• Richie Berger
• From USA
• Street musician in Dublin
• Music by Richie Berger

My name is Richie Berger.
I am an uilleann pipes, fiddle player, low whistle player, and guitarist, and I play both as a street musician, pub musician, weddings, and other things like that.
I first got into traditional Irish music, ironically, in high school through heavy metal, because that was the music I was into at the time as a teenager. And there was a band from Finland that I really liked, called Nightwish, and they actually had the uilleann pipes in their band.

So I first fell in love with the uilleann pipes, and then kind of thought I need to learn this instrument, because it just sounded so beautiful, and I hadn’t heard anything like that before. I started just looking at the uilleann pipes by themselves, and eventually I found a teacher, and I didn’t have money for lessons, but he promised to teach me if I dedicated myself to traditional Irish music. So I kind of worked backwards from rock music to just the pipes, and then to Irish music in general, and then I started playing fiddle and learning a lot about the music and the culture. So that’s kind of how I got into it.

My personal connection to traditional Irish music, largely because it was the first style of music that I played where I was consistently joyful, and it helped me get through a lot of different things in life and a lot of healing as well. And it’s also, I’m also very passionate about Ireland’s history and Ireland’s culture as well. I lived in Dublin for five years, so I really got to live like firsthand, you know, the culture and the experience and the music all kind of intertwined.

The state of Irish traditional music today is very bright. You have a lot of young musicians that are world-renowned blast musicians in the style, all Ireland champions at very young ages, and they’re bringing a lot to the music. There’s a lot of modernization in the style as well, which some people that play in the tradition aren’t as fond of, but I think that kind of fusion with different styles or like even just a revamping of the traditional style is bringing it to a wider audience. So it’s exposing more people to the music and the tradition.

The biggest motivation for me to keep playing and persist in my career in music, are largely because I really don’t know how to do much else. That’s a necessarily true. It is my passion and it’s always been my dream to make a living out of music, not necessarily for fame or anything, but to at least get by. But I’ve been blessed so far with that. So it’s really about just seeing my career through. And I’m also, it’s what I love to do the most. You do what you love for a living. It’s not so much work. It’s still work, but it’s not as bad as it could be.

My biggest hope for the future of Irish traditional music would probably be that it’s just, stays on the same trajectory that it has been. Again, with more and more people around the world being exposed to the music, that it continues to grow at the rate that it has been even more. Because there was a point in time and history where the music was almost dead. It almost was entirely wiped out. It’s a blessing that we still have it in this world, and hopefully the more people hear about it, the more people will take on the uilleann pipes or the fiddle, or even the step dancing.

Yeah, my biggest hope.