ICTM Ireland Annual Conference
25-26 February 2017, Maynooth University
Keynote speaker: Jeff Todd Titon
Sponsored by the Anthropological Association of Ireland
Conference Programme
Saturday, 25 February
9.00am Registration
9.30am Welcome address
9.45am 1A. Music Revival Michalis Poupazis 1B. Collections from 19th Century (chair) Ireland Seán McElwain (chair)
“Revival or Reclamation” “In Search of ‘Patrick Quin – The John Millar, University College Dublin Armagh Harper’ (1745-1812?)” Sylvia Crawford, Dundalk Institute of Technology
“Singing Þjóðtrú: Nordic Folklore in “The Déise Music Archive: An Viking and Folk Metal” exploration of one Irish region’s musical George Nummelin, SOAS, University of legacy” London Christopher Mac Auliffe, Waterford Institute of Technology
“Let’s put up a stage: Experiencing “Reimagining Bunting: Belfast’s Lost Speyfest and a Scottish Music Revival” Sounds” Daithí Kearney and Adèle Commins, Conor Caldwell, Queen’s University Dundalk Institute of Technology Belfast
11.15am Tea/coffee
11.30am 2A. Cultural Sustainability (a) Daithí 2B. Music and Memory Steve Coleman Kearney (chair) (chair)
“Cultural and Environmental “Antonis’ Wedding: The Moment, The Sustainability in Florianopolis, Brazil” Music and Rites Between Tradition and Jamie Corbett, Brown University Modernity in Cyprus” Michalis Poupazis, University College Cork
“The UNESCO resilience-based “Can I walk Beside You? Life Before approach to safeguarding of intangible and After the Woodstock Music and cultural heritage (ICH) in Jordan: a case Arts Fair, 1969” study on audiovisual archiving in the Cormac Sheehan, University College Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” Cork Sabrina Maria Salis, UNESCO
12.30pm 3A. Film. Singing Hari Bolo in a north east Indian village: A Praise music tradition revived by Jyosna La Trobe, Independent Scholar
1.00pm Lunch
2 2.00pm 4A. Roundtable. Irish traditional music: Continuing and evolving the revival process Adrian Scahill (chair)
Aibhlín McCrann, Cruit Éireann Grace Toland, Director, Irish Traditional Music Archive Antaine Ó Faracháin, Sean-Nós Cois Life Terry Moylan, Archivist, Na Píobairí Uilleann Fintan Vallely, Adjunct Professor, University College Dublin
3.30pm Tea/coffee
3.45pm 5A. Technologies of Mediation Tony 5B. Tradition and Authenticity Conor Langlois (chair) Caldwell (chair)
“Music for the Masses: The Promotion of “Who Dares Speak of Authenticity? Radio in 1950s Vietnam” Reimagining Cultural Authenticity in st Lonán Ó Briain, University of the 21 Century” Nottingham Éamonn Costello, University of Limerick
“Home Away from Home: Sustaining the “(E)merging traditions: new perspectives Fieldwork Enterprise” on sean nós and contemporary music Thérèse Smith, University Colllege collaborations” Dublin Stephanie Ford, Maynooth University
4.45pm Tea/coffee
5.00pm 6. Keynote. “Eco-Trope, Eco-Tripe, Sound Cultures, Sustainability and Revival” (introduction by Professor Thérèse Smith)
6.30pm ICTM Ireland AGM
7.30pm Conference dinner
Sunday, 26 February
10.00am 7A. Cultural Sustainability (b) Aoife 7B. Cultural Resilience Lonán Ó Briain Granville (chair) (chair)
“Sufi Music in Morocco and UK: The “Success in the Culture Industries: Sustainability of a Cultural Tradition” Entrepreneurial Neoliberal Rhetoric and Tony Langlois, Mary Immaculate Resilience” College Leah O’Brien Bernini, Cultural Roadmapp
“Taking the Traditional Irish Pub “Cultural Resilience and Irish Traveller Session into Europe: An ethnographic Music” look at conflicting concepts and Noelle Mann, Trinity College Dublin consequences of political interventions” Rina Schiller, Queen’s University
3 Belfast
11.00am 8A. Film. A Train Back: Contemporary Popular Music and Antiquated Recording Technology by Michael Lydon, National University of Ireland, Galway
11.15am Tea/coffee
11.30am 9A. Reviving, Performing, Imagining Elizabeth K Neale (chair)
“Revival and Re-enactment: Transformations in Cornish carolling traditions in California and South Australia” Elizabeth K Neale, Cardiff University/University of Exeter
“Song of the Western Men: Performing Trelawny and the Celtic Revival in Cornwall” Garry Tregidga, University of Exeter
“Transcultural Approaches in the Cornish Nos Lowen Movement” Lea Hagmann, Universität Bern
1.00pm Close
‘A’ panels will be in the Bewerunge Room ‘B’ panels will be in the O’Callaghan Room The keynote presentation will be in the Renehan Hall
4 Keynote Lecture
Eco-Trope, Eco-Tripe, Sound Cultures, Sustainability and Revival Jeff Todd Titon, Brown University Since 1964 when William K. Archer proposed that ethnomusicologists consider ecology when analyzing music within its cultural context, the idea that ecologies bear on our understanding of music and sound cultures has gained increasing traction. Acoustic ecologists warn of noise pollution, while soundscape ecologists study the interactions of sound in specific landscapes. Indigenous ecological knowledge places sound closer to the center of life than does Western science. Ecologies offer an epistemology based in relations and systems; some ethnomusicologists, including this writer, have proposed that it is helpful to think of music cultures as ecosystems. Critics object that this turn to music ecology is founded on a false analogy between nature and culture; further, that it is holistic and in its environmentalism represents an unfortunate return to the grand narratives that were deconstructed in the science wars of the previous century. Sustainability in this view becomes a new grand narrative, as does climate change. However, this critique is directed at the grand narrative of the balance of nature, a paradigm that ecological scientists abandoned in the last century; moreover, complex systems analysis responds to much of this critique by acknowledging the limits of predictability and knowledge, and by devising pragmatic strategies of resilience and adaptive management. Conservation biologists partner with
5 environmentalists to apply these principles and strategies to minimize unintended and negative consequences in the face of inevitable disturbance and change. Applied to sound cultures, sustainability, and revival, these insights promise not only greater understanding of music but also a re-centering of sound connections as a basis for sound communities, sound economies, and a sound ecology.
Biography Jeff Todd Titon received the B.A. from Amherst College, and the M.A. (English) and Ph.D. (American Studies) from the University of Minnesota, where he studied ethnomusicology with Alan Kagan, writing his dissertation on blues music. He taught at Tufts University (1971-1986), where he co-founded the American Studies program, and held appointments in the departments of English and music. In 1986 he moved to Brown as professor and director of the doctoral program in ethnomusicology, a position he held until retirement in 2013. He is the author or editor of eight books, including Early Downhome Blues (1977; 2nd edition, University of North Carolina Press, 1994), which won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award; Worlds of Music (six editions since 1984, with translations into Italian and Chinese); Powerhouse for God (a book, record, and documentary film); Old-Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes (University Press of Kentucky, 2001), American Musical Traditions, (Gale, 2002), and the Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2015). Titon has been a visiting professor at Carleton College, Amherst College, Berea College, the University of Maine, and Indiana University. From 1990 to 1995 he was editor of Ethnomusicology, the Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society and a member of their Executive Board. His fieldwork has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since his retirement in 2013 he has remained active, publishing several essays, editing one book, and giving numerous lectures and keynote addresses. His current research in ecomusicology may be tracked on his blog at http://sustainablemusic.blogspot.com. In the spring 2016 semester he held the Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science at East Tennessee State University. While in residence, he offered a series of public lectures on his current project, a book on a "sound ecology." In addition to his current research and writing in ecomusicology, his ongoing projects include musical conservation partnerships with Old Regular Baptists in eastern Kentucky, with whom he has produced two CDs for Smithsonian Folkways (1997 and 2003); the first of these was selected in 2015 for permanent recognition on the National Recording Registry. Other works in progress include a second book volume and a website on the life and preaching of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, father of the singer Aretha Franklin, which will include Titon's video footage of Franklin's whooped sermons. In addition to his scholarly research and teaching, Titon is a musician. For two years he was the guitarist in the Lazy Bill Lucas Blues Band, a group that appeared in the 1970 Ann Arbor Blues Festival; in the 1980s he took up the fiddle and banjo, and most of his music-making today involves old-time string band music from the upper South.
6 List of Abstracts
1A. Music Revival
Revival or Reclamation John Millar, University College Dublin As a genre that trades in invocations of the past, country music in Dublin today sits at a nexus of nostalgia and contemporaneity. As multiple scenes have developed, each has drawn on diverse strategies for negotiating the tensions inherent in the competing demands of musical practices reliant on both the strictures of the past as well as the necessity of reinvention and assertion of contemporary relevance. From the strictly traditionalist settings of the bluegrass session to the interrogation of country roots in distinctly modern urban environments, individual participants are responding to, and shaping, these pressures. Through examination of two case studies, the bluegrass session representing ‘revivalist’ tendencies, the other an alt- country or roots scene that prioritises a stretching of genre boundaries, this paper will examine these responses. Though often operating in the same physical locations, bluegrass and alt-country make use of distinct modes of performance, participation, and authentication. These are made visible through the deployment and manipulation of sonic markers including accent and vocal grain, instrumental and acoustic textures, as well as interaction and presentational style. These interactions are in turn given meaning through their relationship to the broader social, cultural, and musical worlds of Dublin.
Singing Þjóðtrú: Nordic Folklore in Viking and Folk Metal George Nummelin, SOAS, University of London The Nordic role in Metal is well established within the many Metal subgenres. Of these, Viking and Folk are arguably the most entrenched in a shared cultural history, spanning five countries. Within the two subgenres, this history, as folklore, is reimagined and disseminated in several languages, including English, Norwegian, the vulnerable Faroese, and Old Norse. Additionally, traditional melodies and instruments feature in some works. Grant, in her 2014 text on Music Endangerment comments that ‘Language and music do not exist in separate, parallel spheres’ (2014:4) and their endurance is interlinked. I will demonstrate how this symbiosis has the ability to positively impact on the transmission potential for a culture’s folklore. I will examine the contribution of bands including the Faroese TÝR, the Icelandic Skálmöld, and the collaborative work between Bjørnson and Selvik on Skuggsjá, with reference to use of lyrical content, language and instrumentation. I will explore how the genres incorporate, maintain and recreate their folklore tradition for new global audiences, while reviving and sustaining Faroese and Old Norse. I will show how these musicians, by documenting this musical, cultural and linguistic history are part of the wider revitalization movement.
7 Let’s put up a stage: Experiencing Speyfest and a Scottish Music Revival Daithí Kearney and Adèle Commins, Dundalk Institute of Technology In July 2016, the traditional music festival Speyfest celebrated twenty-one years of existence. Formed by James Alexander OBE through a desire to have local musicians experience and perform with professional artists, the event remains a largely community run venture but attracts a range of acts from across the ‘Celtic’ music world. The event has changed the ecology of the traditional music world around Fochabers in which the Fochabers Fiddlers are an important group that, for the festival, not only include locally based members but also members who have left the area but return to perform with the group at the festival. For this year’s festival, members of the DkIT Ceol Oirghialla Traditional Music Ensemble travelled to Scotland to perform and facilitate workshops in Irish traditional music. This paper draws upon that experience, as well as information gleaned through interviews in the making of a short documentary, The Road to Speyfest, and further communication with festival organisers. It considers the historical links to composers of Scottish traditional music’s ‘Golden Age’ such as William Marshall, who is buried near the town, and the influence of contemporary Scottish music composers and producers such as organiser James Alexander.
1B. Collections from 19th Century Ireland
In Search of “Patrick Quin – The Armagh Harper” (1745-1812?) Sylvia Crawford, Dundalk Institute of Technology In a review of 'The Bard of Erin and other Poems mostly National' by James McHenry, published in The Belfast Monthly Magazine in 1809, the reviewer wrote: 'In the notes, Mr Arthur O'Neil is described as the only Harper in Ireland. Patrick Quin, of Portadown, has perhaps superior merit to O'Neil.' Almost one hundred years later, in 1905, Francis Joseph Bigger, writing in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, wrote about 'Patrick Quin – The Armagh Harper' : 'Very little is known of Quin, so any further details regarding him are very welcome.' This paper sets out to illuminate the life and legacy of Patrick Quin. My search for greater insight into this 18th century harper is with a view to commemorating him in a similar way to his peers. It is a response, more than one hundred years later, to Bigger's plea for further details about Quin's life. I will present known details about Quin gleaned from a variety of primary and secondary sources. I will also give examples of his music, based on archival research which has involved study of Edward Bunting's incomplete field transcriptions from Quin's playing, and grappling with the challenges of playing his music on a harp modelled on the instrument that Quin actually played.
The Déise Music Archive: An exploration of one Irish region’s musical legacy Christopher Mac Auliffe, Waterford Institute of Technology This paper will explore the early musical heritage/legacy of the Déise region of south-east Munster from the 1780s to 1850 by examining the music collections and publications of Déise music collectors and antiquarians Patrick O’Neill (1765-1832), Owning, Co. Kilkenny, and John O’Daly (1800-1878) Lickoran, Co. Waterford, and Dublin. The collections of both
8 men contain music that is representative of both the late 18th century and the early 19th century. Although these fortuitous music collections of O’Neill and O’Daly provide a detailed record of the musical legacy of one region, it can also be used as an overall measure of the emerging musical legacy of Ireland as a whole. While Déise music from this early period was well documented, it cannot be claimed that a static legacy of music was ever present in the Déise region, the music of O’Neill and O’Daly is, in fact, merely a representation of the musical legacy or culture of that moment, some of which was indeed carried forward to the present and some of which was forgotten or ‘side-lined’ in an effort to create a new musical legacy.
Reimagining Bunting: Belfast’s Lost Sounds Conor Caldwell, Queen’s University Belfast Edward Bunting (1773-1843) made a unique contribution to our knowledge of indigenous forms of Irish music. Pre-dating the culture of Irish dance music which would define social life in the nineteenth century, Bunting's collections contain thousands of individual pieces which tell us of the rich history of music making in Ireland. The importance and extent of his work was somewhat overshadowed by the commercial success of his contemporary Thomas Moore, a singer who indeed refashioned airs from Bunting's three published volumes (1796, 1809 and 1840). Bunting's collections have been subject to study from a historical, archival and sociological perspectives, but relatively few attempts have been made to place the music from his publications into a contemporary setting. This project, funded by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland seeks to bring the music of Bunting's collections back to life through collaboration with leading creative artists at QUB, arriving at interpretations which look beyond the written note and word, and which engage in innovative performance practices from across the creative arts. This music represents a lost Belfast soundscape, having been central to significant historical events between 1790 and 1801.
2A. Cultural Sustainability (a)
Cultural and Environmental Sustainability in Florianopolis, Brazil Jamie Corbett, Brown University The southern Brazilian city of Florianopolis has been a historical site of immigration from the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores since 1748. Many historians, researchers, and performers believe that the island’s diverse folklore is a result of 250-year-old wave of Azorean immigration, and thus refer to folkloric genres as having “Azorean roots”. With the help of municipal funding, people in Florianopolis mobilize to protect the future of “Azorean roots” folklore, which they see as threatened by waning interest, capitalist development, and the island’s booming tourism industry. Discourses of sustainability promulgated in Florianopolis aim not only at the folklore the community sees as threatened, but also the natural landscape that they hope to protect from pollution and overdevelopment. These discourses are particularly prominent in the island’s Ecomuseum and the Neighbourhood Association of Sambaqui, where volunteers conserve the sites’ beachfronts and incite youth
9 interest in folkloric music and dance. Based on a total of three months of pre-dissertation fieldwork in Florianopolis in 2015 and 2016, this presentation will explore how discourses of sustainability emerge from the community and cross-cut cultural and environmental patrimonies to set the island apart from the rest of Brazil.
The UNESCO resilience-based approach to safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in Jordan: a case study on audiovisual archiving in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Sabrina Maria Salis, UNESCO In line with the resilience-based approach informing the international response to the Syria crisis in Jordan, UNESCO has been on the front line in preserving cultural heritage as a strategy to enhance the resilience of the communities affected by Syria crisis. Within this context, UNESCO has recently launched a new initiative on audiovisual archiving as part of a broader strategy for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in Jordan. Grounded on the understanding that resilient societies are the first actors in the planning and implementation of safeguarding measures- and this in turn ensures a stronger sustainability of the actions- this initiative adopted a threefold approach:
1. Local communities are directly involved in the inventory and archiving processes. 2. The skills of the local authorities and stakeholders in archiving and inventory are enhanced through appropriate capacity-building trainings. 3. Youth organizations are involved in the archiving process as part of the UNESCO actions on “preventing violent extremism” (PVE) in Jordan.
Drawing from the UNESCO experience in Jordan, this paper explores the role of culture as a tool to strengthen resilience of the society, addressing in particular issues of sustainability in the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.
2B. Music and Memory
Antonis’ Wedding: The Moment, The Music and Rites Between Tradition and Modernity in Cyprus Michalis Poupazis, University College Cork “We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left” (Pierre Nora 1989: 7).Nora’s les lieux de mémoire instigated for me a research drive into the interdependence between music, memory, history and modernity. My ethnographic work in twenty-first century Larnaca, Cyprus is deployed “Between Memory and History” (as Nora titled his 1989 article). Social and musical phenomena reveal the crystallisation of what is perceived as tradition (by Nora) and authentic (by local informants), and the neo-modern approach to these elements. All these transpire between negotiations, both internal and communal, through rites of passage and rituals that remain constant from past to present. Individualism and private choice, as well as native Cypriots’ willingness to engage in perceived “traditional” and “authentic” movements (perhaps ephemeral phenomena), emerge as vital tools for the
10 maintenance of socio-cultural memory in Cyprus, thus creating liminality in between the transactions of one memory site and the next. This paper takes a rite-journey from the perceived “traditional” of the 1930s to contemporary modernity in Cyprus, seeking to answer how Greek-speaking Cypriots structure their place in the modern world in relation to cultural memory, and their apprehension of what is traditional. Exploring this new viewpoint, the paradigmatic example of Antonis’ marriage ceremony forms a particularly telling environment for the music-led collective enactment of selective ties to ‘tradition’ and the wider memorializing of family and community. In a departure from 1930s tradition—most Cypriots perceive the 1930’s Paphos- area ceremony to be the acme of tradition—folk music is now reliably to be found only during the bride’s and groom’s adornment rituals, which take place before the crowning ceremony at church. The focus is upon the liminality of a musically-infused memory site, Antonis’ groom adornment ritual in Larnaca, and the micro-focus is on a single song and moment of the paneri (skep) rite. This article explains how natives draw on cultural resources to summon a remembered or imagined tradition and past while structuring and placing themselves in the twenty-first century. It is a very telling moment, helping to understand how Cypriots comprehend, portray and indulge themselves as contemporary and “oriental” entities locally, in Europe, and internationally.
Can I walk Beside You? Life Before and After the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, 1969 Cormac Sheehan, University College Cork In mid-August, 1969, four hundred thousand people went to the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair (Woodstock). Hundreds of thousands of others never made it. Cars jammed highway 17b from Monticello to Bethel, New York. For a brief yet transformative moment, Max Yasgur’s farm became the ‘garden’ of Aquarian idealism, and a counterpoint to the Vietnam War, conservatism and political unease. ‘It was all about the music’ (Woodstock attendee), but it was also the apex of the social movements of the 1960’s in the USA. Woodstock has become synonymous with a generation (i.e. baby boomers, hippies and the love generation). But as the red, stinking mud of Yasgur’s farm returned to arable land, what happened to those that were there? How do you go to the ‘garden’ and return to normal life? Did it alter their path? Or was it just a magical big gig in a field, and nothing more? This presentation is based on original research with over one hundred attendees. Interviews took place over internet platforms, by phone, in person, letter and email. The interviews were informal, with no deliberate structure, but naturally fell into a pattern of before, during and after Woodstock. Returning to the site of the festival has become a pilgrimage for attendees and countless others. The site has become a museum and arts centre dedicated to the 1960’s, and a popular music venue. This research draws from a bricolage of theories: memory formation, rites of passage, neuro- psychology, narrative analysis, performance and music theory, and cultural history and sustainability. This presentation attempts to begin to understand the lasting impact of Woodstock, to the backdrop of icons of music and popular culture.
11 3A. Film (15 minutes)
Singing Hari Bolo in a north east Indian village: A Praise music tradition revived. Jyosna La Trobe, Independent Scholar Stephen Slawek and Edward O. Henry reported on Hari nam kīrtan or devotional singing in Benares in the 80’s and mentioned the first renowned kirtan song/poem the Giitagovinda by Jayadeva (11th century), born in Rāṛh lit. ‘red earth’, north east India. This largely undocumented region was not only a mighty military nation, but also steeped in Tantric culture as represented by Shiva Nataraja in his tandava dance, fighting to overcome death with dynamic life force. So it is also fair to say that inherent in Rāṛhi music culture there is a fierce but friendly competitive spirit. After discussions with my fieldwork partner Sanjay Mahato, about the decline of traditional kīrtan music in Rāṛh we decided to instigate a competition to reinvigorate this devotional music genre, presently under the influence of pseudo culture, a term coined by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar to denote homogeneous cultural expressions made for short term profits. Through a kīrtan competition we would gather local and international support and offer prize money and other incentives as tools for local empowerment and sustainability. Many kīrtaniyas as they are called locally, reported that they were stunned to see, for the first time, the local names of their kīrtans displayed on public banners around town, drawing the groups to come and register. To our utter amazement 42 groups came to perform in the Competition. This video is largely an ethnographic documentary about the winners of the first Rāṛhi kīrtan Competition and their circumstances.
4A. Roundtable
Irish traditional music: Continuing and evolving the revival process Aibhlín McCrann, Cruit Éireann (chair) Grace Toland, Director, Irish Traditional Music Archive Antaine Ó Faracháin, Sean-Nós Cois Life Terry Moylan, Archivist, Na Píobairí Uilleann Fintan Vallely, Adjunct Professor, University College Dublin This roundtable gathers together a range of viewpoints on the role of different organisations, voiced by representatives of these organisations, on the continuing process of maintaining and sustaining Irish traditional arts, including (but not limited to) song, music and dance. These organisations have promoted and supported this traditional culture in various ways, including through archiving and documenting music in various media; facilitating access to archive materials; promoting live performances; fostering music sustainability through the transmission of knowledge, practices and repertory; facilitating and guiding researchers; developing educational programmes and strategies; and creating spaces for and amplifying more peripheral or threatened elements of traditional culture. The roundtable offers an opportunity to reflect on the course of the revival of Irish traditional music, to comment on more recent projects and proposals in the area of safeguarding, and to consider and imagine how the responsibilities and functions of traditional arts organisations might develop in
12 response to further societal and cultural changes, in the context of a maturing and established tradition.
5A. Technologies of Mediation
Music for the Masses: The Promotion of Radio in 1950s Vietnam Lonán Ó Briain, University of Nottingham When still part of French Indochina in the 1930s, informal radio clubs were run by enthusiasts in the urban centres of Hanoi and Saigon. The Viet Minh commandeered this broadcast equipment in the 1940s to propagate political messages and encourage support for their fledgling movement. By the time independence was achieved, public radio was firmly established as a mouthpiece for the communist party. State-employed broadcasters spouted anti-imperialist rhetoric, but they struggled to sustain the attention of their listeners. In response, a formal edict was announced to instate officially designated times for broadcasting music, stories and other forms of entertainment as a means of engaging the general public. This paper investigates how the Vietnamese public learned to listen. Music broadcasts were used in the interwar years as light entertainment, particularly during major calendrical events such as the Vietnamese New Year. This cultural programming was interspersed between political messages to nurture a resilient and attentive radio listenership. Initially, old records were played on music-specific programmes for 10 to 30 minutes each day. As the technology improved, broadcasters in Hanoi established their own music ensembles. By the end of the 1950s, troupes of musicians were recording and touring with communist-themed songs that remain popular among a distinct cohort of the population today. Using archival documents, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, this research attempts to reconstruct the broadcast sounds of the 1950s to reveal a unique perspective on the cultural history of this diverse nation.
Home Away from Home: Sustaining the Fieldwork Enterprise Thérèse Smith, University Colllege Dublin Themes of sustainability and revival have been central to issues of fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (and related disciplines) since its earliest days, whether armchair or exotic. Recent decades have seen ethnomusicologists focus on the politics of representation (Bohlman 1991, Clifford 1986, Emerson and Shaw 1995, Myers 1992, Marcus 1997, Barz and Cooley eds 2007), the post-colonial ethics of cross-cultural representation (Pratt 1986, Seeger 1992, Stolje, Fox and Olbrys 1999, Whitehead and Conaway 1986, Van Maanen 1988), the image of the "Other" (Clifford and Marcus eds 1986, O Laoire 2003), and issues of gender (Babiracki 2007, Whitehead and Conaway 1986). But attention has not yet been directed in a coherent way to the impact of mass media dissemination on ethnomusicologists' abilities to conduct fieldwork on a remote level. Resident in Europe, but conducting fieldwork amongst African American Baptists with greater access to and knowledge of technology than I have, it is possible for me to obtain recordings (CD and DVD) of church services produced by a church in rural Mississippi. I can also contact the church members via email and their website, although I cannot get access to their radio broadcasts from Europe. Thus I inhabit a space that has come full circle, allowing
13 me to return to "armchair Ethnomusicology" via a technological disadvantage that situates me with access, yet at one remove. What is lost in this contemporary inversion of the historical power relations which have so exercised ethnomusicologists? As similar situations presumably evolve for other ethnomusicologists, there is a need to examine the implications for fieldwork in ethnomusicology. This paper will examine whether fieldwork can be sustained from afar, or whether this is an issue with which Ethnomusicology is no longer willing to engage?
5B. Tradition and Authenticity
Who Dares Speak of Authenticity? Reimagining Cultural Authenticity in the 21st Century. Éamonn Costello, University of Limerick Within the humanities and social science cultural authenticity is widely seen as being an essentialist view that imagines all cultures are unique, separate and autochthonous. The preferred view within this area is that culture is change, and that plurality is the norm rather than the exception. This becomes an issue when we start looking at ‘preserving’ minority forms of cultural expression, such as minority or endangered musics. What are we preserving them from other than some form of change, such as globalisation for example? However, alternative more nuanced perspectives also exist. It is widely excepted within linguistics that language is change, and that language mixing and switching are normal processes. But linguists estimate that by the end of this century approximately half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world we have fallen silent, due mainly to globalisation. Many linguistics have begun the process of creating digital open access language archives, not just to preserve endangered languages but to give the speakers of these languages a renewed sense of the value of their cultural heritage. Others have noted how social media is being used by speakers of minority languages to create language networks that stretch across the globe. This paper will discuss some of these developments in more detail and offer some suggestions as to how ethnomusicology might benefit from similar approaches. Some of the issues inherent in the ‘music is culture’ theory will also be addressed.
(E)merging traditions: new perspectives on sean nós and contemporary music collaborations. Stephanie Ford, Maynooth University Historical perceptions of sean nós singing in academic literature have often portrayed the genre as the preserve of the Gaeltacht areas, its practice best suited community focused performance settings. Gaelic League nationalism and government arts policies at the beginning of the twentieth century has helped maintain these perceptions, imbuing sean nós with a sense of marginality within and outside of traditional music. Similarly, contemporary music has struggled for recognition in wider Irish musical culture. CurrentIrish Arts Council funding allocations indicate that although improving, this is still the case. Having said this, contemporary sean nós practice has experienced a fundamental shift in its performance contexts. Particularly neglected in sean nós scholarship has been its use in contemporary music composed in the 21st century, which draws on the traditional voice as a
14 starting point for musical collaboration. This paper aims to investigate how and why sean nós practices are integrated into the compositional process in these collaborations, drawing on my own ethnographic research. Exploring the concept of a double marginality in respect of both traditions, I will also establish how this concept is being used creatively to construct new configurations of expressive culture, and what the implications of this may be for existing conceptions of the sean nós tradition.
6. Keynote
See page 5
7A. Cultural Sustainability (b)
Sufi Music in Morocco and UK: The Sustainability of a Cultural Tradition Tony Langlois, Mary Immaculate College Although Sufi ritual practices are widespread around the world they are nevertheless frequently considered a heterodox aspect of Islam. The prevalence and cultural significance of Sufism naturally varies between geographical locations, where identical practices exist in very different contexts. Attitudes towards Sufism also vary between generations of Muslims, particularly given the recent rise of stricter, Salafist interpretations of tradition and an increasingly politicised cultural environment in consideration of Islam. This paper explores the musical practices associated with one Moroccan Sufi order with international lodges around the world. In particular it compares two cultural environments, Morocco and the UK, in which the same spiritual tradition engages with the wider community. What adaptations are made, in music and ritual practice, to the UK environment, where not only are lodge members minorities at a national level, but also within a local Islamic milieu? How does a musical tradition and its community of practitioners, sustain core aesthetic and philosophical values in a context that is very different to that of its origins? Observations are supported by recordings of performances in Morocco, Birmingham and Ireland.
Taking the Traditional Irish Pub Session into Europe: An ethnographic look at conflicting concepts and consequences of political interventions Rina Schiller, Queen’s University Belfast Since the 1960s traditional Irish music has found a most effective way of sustainability (Titon and Pettan [eds] 2015) by moving as a group performance into local pub contexts. This partly came about as a result of some fortunate ideas of composer-musician Seán Ó Riada, and it has since then developed a healthy momentum through positive intervention of numerous community musicians. The ‘pub session’, as a specific performance form, has its own extra- musical behaviour associations – sometimes referred to as ‘session etiquette’ – which travel alongside formal genre rules to diverse countries worldwide, leading to musical collaborations between Irish and other musicians. However, within some contexts this form of music-making can lead to incompatibilities with local performance expectations.
15 From my research since the 1990s in various countries lying along the former Iron Curtain (originally inspired by Borneman 1992), I will focus in this paper primarily on ethnographic examples of traditional Irish music performances in Prague (Czech Republic), where some such cultural incompatibilities emerged because of contradictory expectations about traditional Irish session performances. I will conclude my observations with a brief comparative look at images of Irish music in a number of other countries on the eastern and on the western side of the former Iron Curtain, and how interventionist politics of the last century have influenced these present perceptions.
7B. Cultural Resilience
Success in the Culture Industries: Entrepreneurial Neoliberal Rhetoric and Resilience Leah O’Brien Bernini, Cultural Roadmapp Perhaps neoliberalism’s most powerful ideological victory is the rhetorical cleavage of economic relations from political and cultural influences. Such ideologies promote individualism and self-blame while privileging narratives of resilience and the ‘self-made man’. This paper presents findings from my 2016 doctoral study, an ethnography exploring the neoliberalisation of cultural production in professional Irish traditional music. Using ethnographic examples, it demonstrates how participants frame their experiences in terms closely aligned with sociologists’ concept of resilience. Here, resilience refers to the capacity of a person or system (e.g. ecosystem, business, community) to “absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedback” (Walker et. al. 2004:2). The ability to effectively navigate and negotiate a changing, challenging environment—like the music industry—is indicative of one’s adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is not fixed, but can be strengthened with the use of resilience strategies. This paper explores four established resilience strategies used by professional artists: feedback mechanisms, flexible organisation, mobile and modular structure, and a diversity of essential resources. While resilience studies prove these strategies’ efficacy, they also eerily echo neoliberal rhetoric, demonstrating neoliberalism’s power to shape how we understand and interpret our world.
Cultural Resilience and Irish Traveller Music Noelle Mann, Trinity College Dublin Irish Travellers are Ireland’s largest indigenous ethnic minority group. Although the ethnic status of Irish Travellers is officially recognised in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, the Irish State has continued to refuse to do so. Previously, policies enacted by the Irish government aimed to assimilate Travellers into mainstream Irish culture, based on the hypothesis that Travellers were somehow “failed” settled people who needed to be encouraged “back” into the mainstream. The majority of theories surrounding Traveller origins date their culture to the time of the Cromwellian invasions, or the Great Famine. In more recent times, several research projects have suggested that Traveller origins are much more ancient. Some of the most remarkable Irish Traditional musicians, including Johnny Doran and John Doherty, were Irish Travellers, and are recognised by Irish Traditional musicians and
16 researchers. In a climate where many aspects of Traveller culture has been made increasingly difficult to observe, music has remained a strong tradition among many Traveller families. This paper will explore the cultural significance of Irish Traditional Music, and its potential to provide cultural resilience as an unofficial document of Traveller history.
8A. Film (10 minutes)
A Train Back: Contemporary Popular Music and Antiquated Recording Technology Michael Lydon, National University of Ireland, Galway The past looms like a vast frontier over contemporary popular music, indeed as it does over all contemporary culture, resulting in a sense of anachronism evident in the work of a growing number of musicians and songwriters. This video extract seeks to explore this anachronism by examining it through the prism of Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist theory of hauntology. This will allow for an exploration of two contemporary musical works which were recorded using antiquated recording technology. In examining Neil Young’s use of a refurbished 1947 Voice-o-Graph vinyl recording booth on his 2014 album A Letter Home, and The 78 Project’s signature use of a 1930s Presto direct-to-acetate 78rpm disk recorder to record artists such as Rosanne Cash, Richard Thompson and Ireland’s Lisa Hannigan, this video will reveal the significant temporal journeying motif underpinning the construction of each work. To further examine this motif, the video will employ Henri Bergson’s theory on the indivisibility of movement, with further post-structuralist rhetoric in Roland Barthes’ analysis of metalanguages. Ultimately, this video seeks to position these works within the context of a revivalist movement, while equally exploring their employment of a spectral metalanguage of antiquated noise.
9A. Reviving, Performing, Imagining: Negotiating between the Past and Present in Three Cornish Music Revivals
Revival and Re-enactment: Transformations in Cornish carolling traditions in California and South Australia Elizabeth K Neale, Cardiff University/University of Exeter During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many miners migrated from Cornwall (UK) to new mining concerns across the globe, taking with them cultural practices including Christmas carolling repertoires and traditions (Payton, 2005). This paper concerns the contemporary and independent re-emergences of carolling traditions in Moonta (South Australia) and Grass Valley (California) after mid-twentieth century hiatuses, and suggests that the transformations observed in the present day performance practices and contexts of these revivals elucidate local perceptions and performances of the past. In Grass Valley, an originally male choral tradition was revived in 1990 as a mixed choir that now performs in Victorian dress in the town’s ‘Cornish Christmas’ events. Conversely, in Moonta, the predominantly middle class mixed carolling tradition was revived in 2012 as a Cornish miners’ re-enactment within in the town’s ‘Carols in the Square’ celebration. While they ostensibly share a common historical root, the revived forms of these traditions clearly and significantly diverge both from their source materials, and each other. This paper therefore
17 explores issues of transformation in music revivals (Hill and Bithell, 2014) with specific regard to issues of gender and class.
Song of the Western Men: Performing Trelawny and the Celtic Revival in Cornwall Garry Tregidga, University of Exeter In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there was a revival of interest in Cornwall’s historic culture and language. By 1904 this process had led to Cornwall’s official acceptance as a Celtic nation at that year’s Pan-Celtic Congress (Hale, 1997). But little consideration has been given to music in this context with the focus being placed on the much later cultural renaissance of the late twentieth century (Deacon, 2007). This paper seeks to revisit the association between music and cultural revival in the nineteenth century by focusing on the symbolic importance of ‘Trelawny’, otherwise known as Hawker’s ‘Song of the Western Men’. It will offer fresh insight into the Cornish Revival and the role of music in articulating regional patriotism at events ranging from the Dolly Pentreath centenary commemorations in 1877 to the annual dinners of the London Cornish Association in the late 1890s. Consideration will also be given to alternative interpretations such as its adoption as an anti- Catholic anthem in Northern Ireland and the use of lyric variants by the Suffragette campaign and political parties in the early twentieth century. It will also highlight inherent tensions within the Cornish movement given the religious background of Trelawny along with calls for authenticity as a result of the non-Cornish origins of the tune.
Transcultural Approaches in the Cornish Nos Lowen Movement Lea Hagmann, Universität Bern The folk music and dance revival in Cornwall, which started in the 1980s, has brought up the highly debated question concerning the authenticity of (Celto-)Cornish cultural production. Different interpretations of what Cornish music should sound like and what Cornish folk dances should look like have lead to a huge split amongst the Cornish revivalists: one group being mainly concerned with the authenticity of the cultural origins, of historic instruments and costumes; the other group experimenting with traditional material in order to create a new folk movement, Nos Lowen, which they regard as more authentic since it focuses on a more globalized, transcultural and contemporary Cornwall, rather than on what they call a “fossil collection”. This interpretative split regarding different views of “authentic” Cornish folk culture can be best explained by Denis Dutton’s “nominative” versus “expressive authenticity”. Based on Max Peter Baumann’s “Intercultural and Transcultural Dynamics”, this paper focuses on a variety of different transcultural approaches within the Nos Lowen movement: 1) the music groups and the instruments, 2) the dances and 3) the cross-cultural music project Silvia Nicolatto and her Anglo Cornish Friends, which fuses contemporary Brazilian and Cornish Nos Lowen-music.
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