To celebrate World Music Day, we’re spotlighting artists and DJs who are bridging musical generations, recentering forgotten sounds on the dancelfoor, and reshaping how we hear the world. Those taking the sounds of the past and bringing them to the present and future through the lens of modern dance music. World Music Day continues to teach us that while music is being brought forward in new and imaginative ways, an appreciation of music’s past is ever present. Hailing from Ireland, CAOIMHÍN is a testament to this idea.

The singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist grew up with the sounds of Irish Folk music, and carried this influence into a growing music career that is now hitting its stride. But his genius lies in the nuances, because he fuses Gaelic tones with electronic music for a completely novel sound, dubbed as ‘Gaeltronica.’ CAOIMHÍN represents a growing number of Irish artists transporting their heritage into modern dance motifs, rewriting the book on how tradition can be reinterpreted. Having released his debut album Ríocht Na Sí (Land Of The Fairies) in June 2025, CAOIMHÍN is going places fast, and is carrying this unique hybrid with him to audiences around the world.

We caught up with him in the midst of his mini-tour in Australia to talk about his interest in dance music, his burgeoning career and what the future holds for ‘Gaeltronica.’

Tell us a bit about how you got started as a musician.

CAOIMHÍN: We have to go back to when I was five and my mother and father started sending me to music lessons in North Dublin. So, I would have grown up listening, learning and absorbing traditional Irish music. My mother used to get us up before school at 7 a.m. and we had to practice for 15 minutes on each instrument, the flute and fiddle. That’s kind of all I knew, I guess, up until I was maybe 11-12 when I started picking up the guitar, listening to bands like Oasis, getting involved in Rock. But traditional music was always ticking away in the background.

I got to 19 and I started going to raves and discovering House and Techno. I kind of left traditional music for like four or five years from then on, really getting to know this new Electronic music which hadn’t really made sense to me up to that point. Then all of a sudden something seemed to happen in my brain and dance music started to really resonate with me. 

I vividly remember being in the smoking area with a friend of mine who was just getting into learning traditional flute and I dropped that I actually played the flute but hadn’t done it in a couple of years. But in that moment it clicked in me that it was actually really cool to be able to play an instrument and play traditionalized music to such a high level. From that point, I delved back in. But I also had with me all of these new influences that I’d picked up along the way. Since then I’ve been trying to blend my background in traditional music with modern types of dance music.

Was music something you knew you always wanted to do?

Not really. I guess I kind of flip-flopped with it, but I do remember growing up and listening to traditional music and can see it’s changed a lot now. But when I was growing up, traditional Irish music wasn’t cool. I always yearned for a day where it would be cool among young people. I did biochemistry in college and was going to go off and get a normal job but something happened in my last year in college where I was like, ‘I just want to do music.’ Then, I just tried to give myself the confidence that it’s all going to work out.

Tell us a bit more about how traditional Irish music has changed over the years. What major shifts have you seen?

I guess the main thing is that our music is more embraced now than it was when I was growing up. It would always have been shunned outside of traditional music circles where people would see it as just diddly music. But since 2018 I’d say, it feels like we’re going through a Celtic revival like we had in the 1970s with bands like Planksy and The Bothy Band. The ordinary person in Ireland is really vibing with traditionalized music now.

At the same time, there’s something else happening which feels new to me in that we’re starting to become comfortable with exploring different types of musical fusions, especially dance music. I personally thought it was only a matter of time because if you look at how prominent African music is now in dance music, that’s just elements of their folk music being incorporated with more modern sounds.That was bound to happen in Ireland. Now you’ve got great bands like Huartan and Cushla and so many others pushing boundaries.

You call your music ‘Gaeltronica.’ How do you integrate these Folk and Dance influences in your music? 

I don’t really think about it too much to be honest. Mainly I’m just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks! Sometimes I’ll hear a Folk song, say for example, there’s a version I did of the ‘Beidh Aonach Amárach’ which is a classic Irish Folk song in the Irish language which means ‘there’s a fair tomorrow.’ I just heard that and was like, “there’s a bit of a groove there.” I could hear how I could have a looping chord pattern in it and thought to give it a go.

Sometimes I just have this experience making music where it all comes together really quickly because I’m really excited about something and that was one of those instances. Or I could have a traditional Irish tune which doesn’t have any lyrics, put a chord structure around it and start adding in other elements. I use Splice for my samples and play chords on the guitar myself. I have a lot of loops in my laptop that I make and sound really good but I don’t exactly know what they’re going to be yet. Or I’ll start a song with a sample as a base. So creativity comes about in so many different ways.

You also incorporate Irish language into your music. Is that another way to honour your heritage?

Absolutely. It wasn’t my native language growing up but I learned it in school for the first eight years of my life. I do feel like the fact I have it means I almost feel a duty to do something with it, and people are very hungry for Irish as well. So it kind of goes down a treat. My music is bilingual and there’s more of a challenge to write in Irish for sure. But I’ve been getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.

“Irish artists are starting to become comfortable with exploring musical fusions, especially dance music. It was bound to happen.”

Let’s talk about your new album Ríocht Na Sí (Land Of The Fairies), what did you want to achieve with this project?

I wasn’t really planning on doing an album. I’d just been doing singles up until then but I came across the phrase ‘Ríocht Na Sí’ maybe eight or nine months ago and thought that’s a great name for a song and an album. It encompasses what I’m trying to do. Encapsulates elements from our tradition, not only with music, but also from Irish folklore. I love the fact that those older generations seem to be far more connected to nature than we were. They had a great reverence for it and understood that this is the thing that’s keeping us alive so we have to treat it with respect.

So I thought, ‘why don’t I just knuckle down and make an album?’ Write some songs based on that term and incorporate older folk songs that kind of fit within that theme. That’s all it was, really, while sonically exploring this middle ground between traditional and contemporary.

In your journey merging these sounds, have you come across any challenges?

Everything I do is loop based at the moment. From the perspective of performing live, it means I can do a bit of live looping. But one of the challenges is that not all traditional Irish songs fall into a loop category. A lot of them follow a verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure which doesn’t really help. Then a lot of the tunes might have an A part and a B part where the A part might have a certain chord structure and the B part might have a completely different chord structure. So that can be hard to replicate live. At the moment, I’m on touring mode for the album but in the winter, I guess I’m going to have to sit down and think of the next creative direction that I want to take things in.

What do you think the ceiling is for the type of music you make? How far do you think you and other artists can take it?

That’s something I think I’m finding out for myself right now. Like I did have an experience in Ireland back in January where I showcased in front of American and Canadian festival bookers. I had one agent come to me after my show and she said, “I love your stuff, but I can’t take you on because I had like an act before that was half Folk and traditional, half Electronic and we just didn’t know where to put them.” It was like I wasn’t Folk enough for the Folk festivals or Electronic enough for the Electronic ones. I think because it’s so new and so different, I’m kind of up against it in a way.

I know for a fact that if I was to go and just make pure Folk and pure trad, I’d be going around America and all these festivals already. But that’s not something that really feels exciting to me. I’d prefer to be on this path even if it meant getting less gigs. This is a scene that’s growing. So I think as people trailblaze and get more of this type of music out there and get people into it, the rest will take care of itself. More opportunities will come out of it. 

How do you stay inspired and creative?

I go to music sessions and camps and they help me stay inspired in terms of learning  and hearing new tunes from people. I try to keep up my level of the Irish language by reading Roald Dahl books in the Irish language as I’m going to sleep. That’s a nice level of Irish that I can digest. I’m involved with a charity called the Gaelic Woodland Project. We’re set up to create new native Irish forests in Ireland and protect the ones we still have. There’s some really inspiring people involved in that charity and being around that enthusiasm rubs off on me and has inspired me to write songs based on my love of nature.

What are some of the proudest moments of your career so far?

I guess the proudest moment is the one that felt like the biggest leap, which was playing live for the first time. It was at a festival called All Together Now back in 2022. I had put out maybe two or three songs at that point and there was a bit of buzz going but I still had no idea how to play this stuff live. I just got a text from Tomás Mulligan from Ispíní na hÉireann and he was putting together a stage at the festival. He was like, ‘Will you play?’ It was maybe a month out from the festival and I had no idea how I was going to be able to put together a 40-45 minute set. But I was like, ‘you know what? I’m going to say yes and see what happens.’

For the next month, I was bricking myself big time and putting in a lot of work trying to get the songs that I made and present them live. Didn’t sleep a wink. I was probably playing to like two or 300 people and it was surreal. I’m really happy I did it. That taught me that you’ve got to leap sometimes and not think too much about things.

What does World Music Day mean to you?

For me, it’s about appreciating all types of folk music around the world and acknowledging the fact that all forms of music evolved from them. But also paying homage to that and trying to connect with them more as well. I think it’s great that people love world music and organic types of sounds, that’s what it’s all about.

Tell us about your World Music Day show for Mixcloud.

I’ve made a radio show that essentially explores this idea of ‘Gaeltronica.’ It features some of my tracks but more gives a platform to all of the cool music that’s coming out right now and some of the earlier stuff that kicked it all off. There are some pure Irish folk tracks that I love in there and a few pure Electronic songs too that show where I’m coming from, both sides of the package that I’ve come up with.