Focus: Irish Traditional Music

Sean Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000050196
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Focus: Irish Traditional Music, Second Edition introduces the instrumental and vocal musics of Ireland, its diaspora in North America, and its Celtic neighbors while exploring the essential values underlying these rich musical cultures and placing them in broader historical and social context. With both the undergraduate and graduate student in mind, the text weaves together past and present, bringing together important ideas about Irish music from a variety of sources and presenting them, in three parts, within interdisciplinary lenses of history, film, politics, poetry, and art:

I. Irish Music in Place and Time provides an overview of the island's musical history and its relationship to current performance practice.

II. Music Traditions Abroad and at Home contrasts the instrumental and vocal musics of the "Celtic Nations" (Scotland, Wales, Brittany, etc.) and the United States with those of Ireland.

III. Focusing In: Vocal Music in Irish-Gaelic and English identifies the great songs of Ireland's two main languages and explores the globalization of Irish music.

New to this edition are discussions of those contemporary issues reflective of Ireland's dramatic political and cultural shifts in the decade since first publication, issues concerning equity and inclusion, white nationalism, the Irish Traveller community, hip hop and punk, and more. Pedagogical features—such as discussion questions, a glossary, a timeline of key dates, and expanded references, as well as an online soundtrack—ensure that readers of Focus: Irish Traditional Music, Second Edition will be able to grasp Ireland's important social and cultural contexts and apply that understanding to traditional and contemporary vocal and instrumental music today.

PART I

Irish Music in Place and Time

CHAPTER 1

Looking In from the Outside

Is glas iad na cnoc i bhfad uainn ~ Distant hills look green.

Ireland seems so familiar to those who have never visited. A high-functioning tourist machine generates powerful and alluring images of castles, rocky shorelines, rolling green hills, and remarkably good-looking people. A never-flagging set of factories feeds a never-ending desire on the part of foreigners for Irish-themed clothing, tea towels, shot glasses, leprechauns, shamrock pins, and other signifiers of Irish heritage. In a cultural climate where red hair is enough to (erroneously) proclaim one as “Irish,” and where being descended from one Irish grandparent (along with Muhammad Ali, Che Guevara, and Mariah Carey) allows one to gain Irish citizenship, it should not be surprising that Ireland’s economic upswing of the late 1990s and early twenty-first century should have brought a corresponding upswing in the international popularity of all things Irish.

This second edition of Focus: Irish Traditional Music brings the traditional music of Ireland as it is played and sung today together with the essential interdisciplinary features that make Irish music still so important in Ireland and abroad. Divided into three main parts, Focus: Irish Traditional Music covers the historical context, the cultural context, and the important details of Irish instrumental and vocal music. Chapter 1, “Looking In from the Outside,” approaches Ireland from a foreign, particularly diasporic, perspective. It locates Ireland not only as part of Europe but as the homeland of the Irish diaspora, engages the reader in understanding musical processes such as texture, variation, and modes, and discusses what happens at a performance of Irish music in Ireland.

Chapter 2, “Roots and Branches of Gaelic Ireland,” has as its concentration the historical context of Irish traditional music and culture, from the establishment of settlements on the island to the development of the bards as powerful culture-bearers. Chapter 3 begins with Queen Elizabeth I’s 1603 proclamation to “hang all harpers where found,” and brings the reader up to the present, to the establishment of what is now considered “Irish traditional music.” Chapter 4, “Music of the ‘Celtic’ Nations,” explores the related musics of Scotland, Wales, Northumberland, Cornwall, Brittany, Galicia, and Cape Breton in eastern Canada. It examines the problematic nature of the linguistic term “Celtic” in its application to music. It also focuses on instruments, contexts, languages, and related cultural issues that both join and separate the various traditions. Chapter 5, “The Green Fields of America,” explores not only the reasons for the Irish diaspora around the globe, but also the rich music that resulted from their experiences in emigration and exile. The chapter also discusses authenticity in the context of how foreigners, particularly Americans, have created for themselves a vision of Ireland and celebrated that vision primarily in song. Chapter 6, “Irish Instrumental Music,” is entirely devoted to the instruments, forms, and playing styles of the bagpipes, fiddles, flutes, accordions, and other common instruments heard in traditional contexts.

Chapters 7 (“Vocal Music in Irish-Gaelic”) and 8 (“Vocal Music in English”) are the heart of this book. These chapters introduce the reader to sean-nós (“old style”) singing, often considered (particularly by its practitioners) to be the soul of Irish music and among its most ancient forms. These chapters cover sean-nós together with other songs in Irish, the great English-language ballads, and Irish macaronic (bilingual) songs. These chapters are the book’s primary focus because few published works reach into the vocal tradition. Chapter 9, “New Contexts for Music and Dance,” looks at the current excitement and attraction toward Irish (and, more broadly, “Celtic”) music, highlighting the nation’s dramatic economic growth and the easing of tensions in Northern Ireland. The chapter concludes with a sense of how Irish music is developing into an international language for people from all over the world who know how to play and sing it, and what listeners can expect to hear from Irish music and musicians in the future.

The second edition—which includes updated and relevant current information—features specific short articles, each with a discussion question. These topics, such as the use of “Celtic” signifiers by white nationalists, issues of equity and inclusion in Irish music, the enduring popularity of “Danny Boy” outside of Ireland, and the intersection of films, music, and culture, connect Irish traditional music with what is happening today. Ireland is very much embedded in the twenty-first century—regardless of promotional efforts to keep it looking the way it did in the nineteenth century—and it should come as no surprise to find a dozen different mobile phones scattered among the pints of Guinness and cider on the tables at a typical music session.

At the end of the book the reader will find: a glossary of Irish terms; a set of additional resources (for reading and web surfing); a listening guide to online music tracks; references; and an index. All of these resources are intended to directly connect the reader with little previous knowledge of Ireland, its culture or music, to what is most essentially Irish in the country’s music.

Locating Ireland in Place and Time

The island of Ireland comprises two countries: the Republic of Ireland in the south, and Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) in the northeast. As a two-nation island, Ireland is a very small place compared to, for example, Russia, China, Canada, or the United States. It is approximately the same size as Indiana in the United States, and its entire population of over 6.6 million people (4.8 million in the Republic; 1.8 in Northern Ireland) would easily fit inside the five boroughs of New York City with room to spare. It is in close proximity to the mainland of Europe (Figure 1.1), and it is part of the European Union, making it subject to laws and treaties voted on by the EU member states. With the looming upheavals regarding the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU (“Brexit”), Northern Ireland may become more politically separate from the Republic than it has been for two decades. Ireland—the island—is also a homeland for the more than 70 million descendants of its people around the world.

Figure 1.1 Ireland as a part of Europe

Ireland is also a kind of fictive homeland for the people with no heritage connection, but who are profoundly attracted by its music. It might be worth asking why it is that thousands of non-Irish visitors descend on the village of Doolin in Ireland’s County Clare each year. In spite of its small size, Doolin is one of several centers of Irish instrumental performance, geared toward the tourism industry that brings busloads of foreigners into the town every day. People can enter a pub, drink a pint, listen to a performance, and get back on the bus, confident that they have experienced the “true Ireland” of their imaginations. The fact that many of the instrumentalists in the Doolin pubs are not local and perhaps not even Irish is, to the average visitor, irrelevant. What is important is the array of visual, aural, and other experiential indicators proclaiming that the scene is “just right” in its authenticity and sense of welcome. Indeed, to some extent, the context is an Irish pub, Irish music is being played, and the beer is flowing. What more does anyone need?

American Images of the Irish

Of all the roads into Irish culture, surely one of the most well-worn takes listeners through “Danny Boy,” “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” and other hits of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Or perhaps the reader has encountered green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, or carefully studied—as a child—cartoon images of leprechauns while consuming a bowl of Lucky Charms™ breakfast cereal. The friendly Irish cops in the classic children’s book Make Way for Ducklings (McCloskey 1941) and Huck Finn’s no-good drunken absent father (Twain 1884) are but two examples of Irish-themed character types that non-Irish-born children encounter early on. Certain films highlight particular traits ascribed to the Irish. Mary Poppins, for example, includes a sneaky Gaelic-speaking fox; Singing in the Rain presents two “reformed” huckster stage Irishmen with hearts of gold; numerous cartoons and even a few Star Trek episodes feature periodically drunken but attractive Irishmen that serve to cement images in the hearts and minds of North Americans in particular.

How did Irish imagery give rise to such an array of stereotypes, as far as the non-Irish view the Irish? Think of these images of Irishness, reinforced since the 1850s in American popular culture: the drunken father, weak son, sweet colleen, saintly mother, valiant soldier, noble priest, scatter-brained maid, jovial-but-slightly-corrupt cop, and gangster. We have all likely seen images on public television of Riverdance (or Celtic Woman, or Celtic Thunder) and heard the lush, vague, echoey sounds of Enya’s New Age recordings. Some of us, or our sisters or daughters, may have taken classes in Irish step-dance, complete with heavy, embroidered, expensive dance outfits, wigs with dozens of tiny ringlets, and hordes of anxious hovering stage mothers at competitions.

Those of us who play and sing Irish music in the United States know well the annoyed looks directed at people who stray too far from the Irish-American hit repertoire of songs like “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Lay” as sung by Bing Crosby. It is not out of the question, after playing a set of jigs, to be asked to “play an Irish jig” (meaning “The Irish Washerwoman,” whose title alone reinforces more Irish stereotypes in the American mind). Similarly, singing a song in Irish-Gaelic frequently leads to the request for a “real Irish” song (in other words, an Irish-themed American song). The ubiquitous St. Patrick’s Day accessories, together with the license to drink to excess, did not develop in a vacuum. Irish-American songs, images, stereotypes, marketing gimmicks, and musical sounds all have historical precedent resulting from Irish immigrants’ transitions into American society. Since the reader is beginning this book by looking into Irish musical culture from the outside, it is reasonable to assume at least a little familiarity with the outer trappings of Irishness.

My own early encounters with Irish music occurred when I was a teenager in Berkeley, California. I used white chalk and a mechanical pencil (perfectly, thanks to being an architect’s daughter) to alter the date on my driver’s license so that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Irish Music in Place and Time
• PART II Music Traditions Abroad and at Home
• PART III Focusing In: Vocal Music in Irish-Gaelic and English
• Glossary
• Additional Resources
• Listening Guide
• Appendix 1: Key Dates in Irish History
• Appendix 2: Celebrating an Irish Meal
• References
• About the Author
• Index