Well it isn't many years ago that playing a bouzouki with Irish music was pretty experimental. And a few years before itb was the banjo that was the weird innovation. The didgeridoo is still working its way into the tradition, but it can sound great with Irish music.

Then The Chieftains came home with some great Chinese tunes. And there's all kinds of percussion from Africa working it's way in. (In fact I've got a sneaking suspicion that the first bodhrans in modern times were probably brought back from Morocco by some Irish hippy who strummed it like a guitar because he'd have been a guitar player rather than a drummer to start off with. Then the folklorists sneaked around and found some kind opf precedent in he Irish tradition to make it a bit more respectable.)

What I mean is, there's been a hell of a lot of experiementation all the time, and it's still going on. But if it sounds right, pretty soon people don't think of it as experimental.