IRISH SCENE AND SOUND IRISH SCENE AND SOUND Identity, Authenticity and Transnationality among Young Musicians Virva Basegmez Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 57 2005 IRISH SCENE AND SOUND Identity, Authenticity and Transnationality among Young Musicians Doctoral dissertation © Virva Basegmez 2005 Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 57 Cover design by Helen Åsman and Virva Basegmez Cover photo by Virva Basegmez Department of Social Anthropology Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm Sweden All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author. ISBN 91-7155-084-4 Printed by Elanders Gotab, Stockholm 2005 This book is distributed by Almqvist & Wiksell International P.O. Box 76 34 S-103 94 Stockholm Sweden E-mail: [email protected] To Tilda and Murat CONTENTS Acknowledgements x 1 INTRODUCTION: SCENES IN THE SCENE 1 Irish national identity: past and present dislocation 5 Anthropology of Ireland, rural and urban 14 Fields in the field 16 Media contexts, return visits and extended ethnography 20 The Celtic Tiger and the Irish international music industry 22 Outline of the chapters 28 2 GENRE, SOUND AND PATHWAYS 31 Studies of popular music and some theoretical orientations 31 The concept of genre: flux, usage, context 34 Genre, style and canonisation 37 Music genres in Ireland 39 Irish traditional music and its revival 39 Irish rock music and indies 44 Showbands, cover bands and tribute bands 45 Folk rock and Celtic music 47 Fusions, world music, modern dance music and the survival of traditional music 50 Bricolage and the bringing down of musical categories 54 Talking about sounds, influences, meanings and moods 57 Musical pathways, worlds and genres 59 Familiar routes, networks of perspectives and culture 60 Individuality and contested pathways 61 Pathways in urban life and translocal music scenes 66 Changing pathways and biographies 68 Interaction or separation: mix or clique 74 Taste games in style and lifestyle 78 Age, generation, class and gender 79 3 MAKING THE MUSIC SCENE: DUBLIN AND GALWAY 91 Scenes, places and identities 92 Urban scenescape and soundscape 99 Dublin's music scene: a springboard 104 'There's a party going on' 110 Galway's music scene: a playground 116 Influential musicians and favourite pubs 128 Spontaneous house sessions and experimental recording sessions 130 Changing scene and sound 136 4 MUSIC PERFORMANCE: SESSIONS, GIGS AND AUDIENCES 141 Performance studies and the politics of music scenes 141 Uniqueness and repetition 146 Pain and pleasure 148 Flow, vibe and the evaluation of performance 150 Getting sessions started 154 Traditional sessions: informal, open and regular 156 Staged traditional sessions 166 Session culture: etiquette, egalitarian ethos and hierarchy 168 Getting rock gigs 172 Dublin - Original rock music in Eamonn Doran's 174 Galway - Cover rock in King's Head 179 Mix of music in Galway's Róisín Dubh 181 Audience: regulars, tourists and fans 182 Traditional music audiences: the local Irish and the tourists 182 The crowd and different kinds of fans and regulars 185 5 NEGOTIATIONS AND NEGATIONS OF AUTHENTICITY AND IRISHNESS 193 The ideal image of Irish traditional music 199 Irish traditional music of today - a living tradition 202 Discourses between the 'purists' and the 'open-minded' 206 Ireland as the authentic Other 211 Commercialism, technology and authenticity 214 Discourses of authenticity: cover bands, original bands and world music 217 Emotional authenticity 221 National identity and Irishness 225 Contemporary musical discourses of Irishness 234 'Irish Ireland' versus 'global Ireland’ 246 Paddy's Day: a celebration of Irland's national day in a global way 251 Rehearsals and events leading up to the big parade 256 6 THE FIFTH PROVINCE: IRISH POPULAR MUSIC AND THE WORLD 264 The global and the local, centres and peripheries in the Irish music scene 269 Media, tourism, festivals: the marketing of Irishness in a global context 275 A new awareness of the dislocated Irish 278 The Irish diaspora, foreign and travelling musicians 281 Young traditional bands and Irish music abroad 289 Postcolonialism and multiculturalism 294 The fusion between DJ, Delos and De Jimbe 302 Temple Bar Music Centre, 3 March 1997 303 The ultimate fusion gig in Da Club 307 Some afterthoughts: a temporary crossover 309 Transnational connections and craic 311 Conclusion - The making of a transnational popular Irish music scene 314 References 318 Index 338 Acknowledgements First of all, I have to acknowledge all the musicians I met! This PhD the- sis in social anthropology would not have been the same without the helpful informants and talkative interviewees I engaged with. The elo- quent musicians and their analyses of life and work in Ireland have been very useful to me. They were often to the point. Whatever they thought of me, they will have a precious place in my heart. They gave me many moving stories about the Irish music scene. I should point out that I have kept the original names of the bands in the text, but changed most of the names of their members in order not to reveal individual identi- ties. It has been important to maintain the names of the bands since they often illustrated characteristics of the music they played or certain fea- tures of the players' lifestyles. Financially, I have mainly been supported by the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (FRN, Forskningsrådsnämnden), as a part of their programme 'Global processes from a European per- spective'. I was also funded by the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, and to some degree by John Söderberg's founda- tion. Both FRN and the Department of Social Anthropology have ar- ranged inspiring seminars where I have had the opportunity to share my thoughts and analyses of my material. This study would not have been possible to accomplish without my supervisor Helena Wulff and her enduring encouragement and engage- ment in my project. Her own interest in Ireland, Irish Studies and espe- cially Irish dance has been invaluable throughout the whole process of analysing, writing up and finishing. I also want to express my gratitude to other people at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University: to Ulf Hannerz for being my supervisor in the beginning and for commenting on the manuscript towards the end, and to Gudrun Dahl for reading my first project outlines and for assisting me with some of the practical issues in turning the thesis into print. I am very grateful to friends and colleagues at the Department, such as Peter Frick, Eva- Maria Hardtmann, Hasse Huss, Marie Larsson, Åse Ottosson and Per Ståhlberg among others. Lena Holm was always helpful and took care of the economic side of the project. Ann-Charlotte Krus took a kind inter- est in my work. I would also like to thank the staff at the Department of Anthropol- ogy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, especially for allowing me to read some undergraduate theses about Irish music and musicians, but also for welcoming me to participate in seminars there. In Dublin, personnel at the Irish Traditional Music Archive was very helpful and I appreciated the comprehensive collection of materials at the archive. My thanks also to the IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music) for arranging interesting conferences in Sydney, Oslo and Turku where I presented papers about my project. I have been an active member of NU (Nätverk för Ungdomskulturforskning), which is a Swedish national network for researchers studying youth culture. The friendship of colleagues in this interdisciplinary network has been as sig- nificant as the seminars and conferences have been important. Before starting my project I was inspired by a course arranged by Johan Fornäs at the Department of JMK (Journalism, Media and Communication), Stockholm University, called 'Popular Music in Media Studies'. The course and the subsequent seminars made me decide to go ahead with my study of the Irish music scene. Hillevi Ganetz, Göran Bolin and Hasse Huss were some of the participants in the popular music course and seminars at JMK. I also have to mention that I have been encour- aged in particular to undertake this study by some musician friends in Sweden who thought that it was certainly better that a study of musicians was conducted by a non-musician rather than a musician! I am also grateful to the Swedish-Irish Society for all the pleasant ativities and parties they arranged. I have had a great time, especially at the annual St Patrick's Day parties in Stockholm. Thanks to everybody at the Swedish-Irish Society who have been helpful with advice, about the Irish music scene both in Ireland and in Sweden. Thanks also to the Irish Embassy in Stockholm for information about Ireland when I was first planning my fieldwork. I very much appreciated the work of my English language editor, Margaret Cornell, in England. My gratitude goes also to Helen Åsman, in Stockholm, who assisted me with the layout of the book. She was also an artistic adviser for the cover of the book. There are several friends I want to thank. 'Ankorna' (Annica Thomas, Annika Finn Nordlander and Kristina Björkegren) gave me much needed XI breaks from my work; I certainly enjoyed all the good times - craic - with them in the Irish pubs in Stockholm. Tina Runa and Eva-Marie Dahl are great friends who helped me when things were not going too well. They also shared my good times. Thanks also to Niina Kallio in Dublin for her company in the music pubs and for drawing pictures for me. Karolina Nilheim is another good friend of mine, who visited me in Galway and even went along to my field there. Veronica and Heike in Galway cer- tainly gave me unforgettable memories! And, of course, my family has been patient and helped me to get through this time-consuming work.