Dublin's traditional music has been eclipsed by that of other parts of Ireland. A new tour should change that, writes Siobhán Long

Over the years Dublin has happily cosied up musically to everyone from Bono to Glen Hansard and Luke Kelly. But the Pale's traditional roots have for too long escaped the limelight, with swarthy regional styles and tunes, such as Sligo's fiddle and Sliabh Luachra's feisty polkas and slides, dominating the debate about traditional music past and present. Music Network's first tour of 2004 seeks to change all that.

Fuelled by a quartet of musicians, three of whom share not only a history in music but also a geography - the Navan Road and Clontarf on Dublin's northside - this tour promises to rattle our preconception that, like the devil, the west's got all the best tunes. If Kevin Glackin, Seán Potts, Paul McGrattan and Seán Tyrrell have their way, Dublin's tunes and songs will get a fairer airing before 2004 gets settled in its seat.

Potts, piper and scion of the famed clan, is quick to take the pulse of Dublin's musical health. "There are a number of musicians today whose standard of musicianship ranks with anything in the past," he says. "I'm very close to Conor McKeown and Liam O'Connor [the 2003 TG4 Traditional Musician of the Year\] and these players have achieved high standards and originality. But most of all, despite the accessibility of so many different idioms of music, they've stuck largely with music that's within the broad parameters of what I've always liked. It's not that any particular music is right or wrong. There are no rights or wrongs in music. But somehow they play the kind of traditional music that satisfies my musical needs."

McGrattan, the second member of this Dublin triad, shared his first day at school with Potts, whose father, a former member of The Chieftains and long-time promoter of Dublin's piping tradition, provided the boys with many of their tunes. "The parish I'm from is full of musicians, full of flute players," says McGrattan, "and Seán Potts used to come and teach us in the local GAA centre. When we went to Coláiste Mhuire in Parnell Square it was a cool thing to play traditional music, whereas Paddy Glackin, who was there 10 years before us, had the exact opposite experience. By the time we came along the Bothy Band had made their impact, and that made a huge difference. But Dublin was always a melting pot for music. Dublin was always the stronghold of piping as well, and to be honest when we were learning tunes we didn't know that they'd come from players in Sligo or Roscommon."

McGrattan views the recent banning of children in pubs after the 9 p.m. as akin to a punitive sentence being passed on the music. "To be able to sit down in a pub and play with musicians who might have been teaching you by day," he says, "gave us a chance to get to know those people on a completely different level. When kids hit the teenage years and rebel and don't want to play the music, what keeps them going is the whole social side.

"These people made a huge impression on us. They were real characters. Can you imagine hearing Johnny O'Leary playing but never getting a chance to hear him talk? It would be a totally different experience."

Glackin, yet another member of a famed clan (along with his brothers Paddy and Seamus and his father, Tom), speaks passionately. With a lengthy résumé - having recorded with his brother Seamus, with Davy Spillane and Mary Black, spearheading the online-teaching website Scoiltrad and teaching music students at Dublin Institute of Technology, he doesn't hesitate to highlight what he sees as the nefarious claims some musicians make about the music. "People are beginning to use the same old clichés," he says with a certain weariness.

"They say things like: 'The most important aspect of their music is landscape.' What about the likes of Dan Dowd, who spent years walking from Donnycarney to teach kids in the Pipers Club, or Leo Rowsome, who spent weeks showing lads how to tune their pipes? That seems to have been forgotten. They're appealing to the American market where they want the Celtic twilight vibe - and a lot of the commercial musicians are giving it to them."

Glackin casts a cold eye over the hero worship now at play."I was watching a programme in the TV series The Raw Bar, called In Touch With The Dead," he says, "and all the players were in touch with the big names: Johnny Doherty and Padraig O'Keeffe. There was nobody in touch with the players who just taught them week in week out, out of a sheer love for the music.

"A lot of players are playing music today because their parents dragged them out every Tuesday to local classes. Nobody mentions that. It's all to do with the drumlins and meandering rivers that affected Patrick Kavanagh."

• Music Network's Best Of Irish tour begins tomorrow in Clifden, Co Galway, and ends in Listowel, Co Kerry, on January 29th. See www.musicnetwork.ie or call 01-6719429 for more details