It was men from Sligo, men like James Morrison and Michael Coleman, who recorded seminal 78 rpm discs in New York in the opening decades of the century. These records found their way back to Ireland, and became reference works, standards for musicians all over the country. Sligo, and its neighboring counties of Leitrim and Roscommon, are well aware of their important place in Irish music history. They also mentioned roadside monuments to great musicians as evidence of music's centrality to the lives of local people. Most importantly, they speak of the Coleman Heritage Center, where plans are afoot for a traditional music archive purely for local music.
Local tunes are important to the band.
Liam Kelly, the group's flute player, said that their albums and concert performances contain a lot of local Sligo pieces. We did get a couple of tunes from that book that Bernie Flaherty put out called Trip to Sligo. You know, we listened to stuff like that, which is more localized rather than just picking tunes up from anywhere in the country. If anyone should know about Dervish's musical policy, it's Kelly. Along with accordion player Shane Mitchell, he has been the core of Dervish's instrumental sets since the very beginning.