Thank you for sharing this. The man is a legend, his whole life dedicated to music. It also gives you feel of traditional Irish music with it's history and development and he highlights similarities between how modern music has developed from traditional rhythm and structure.
I've always been fascinated with the history of American Blues and it's origins and how simple instruments were built from everyday materials to produce very distinct sounds. This now gives me an insight into the origins and types of Irish traditional music that will certainly help me develop a feel for it whilst learning to play. It is one thing to play an instrument but it's something else to be able to let it talk to people in such an expressive and emotional way.
You can sit and listen to a piece and say at the end 'That was good', or sit and listen to the same piece and come away with goose bumps and feeling emotional. There is a huge difference and it (to me anyway) is all about the feeling that you put into the music that you play. And Irish traditional music gives you an opportunity to do that. To me music is communication, whether you want to tell a story or just get people up dancing. There's a right way and a wrong way to do it.