Full Description
Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond represents the first interdisciplinary volume of chapters on an intricate cultural field that can be experienced and interpreted in manifold ways, whether in Ireland (The Republic of Ireland and/or Northern Ireland), among its diaspora(s), or further afield. While each contributor addresses particular themes viewed from discrete perspectives, collectively the book contemplates whether 'music in Ireland' can be regarded as one interrelated plane of cultural and/or national identity, given the various conceptions and contexts of both Ireland (geographical, political, diasporic, mythical) and Music (including a proliferation of practices and genres) that give rise to multiple sites of identification. Arranged in the relatively distinct yet interweaving parts of 'Historical Perspectives', 'Recent and Contemporary Production' and 'Cultural Explorations', its various chapters act to juxtapose the socio-historical distinctions between the major style categories most typically associated with music in Ireland - traditional, classical and popular - and to explore a range of dialectical relationships between these musical styles in matters pertaining to national and cultural identity. The book includes a number of chapters that examine various movements (and 'moments') of traditional music revival from the late eighteenth century to the present day, as well as chapters that tease out various issues of national identity pertaining to individual composers/performers (art music, popular music) and their audiences. Many chapters in the volume consider mediating influences (infrastructural, technological, political) and/or social categories (class, gender, religion, ethnicity, race, age) in the interpretation of music production and consumption. Performers and composers discussed include U2, Raymond Deane, Afro-Celt Sound System, E.J. Moeran, Séamus Ennis, Kevin O'Connell, Stiff Little Fingers, Frederick May, Arnold
Contents
Introduction, John O'Flynn, Mark Fitzgerald; Part I Historical Perspectives; Chapter 1 'Whatever has a Foreign Tone / We like much better than our own': Irish Music and Anglo-Irish Identity in the Eighteenth Century, Barra Boydell; Chapter 2 Traditional Music in the Irish Revival, Martin Dowling; Chapter 3 'A National School of Music Such as the World has Never Seen': Re-appropriating the Early Twentieth Century into a Chronology of Irish Composition, Edmund Hunt; Chapter 4 The 'Irish Music' of Arnold Bax and E.J. Moeran, Fabian Gregor Huss; Chapter 5 Inventing Identities: The Case of Frederick May, Mark Fitzgerald; Chapter 6 Forging a Northern Irish Identity: Music Broadcasting on BBC Northern Ireland, 1924-39, Ruth Stanley; Part II Recent and Contemporary Production; Chapter 7 'From Inside my Head': Issues of Identity in Northern Ireland through the Music of Kevin O'Connell, Jennifer McCay; Chapter 8 The Honourable Tradition of Non-existence: Issues of Irish Identity in the Music and Writings of Raymond Deane, Adrian Smith; Chapter 9 Dancing at the Crossroads Remixed: Irish Traditional Musical Identity in Changing Community Contexts, Kari K. Veblen; Chapter 10 Morrissey's Gothic Ireland, Isabella van Elferen; Chapter 11 Post-punk Industrial Cyber Opera? The Ambivalent and Disruptive Hybridity of Early 1990s' U2, Noel McLaughlin; Part III Cultural Explorations; Chapter 12 Gael or Gall ? Musical Identity in Early 1970s Cape Clear Island, Thérèse Smith; Chapter 13 Positive Vibrations: Musical Communities in African Dublin, Matteo Cullen; Chapter 14 Kalfou Danjere ? Interpreting Irish-Celtic Music, John O'Flynn; Chapter 15 Music in Ireland: Youth Cultures and Youth Identity, Eileen Hogan; Chapter 16 The Invention of Ethnicity: Traditional Music and the Modulations of Irish Culture, Harry White;
