My once-in-my-lifetime visit to Ireland included a one-time-only visit to a local ceilidh dance, where an electric piano was part of the featured 4-piece band. This was in a fairly rural area, but at a hotel ballroom in the center of town (a small town in Roscommon near Mayo). The dancing was pretty energetic and seemed to adhere very closely to sets of rules that the attendees all knew. To my mind, that was certainly an experience of real folk culture, and it definitely involved music. It sure seemed like folk music to me.

A few nights later, at a pub in Doolin famous either for traditional music or for musician-tourists (depending upon who you ask), the adhoc group of players gathered around a table included a keyboard player along with the fiddlers and whistlers. He was using his electric instrument strictly as a bass; he could have played the simple little parts he was playing it with a single left-hand finger, although he probably used more ~ maybe his two index fingers.

A real string bass, or even a washtub/tea-chest, might have seemed more aesthetically appropriate, but he kept his volume approproiately low and his playing simple but tasteful, and so fit in quite nicely. Less obtrusive, certainly, than another participant banging away on a more traditional instrument, the dreaded bodhran...