Irish music is not simple. For a start, there are a number of very strong song and instrumental traditions, which is to say there is a great deal of VARIETY and COMPLEXITY in the music.

Within the song tradition, there are songs from 400 years ago and songs from 4 days ago, fast and slow, sad and joyous and sly and rebellious and reverent and other things as well; some in major, minor, mixolydian and scales the Greeks never conceived... and then there are songs in English and Gaelic and a bit of both sometimes with Classical touches thrown in on purpose and at random.

Like the songs, the tunes come in all scales and speeds in forms from Scotland, England and the Continent as well as native Irish and few of the instruments they're played on are Irish at all.

In general, I would not start a sentence about Irish music saying that it was "simply" anything.

All the best,
Dan Milner