The Irishness of Irish Music

John O'Flynn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351543361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This book brings together important material from a range of sources and highlights how government organizations, musicians, academics and commercial companies are concerned with, and seek to use, a particular notion of Irish musical identity. Rooting the study in the context of the recent history of popular, traditional and classical music in Ireland, as well as providing an overview of aspects of the national field of music production and consumption, O'Flynn goes on to argue that the relationship between Irish identity and Irish music emerges as a contested site of meaning. His analysis exposes the negotiation and articulation of civic, ethnic and economic ideas within a shifting hegemony of national musical culture, and finds inconsistencies between and among symbolic constructions of Irish music and observed patterns in the domestic field. More specifically, O'Flynn illustrates how settings, genres, social groups and values can influence individual identifications or negations of Irishness in music. While the apprehension of intra-musical elements leads to perceptions of music that sounds Irish, style and authenticity emerge as critical articulatory principles in the identification of music that feels Irish. The celebratory and homogenizing discourse associated with the international success of some Irish musical forms is not reflected in the opinions of the people interviewed by O'Flynn; at the same time, an insider/outsider dialectic of national identity is found in various forms of discourse about Irish music. Performers and composers discussed include Bill Whelan (Riverdance), Sinead O'Connor, The Corrs, Altan, U2, Martin Hayes, Dolores Keane and Gerald Barry.

Chapter 1
Irishness and music: Towards an interpretive framework

Introduction

This book is concerned with national identity and music in Ireland, as it comes to be experienced and articulated by way of musical events and products, as well as through the varied and interrelated discourses of consumer, governmental, cultural, academic and industrial interests. Its provocative title can be regarded in several ways, from conceptions of Irishness that arise out of culturally defined fields of musical content and practice to more critical perspectives that avoid any fixed or essentialist interpretations of the same musical and cultural phenomena. The idea of Irishness can also be used in ironic readings of what might be perceived as stereotypical sounds and images of Irish musical culture. In a sense, the book’s title embraces all of these, for while I generally adopt and sympathize with critical (and sometimes ironic) standpoints, I also engage with received notions of ‘Ireland’, ‘Irishness’ and ‘Irish music’. Of course, what counts as Irish music, what is included and what is excluded under that term is very often contested. For example, the choice of an archive photograph of The Corrs for the book’s cover might appear incongruous to some, posing questions about the cultural authenticity of that group’s particular style and output; for others again, it might seem inconceivable not to include The Corrs in any lengthy discussion about contemporary music in Ireland.

In other respects, the theme of Irishness and music might come across as anachronistic, particularly when considered in the light of contemporary, post-nationalist images of a globally oriented Irish economy. Debates concerning national identity and music, it might be argued, belong to a nationalist past, and in late modern contexts these debates are only relevant to residual ideological factions within an otherwise pluralist and forward-looking society. And yet, looking back over the past decade or so, questions about the Irishness of Irish music seem to have intensified rather than abated. One has to look no further than to past issues of The Journal of Music in Ireland to get some idea about the scale of the phenomenon at a discursive level.¹ It seems that many who are involved in music on the island must at some stage consider, first, what is meant by the term ‘Irish music’ and second, how their musical endeavours and interests relate to broader issues of identity in Ireland. Quite obviously, there is no one conception of Irishness and music. Nor should we consider that theorizations of national identity and music are confined to music producers, journalists, academics and others with a specialized interest in the field; equally important are the everyday views (or ‘commonsense theories’) of national identity and music that may arise from social experience, whether through attendance at music events, through other habits and technologies of music consumption, or through broader cultural and educational media.

Music in Ireland at the turn of the twenty-first century

The mid-1990s saw an explosion of celebratory discourse surrounding a number of high-profile Irish music acts. Insofar as some types of music by domestic artists enjoyed a disproportionately large share of international music sales, the general category of Irish music was enjoying an unprecedented success (Goodbody Economic Consultants, 2003: 34). Global markets for traditional groups like The Chieftains and Altan had expanded from a folk niche into the more mainstream category of world music (see Taylor, 1997: 209–30). U2 were purported to be the world’s ‘biggest’ rock band, and the international successes of Sinéad O’Connor and The Cranberries suggested to the outside world that the idea of Irish rock was based on more than a one-act wonder.² Arguably, the phenomenon of this period was the rise and rise of traditional-derived Irish music productions. Here, I not only refer to the meteoric success of Enya’s New Age/Celtic sound and, more recently, the sustained Billboard world music rating of the Celtic Woman ensemble, but also to the wholescale showcasing of Irishness and music through a series of musical mega-productions. Nowhere was this more explicit than in the case of Riverdance, a music and dance show that would come to be regarded as the largest cultural export ever to emerge from Ireland (see Kuhling et al., 2006).

Yet, even when all of these high-profile acts are considered together, they represent a very small part of the field of music production in contemporary Irish society. In other words, what is celebrated in terms of Irishness and music is based on a very narrow selection of products. Furthermore, many of the cultural mediators who allude to and assume the inherent ethnicity of Irish music, do so by presuming a number of essential qualities for Irish people and Irish music alike.³ This suggests a general problem with two major aspects. First, what comes to be celebrated as Irish music does not represent the diversity and totality of musical life in Ireland. Second, where national identity is concerned, the perceptions of the majority of Irish people are assumed by a relatively small and unrepresentative group of commentators.

The recent celebration of some types of Irish music has been concomitant with a society that has changed in several respects. Notably, the Republic of Ireland had become progressively less isolationist in outlook from the 1960s onwards. Moreover, during the same period the Republic’s economy had advanced from a relatively backward position in European terms to becoming a global economic success. So it would appear that the celebration of Irishness in music and in other aspects of culture is as much involved with economic conceptions of nationality as it is with cultural and/or political ideas. Indeed, the assumed links between cultural exposure and national economic success have come to be interpreted by many commentators in celebratory terms of national identity, with musical ‘renaissance’ regarded as a signifier of ‘national confidence’ (for example, Ó Cinnéide, 2002: 1–7; Walsh, 1996: 78). If anything, the intervening years between the mid-1990s and the time of writing have witnessed an intensification of the tendencies already outlined. In socio-economic terms, Ireland has experienced an unparalleled period of expansion and development, changes that have come to be mirrored by increased levels of music production and consumption in general. The ubiquity of celebratory discourse about the success and/or Irishness of (some) Irish music has not diminished; at the same time, a certain degree of critical response to this phenomenon has gathered ground in scholarship and in some journalistic views on Irish cultural life.

Part of the problem with the celebratory discourse about Irish music is the way in which such navel-gazing representations of Irishness can serve to exclude many musical genres, traditions and practices. I speak here firstly about Irish classical music⁴ which, as White (1998a, 1998b, 2003, 2005) observes, has largely not been included in explorations of national-cultural identity, whether celebratory, critical or otherwise. This can be considered as anomalous insofar as ideas of other ‘national’ music(s) often include art music from the countries concerned (Grieg as Norwegian, Bernstein as American, Villa-Lobos as Brazilian, and so on). A second area of the national musical field that has received little or no attention has been the entire range of domestic popular music scenes. Related to this, it could be stated that, with the exception of some amateur practices in traditional music, affirmations of an Irish musical identity have in the main excluded non-commodity musical forms. In other words, very little attention has been given to those aspects of musical culture that have not achieved national or transnational ‘visibility’ (Slobin, 1993: 17).

Defining Irish music

The term ‘Irish music’ suggests many possible meanings. The definition used throughout this book, namely, music produced in Ireland, follows the pluralist position argued by composer/performer and academic Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (1982a: 919). An obvious limitation of this approach is that it effectively excludes music produced by populations of Irish people living in other countries,⁵ although this can be to some extent justified by pointing out that all styles and genres of music produced in Ireland will have continuities and connections with music systems beyond its shores (Ó Súilleabháin, 1982a: 915). Not only that, but in increasingly globalized contexts of music production and consumption, it is arguable that particular genres of music hitherto associated with fixed conceptions of Irish ethnicity, be it in Ireland or amongst the worldwide Irish Diaspora, have to some degree become re-contextualized insofar as the same music is practised and enjoyed by non-Irish musicians and audiences in many parts of the world (see, for example, Williams, 2006).

This book then focuses on music in domestic national contexts. While obviously not the only way that the category of Irish music can be conceived, it is a way that Irish people themselves sometimes demarcate the field. For example, Bradby (1994), in a review of the ‘Imagining Ireland’ conference held in Dublin, 1993, describes how participants at an open forum on Irish popular music delimited the discussion to popular music produced by the ‘Irish-living-in-Ireland’. My reason for focusing the discussion on domestic-produced music is because the subject matter is concerned with a particular society as much as it is with a particular nation; furthermore, I do not assume that this society-nation equates to any singular ethnicity. Thus, Irishness can be regarded as a problematic, rather than as a given concept.

I confine the study to the Republic of Ireland (henceforth ‘Ireland’) for two principal reasons. First, the book considers governmental and other official constructions of national identity and music within the sovereign Irish state, thereby leaving Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) out of the analysis, or at least those parts that deal with infrastructural elements.⁶ Second, I wish to focus on how Irishness, as opposed to Irishness in combination with Ulsterness and/or Britishness, is associated with certain types of music. Related to these points, the book does not engage in any substantial way with the complex issues of cultural identity arising from the sectarian and political ‘troubles’ experienced in Northern Ireland over recent decades. While this is a topic that has already received some attention (Bracefield, 1996; McCann, 1995; McLoone, 2004; Magowan, 2005; Rolston, 1999, 2001; Stokes, 1994: 8–10; Vallely, 2004a, 2006) and undoubtedly merits further investigation, I do not pursue this route, largely because it is not an issue that significantly emerges amongst the various voices represented in this book.

Of course, musical activities are never wholly contained by political boundaries, and in relation to this particular study it is worth noting that many Irish musicians born north of the border are likely to have aspects of their education and subsequent production based in the Republic. Some contemporary examples include singer/songwriters Juliet Turner and Paul Brady, and the composer/performer Phil Coulter (see Swan, 2003: 173–6; 237–40; 241–6). Furthermore, I acknowledge the interrelatedness and latent ambiguities of Irish, British and other national identities, an issue that is touched on immediately below. Overt and covert political ideas do sometimes come to the fore in the book, but only inasmuch as they are raised in the course of people’s opinions about music and cultural-national identity in Ireland.

Identifying styles of Irish music

The broad definition of Irish music used throughout this work is premised on two key principles. First, the demarcation of particular styles and related sets of musical practices in Ireland or anywhere else arise with reference to the entire musical field (Green, 1999; Middleton, 1990: 1–12). Second, and at the same time, there are specific socio-historical contexts that give rise to the identification of three major style categories for Irish music, namely, traditional, popular and classical, and of various sub-styles within these.⁷ This approach departs from conventional accounts of Irish music that are framed around a dual content of traditional music and classical music (see pp. 14–15 below), or on categorization systems centred on Western conceptions of a popular/classical split. Under this latter view, the folk or traditional label is regarded as primarily ideological insofar as its discursive origins represent a reaction to the rise of popular and mass-mediated cultural production in countries such as Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Boyes, 1993; Clampin, 1999; Francmanis, 2003; Harker, 1985; Middleton, 1990; Pickering and Green, 1987; Small, 1987). Indeed, some critics of revivalist and other folkloristic perspectives go as far as to suggest that the term folk – and by extension, traditional – is itself a dubious if not redundant musical category (Boyes, 1993; Harker, 1985; Middleton, 1990).⁸ Accordingly, the category of folk or traditional can be subsumed within a broader conception of popular music that embraces all vernacular musical practices in differentiated modern societies (Middleton, 1990; Pickering and Green, 1987; Small, 1987). This re-alignment of the major categories allows us to interpret the dominant ideological interests of modern musical history through the dichotomous conceptions of high and low culture or, in the specific case of music, through the seemingly antithetical categories of classical and popular. However, this is a position that can be challenged, particularly with reference to music in Ireland over a similar historical period.

Certainly, it is possible to find parallels between historical accounts of antiquarian, revivalist and folkloristic movements in England and those that obtained in the Irish situation over a similar period (McCarthy, 1999; White, 1998a). In fact, prior to Ireland’s sovereign independence in 1922, the two countries were economically and politically connected, and as such were also linked culturally and ideologically. Similar to patterns that unfolded in England, was the association of music with social categories and a tradition of antiquarian scholarship that later came to be transformed and appropriated by revivalist interests (White, 1998a: 53–73, 1998b: 27–32). Yet, social stratification in Ireland over this period differed in a number of respects. First, Ireland would remain a predominantly (though not exclusively) rural society well into the twentieth century (Tovey and Share, 2000: 41). Second, antiquarian interests in Irish culture were mediated through parallel processes of social differentiation and colonization. The first collections of Irish folk music by Anglo-Irish scholars represented an attraction to a cultural other, or a fetishization of ‘native’ Gaelic Irishness, as it were (see White, 1998a: 36–52).⁹ A third difference relates to the later folk revival period at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the case of England, the ideological basis of the folk revival might be interpreted in terms of social stratification, national interests and a counterbalance to the perceived threat of mass culture. However, if we consider Ireland as a British colony during this time, then such an ideological convergence falls apart. In fact, the revival of Irish culture was symbolically appropriated by separatist-nationalist interests and as such became a site of opposition and struggle (White, 1998a: 56).

Perceived differences between Irishness and Britishness often came to be conflated with socio-economic categories and distinctions of musical style. Under this way of thinking, non-traditional musical forms might be regarded as un-Irish. Thus, Irish classical music was often associated with an Anglo-Irish ascendancy comprising the merchant and upper classes while popular music was simultaneously regarded as ‘vulgar’ and ‘foreign’. As Townshend (1999: 34) describes, this ‘vocabulary of contamination’ assumed the existence of ‘an original, organic Irish culture’.¹⁰ And yet, nationalist propaganda and romantic ideology notwithstanding, the material conditions under which Irish people lived and under which music was produced and consumed were specific to Ireland during the period in question. Counter to trends in the industrialized regions of Europe, a substantial majority of Irish people remained in rural communities and their musical practices were quite distinct from, though by no means unrelated to, music outside of those communities (McCarthy, 1999: 45–51).¹¹ In other words, I propose that whatever ideological constructions and struggles there may have been, traditional music as a practice or, to borrow Theodor Ador...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of figures and tables
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Irishness and music: Towards an interpretive framework
• 2 A brief and recent history of Irish music
• 3 Mapping the field
• 4 Snapshots
• 5 Ireland in music?
• 6 Irishness and music in a changing society
• 7 The music
• 8 Authenticity and Irish music
• Conclusion: Irishness and music ‘inside out’
• Bibliography
• Select discography
• Filmography
• Index