The increasing presence of televisions and radios along with advances in technology (e.g. communications) brought the Irish into contact with cultures from all over the world. Most of the cultural importation in Ireland came from America and Britain, the two countries containing the largest populations of the diaspora. A major aspect of American and British culture that immediately gained popularity in Ireland was music, especially American and British pop and rock music, and punk music. Compared to other European countries, Ireland had been experiencing musical stagnancy in the early part of the twentieth century due in part to its protectionism and conservatism ideologies. Traditional music was by far the most common type of music performed throughout Ireland, and because of homogeneity of small rural communities and public house settings, traditional music performances were very accessible, very common, and very similar throughout the island, including the North. The Grove Music Online offers a sufficient description of this Irish traditional music:
Reflecting the predominant social and cultural strains in modern Ireland, its traditional music is largely Celtic (Gaelic or Irish) and British (English or Scottish) in origin. Its main contemporary forms are songs in Irish and English and instrumental airs and dance tunes (…). Monophonic melody is predominant, although harmonic and percussive dimensions have developed in recet years with the introdcution of instruments that allow for these dimensions. Most tunes, vocal and instrumental, are heptatonic, with pentatonic song airs common in the northern province of Ulster. [Most] are in the Ionian mode (…). Phrases are mostly even in number and equal in length. The tradition is often considered to be essentially one of solo performance, but small and large instrumental groups are common (…). Transcriptions of song texts and staff notation or a variety of alpha-numeric or tablature music notations have been increasingly used by performers over the last 200 years, but only as an aid to memory or for teaching and never in performance. Some level of literacy is now common.
The importance of folk or traditional music as an element of the Irish identity is evident in part by the fact that the state symbol of the Republic is the harp, an instrument used often in folk music (see White and Carolan 2008 for discussion of Irish traditional music). Naturally, as if often the case, the influx of new foreign music into the country met with conservative resistance by folk advocates on the grounds that rock and pop—or for this discussion, pop/rock—were not “Irish.” Regardless of the conservative discontent, British and American rock or pop music became extremely popular among the younger Irish generations. For those who disliked the commercial nature of pop and rock, punk music and beat music became the more authentic “new” genres. It was within this tumultuous musical environment of the competing popular genres of beat, punk, rock, and pop music that U2 formed in 1977.