Ordinary Irish Life: Music, Sport and Culture

Description

Drawing together the themes of music, sport and culture, this lively collection investigates commonplace elements of Irish life both in Ireland and abroad.

Music as a powerful presence in everyday living is discussed from contributions exploring the Irish show band scene of the 1960s to traditional music making in both urban and rural Ireland in the new millennium. While the shifting sands of popular and folk culture are examined through song text, so too are the ubiquity of talk radio and its particular Irish inflections revealed. Sport is embedded in ordinary Irish life and individual essays explore this oft-contested site of Irish identity. Finally, considered case studies of the corner boys of parochial Ireland and the emigrant experiences of Irish railroad workers in Cuba remind us of forgotten forms and neglected manifestations of ordinary Irish life.

Quite apart from its intrinsic value to the growing field of Irish Studies, this fascinating book delves into the study of ordinary lives and living through original and dynamic contributions.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction by David Doyle (UCD) and Méabh Ní Fhuartháin NUI Galway
2. ‘Recycling Irish popular culture’ ~ Guy Beiner, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
3. ‘We were so different!’ Negotiating Gender on the Showband Stage’ ~ Rebecca Miller, Hampshire College, USA
4. ‘Rethinking Rural/Urban: Traditional Music and ‘Musical Community’ in 21st Century Dublin’ ~ Lauren Weintraub Stoebel, CUNY
5. ‘A sort of homecoming: U2, performance and community in Ireland’ ~ Visnja Cogan, Sorbonne, Paris
6. ‘The Riddle of Ravenhill: The 1954 Irish Rugby International in Belfast’ ~ Vic Rigby, Independent Writer
7. ‘Seán Burke, ‘Lion of Lahinch’: an IRA man at the Walker Cup ~ Jim Shanahan, SPD, DCU
8. ‘Corner Boys in small town Ireland, 1922 – 1970’ ~ Leo Keohane, NUI Galway
9. ‘Life on-air: Talk radio and popular culture in Ireland’ ~ Finola Doyle O’Neill, University College Cork
10. ”Neither white nor free’: Irish railroad workers in the troubled colony of Cuba, 1835-1837′ ~ Margaret Brehony, NUI Galway

About the Editors

Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin is currently the University Fellow (Teaching and Research) in Irish Studies and Co-ordinator, of the BA Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway. She is also co-director of the research network Comhrá Ceoil: Irish music and dance studies.

Dr David Doyle is an Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the UCD Institute of Criminology and a Research Associate of School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College, Dublin.