This. My ex-husband and I are not even a little bit Irish (although, as Ashkenazic Jewish, we look pretty damn white) but we started going to pub sessions because MUSIC AND FREE BEER and pennywhistle's not hard to play for someone (me) who studied recorder and flute, and these days he plays bodhran and sings in an Irish band. (He got the sessions in the divorce. I got the goth clubs.) And Gaelic Storm at one point had a fiddle player of Indian descent -- I think his last name was Banerjee.