Hello Mary,

Great to hear from you. Sadly the Black Nun is kind of 'sleeping' now, generally through lack of interest, but who knows what might happen in the future.

Yes I know of Altnaveigh House & their good work.
They & Different Drums have certainly been doing excellent work these past few years.

Azizi, aye of course the female goats have the softer skin.
Sure, don't we all know the female of the species has skin akin to her personality - easily manipulated! :-)

I think it'll be a long time before the Lambeg & African Drums are accepted into Trad Sessions though, but then I suppose they used to say that about Guitars & Bouzoukis didn't they, so you never know!

Suppose the trick is just to keep an open mind & see what works & what doesn't.

By the way folks, we had a Flute player from a local Flute Band join us last night at our weekly Ballad & Tunes session, near the Giants Causeway, & there was, I'm delighted to say, a certain amount of tune overlap. Plus he knew some of the songs & was able to muck in with those too. Luckily he also knew a couple of the more comical Christy Moore songs too & so he fitted right in.