Re-Imagining Irish Music and Dance

Re-Imagining Irish Music and Dance MICK MOLONEY Irish music and dance traditions are among the most visible global symbols of Irishness in the world today, defining and articulating a cultural center at a time of unprecedented social change at home and abroad. Most performing artists, enthusiasts, and cultural commentators would probably agree that Irish music and dance are enjoying the best of times in an extraordinary cul tural renaissance. There are, of course, multiple genres oflrish music. They range from older traditional styles of playing and singing to classical Irish music in the Euro pean tradition; the fifes, drums, flutes, and lambegs of the Northern Union ists; the modern rock sounds of world-famous groups like U2, the Cran berries, and the Corrs; the musical fusions created by composers such as Bill Whelan; and the magisterial collaborations between traditional and classi cal musicians, spearheaded by innovators like Micheal O Suilleabhain and Shaun Davey. Then there is the vast trove of musical expressions associated with the Irish Diaspora around the world: songs of the Irish transported to the British colonies, songs of the Irish laborer in England, songs of the Irish fishermen and loggers in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, and the many traditions of popular music and song associated with the Irish in America. Over the past two centuries, Irish and Irish American traditional, clas sical, popular, and various hybrid musical forms have emerged, coalesced, 123 and sometimes vanished at different times and under different conditions. music ill its various fom~ cem~: on~f :, ~o: :o:tfitl co~n!:::., Minstrelsy, Irish American Tin Pan Alley songs, vaudeville routines; the pub the Irish have to their cultural identity-and indeed to multiple cultural singing genre pioneered by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Sean identities. O'Riada, and Ceolt6iri Cualann; the Chieftains, Horslips, and Irish folk rock; One of those identities is said to be "Celtic." And the question, "What is Planxty and the Bothy Band in the 1970s; and, of course, Riverdance are just a Celtic?" is about as tricky as the issue of what "Irish" may mean. The "Re few examples of innovative Irish or Irish American musical hybrids. And Imagining Ireland" conference was held in the southern United States, a then there are Irish artists such as U2, the Cranberries, the Corrs, and Van region with a large population that can lay claim to both Irish and Scottish Morrison who have gained an international reputation playing music that ancestry. Clearly there are historic and cultural connections between the derives its primary inspiration from British and American rock genres. peoples oflreland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia, and other European re Millions of people are purchasing recordings and videos of Irish music gions. But is "Celtic" today simply a term that denotes ancestral connections? and dance in stores, by mail order, and online all over the world. Outlets for Or does use of the term imply that there are contemporary cultural con the music have increased dramatically; one can hear Irish music today inter nections, and are those connections informed by historical commonalities? nationally at concerts and festivals, in bars and clubs, on radio and TV, and Is the whole concept of a Pan Celtic identity largely amplified if not entirely in films. Irish musicians and dancers in large numbers are making a full-time invented by cultural nationalists like the great Breton musician Alan Stivell? living. Thousands more have become accomplished performing artists, mak Is it a notion that stresses cultural commonalities, primordial ancestral con ing a part-time living from their art. And more men and women than ever nections, and a unified history marked by marginalization and oppression, before from within and outside the ancestral culture are learning to perform by which identity is deliberately suppressed as part of colonial policy? And in Irish music and dance. evitably then the next question is: even if this is so, then how are these con nections constructed or articulated? Which voices are heard in public ?n this What is really Irish about the disparate approaches to Irish music that are subject? Usually they are not the voices of the performing artists, most of emerging in Ireland and in the Diaspora? What is Irish, for example, about whom quickly tire of this backdrop of ideological fulminations and simply music in the western classical style that is written in Ireland by Irish-born want to get on with their art. composers? What does it owe to Ireland and what does it owe to European It seems clear that the term "Celtic" has widely different meanings to dif-. high-arNraditions? What is Irish about the music ofU2, for example, beyond ferent people. It may mean little to many in the "Celtic" countries themselves. the obvious fact that the band members are Irish-born? Have jazz or experi Does it mean more perhaps in the United States, where the word "Celtic" has mental music played in Ireland any real claim to being "Irish"? become synonymous with the mass marketing of cultural symbols, particu These are all questions that are being posed in contemporary Irish musi larly Celtic music, as commodities to be bought and sold? cological studies, amid perceptions that certain forms of musical discourse Of course, all musics created in Ireland or by Irish composers in the Dias have been privileged over other forms by popular acclaim and also by aca pora can validly claim a measure of Irishness. I would like to look at one of demic institutions and cultural organizations. Such privileging is often cri these forms, the music generally known as traditional Irish instrumental tiqued as motivated by a barely concealed agenda of cultural nationalism music, and the ability to sustain itself that it has shown over time. This mu which has its roots in the romantic nation-building movements of the nine sic has preserved a core identity while accommodating a variety of outside teenth century. 1 The debate is often intense. influences-an experience that indeed encapsulates the general cultural his Against this backdrop is the simple fact that Irish people have chosen to tory of the island itself. express many of their deepest cultural concerns through certain genres of music and song, doing so during centuries of political and social strife and While there are seemingly never-ending discussions about its precise param resistance to colonial rule. Over the past two hundred years, major themes eters, the art form known as traditional Irish instrumental music both within in Irish history and social life have also been addressed through music, and and outside Ireland is the music played in a distinctive style on instruments 1 (\I\ . M o Io " e --/ -z:Vt11 such as the fiddle, uilleann pipes, flute, concertina, accordion, tenor banjo, played came from England or Continental Europe into the musical culture in and tin whistle with a variety of accompanying instruments such as the the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fiddle arrived in the early eigh bodhran, piano, guitar, bouzouki, and keyboards. There is also the tradition teenth ·century, the flute a few decades later. The concertina, melodeon, and of the Irish harp, once an elite instrument, which since the late eighteenth accordion enter at various points in the nineteenth and early twentieth century has been emblematic of the country of Ireland itself. centuries. Their accommodation was often contested vigorously. The Gaelic In any historical discussion of Irish traditional music, the first point that American newspaper, for example, issued a call to arms against the increas should be made is that innovation and modernization have always been the ingly popular accordion: cornerstones of this music rather than a rigid conformity to artistic norms The strains of the violin, the pipes or the flute are not heard as frequently or which is an idea more often than not associated with antiquarian notions as generally in the land as of old, and in their stead the ears are tormented with of tradition. the racking, discordant screech of the concertina and accordion. What There are many pervasive myths about Irish traditional music-the big prompted Irish boys and girls to adopt these instruments of torture and dis gest of all being that it is very old. There are some mediaeval strains in the card the violin, the pipes and the flute, it is hard to find out ... The man or music, particularly in the nondance forms, and some traditions such as the woman, boy or girl, in sympathy with the revival of things Irish-the music music of the harpers can be traced back to the seventeenth century. But as well as the language of the race-should make a firm resolution and to act the form, structure, and style of the traditional music played today in fact . up to.it, wherever and whenever he or she gets the opportunity, destroy every come from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the concertina and accordion that can be reached. The most ear-splitting one of repertoire is in fact post-Famine.2 It is a music based on a strophic eight-bar these instruments ever made in Germany is not proof against a scissors or a system in which two, or sometimes more, eight-bar strains are repeated a knife-a hole in the bellows silences it forever. Every concertina or accordion limited number of times. This is a structure shared by the whole Anglo Celtic destroyed in Ireland is a blow struck for the restoration oflrish national mu Diaspora in the instrumental dance music of Ireland, Scotland, and the sical taste ... Nature loves harmony and will bless you for the act.

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