Music in Irish Cultural History

Description

This collection of essays on the subject of music and Irish identity covers a number of different musical genres and periods, produced in a coherent volume representing a significant intervention within the field of Irish music studies. The main essays include the (re-) establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; and the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects. With chapters ranging from the politics of betrayal in the songs of Thomas Moore to the use of music in the award winning film Once. Gerry Smyth offers a provocative and very readable analysis of key moments from Irish cultural history considered from the perspective of music.

Table of Contents

1. Listening to the Future: Music and Irish Studies
2. Betrayal as Theme and Influence in Thomas Moore’s ‘On Music’
3. Music in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’: Sources, Contexts, Meanings
4. Paddy Sad and Paddy Mad: Music and the Condition of Irishness
5. Bringing It All Back Home? The Dynamics of Local Music-Making in The Commitments
6. Celtic Music: From the Margins to the Centre (And Back Again?)
7. Listening to the Novel: The Role and Representation of Traditional Music in Contemporary Irish Fiction
8. No Country for Young Women: Celtic Music, Dissent and the Irish Female Body
9. ‘The same sound but with a different meaning’: Music, Politics and Identity in Bernard Mac Laverty’s Grace Notes
10. ‘Sing your melody, I’ll sing along’: Mimentic and Diegetic Uses of Music in Once

About the Author

Dr Gerry Smyth is Reader in Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores Univeristy. He has published widely in the area of Irish Studies and Popular Music Studies, including Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination  (Palgrave, 2001), Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork University Press, 2005) and Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock (Atrium Press, 2005).