KYOTO -- Need to beat those hum-drum blues? Get some spring back in your step with some great Irish dance music by Kesh Band, which kicks off its 10-day St. Patrick's week tour tonight in Kobe.

The Kyoto-based Kesh plays regularly around Honshu, but now offers a rare treat you won't want to miss: top Irish guitarist Peter Gilmore, flown over from Dublin by sponsor Guiness beer expressly for this week's Irish celebrations.

"I already have a hot band, but we thought we'd get someone really good for St. Pat's, and Peter's a genius," says Kesh fiddler Jay Gregg, explaining that Gilmore is in great demand as session musician for the likes of flutist Lawrence Nugent and fiddler Martin Hayes, two of the greatest names in today's Irish music scene.

Kesh Band, named for an Irish jig tune, which in turn takes its name from a mountain in Ireland, has benefited from the current international Irish music renaissance, now storming Japan's shores as well. Though core members Jay Gregg, Atsushi Akazawa and Melissa Holding have played together for the last six years, the demand for their music has taken off, as Japanese have fed their Celtic fever with Japan tours by Irish supergroups like Altan, the Suffering Gaels, Donal Lunny and Riverdance.

In addition to Gregg on fiddle, Holding plays accordion and Akazawa plays bouzouki (an eight-stringed Greek lute recently much used in Irish music) and fiddle. With Gilmore on guitar, Akazawa is freed up for fiddle. "With two fiddles, we can play off each other, which is a thrill. It builds and builds, really winds up," says Akazawa.

What lends Irish music its magic, the thing that gets your foot tapping and your bottom bouncing? Part of it is the rhythm that underlies all Irish tunes, the bagpipe drone, which is either aurally present (often mimicked by the guitar or fiddle if no bagpipes are played), or implied.

Although "drone" may sound boring, it is anything but.

"The musicians set up an 'attack drone.' It's infectious, it pummels you! It's made for dancing," Gregg says animatedly, explaining that it's the basis for all other Irish rhythms: jigs, reels, slides, airs, hornpipes and polkas.

The drone in turn is made up of specialized techniques like rolls and triplets (multiple notes played to give the illusion of a single note) and crans, a skip or break in the drone that is sure to put a hop in your hoof.

"The music is really put together in a clever way, with ornamentation that's improvised, but within very defined boundaries. The way you gauge good players is by how quickly they can improvise, and their skill at ornamentation," says Gregg.

In Irish music all players are constantly playing the exact same melody at the same volume, so you get a thick, luxurious and complicated sound in which the musicians and audience are riding a rhythm wave, Gregg explains. Individual players may add ornamentation, but the goal is to contribute to that thick wave, not to stand out.

"One of the great truths of Irish music is that the sum is much greater than the parts. You go high, low, all over, but everyone's together, note for note -- it's a wild ride," he says.

Nearly every Irish musician learns by ear, not from musical notation. Since it's considered rude to play if you don't know the tune, a player's ear has to be extremely good.

Though most of the thousands of Irish tunes were written down in the 1800s, many date back much further. "Irish music is what happened when country folk in Ireland got a hold of baroque," Gregg explains half-jokingly. For centuries, its main purpose was as dance accompaniment. In America it contributed to the bluegrass style, which became a component in the birth of both country and rock 'n' roll.

It was not often presented in concert, though, until the Bothy Band (some of its members went on to join the Chieftains) brought Irish music to the world's attention with its recordings made in the late 1960s. The world's love affair with Irish music began then, building into a worldwide passion today.

"We're so booked up that we're having to turn work away," laments Gregg, but he adds that the group's popularity will give rise to a CD before the year is out.