Flowing tides : history and memory in an Irish soundscape

345 Pages·2016·6.58 MB·English

by  Gearoid O hAllmhurain

Flowing Tides

Flowing Tides
HISTORY AND MEMORY IN AN IRISH SOUNDSCAPE
Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Ó hAllmhuráin, Gearóid.
Title: Flowing tides : history and memory in an Irish soundscape/ Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044405| ISBN 9780199380084 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780199380091 (institutional e- book) | ISBN 9780199380114 (online content) |
ISBN 9780199380107 (companion website)
Subjects: LCSH: Folk music— Ireland— Clare— History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3654.7.C6 O5 2016 | DDC 781.62/ 916204193— dc23
LC record available at http:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2015044405
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Do
Pheadar Ó Lochlainn
ceoltóir, scéalaí, cara
For
Peadar O’Loughlin
musician, raconteur, friend

CONTENTS
Foreword  ix
Preface  xi
About the Companion Website  xv
L’entrée: Clare and Its Soundscape  1
On Europe’s Edge 3
The Scope of This Book 10
1. Recentering the Musical Periphery  19
Harvesting a Sonic Archive 21
Shifting Cartographies of Place and Mobility 33
2. Napoleon to Parnell: Before and After the Famine  47
Ancien Régime Quadrilles and New Musical Spaces 49
Great Famine: Grim Requiem of the Music Maker 61
Fenian Concertinas and Land League Ballads 75
The Feminization of Musical Space 80
3. Fifers, Tans, and Jazzers: Soundscape in Transition  87
Temperance and Beyond: Fifes, Drums, Brass, and Reed 89
Clare Music Makers and the Fight for Irish Independence 97
The Roaring Twenties and Dance Hall Days 105
4. Hearth and Clachan: The Musical Year in Rural Clare  121
Anois Teacht an Earraigh: Courting, Fasting, and Rites of Spring 123
Torthaí na Bealtaine: Fairies, Garlands, and Crossroad Capers 129
Aimsir an Fhómhair: Autumn Threshing, Meitheals, and Soirées 136
Ceol an Gheimhridh: Winter Cuaird and Wren Dances 140
5. Out of Isolation: The Fleadh Down in Ennis  151
Pipers Three: Ennis, Reid, and Doran 153
Double Bass and Clog Box: Céilí Band Fever 162
1956: Annus Mirabilis 171
6. Autobahn to Doolin: Soundscape as a Cultural Commodity  189
Toonagh Pedagogue: A Quiet Musical Revolution 193
Doolin Discord: Counterculture and Pub Culture 201
Willie Week: Ireland’s Musical Mecca 208
viii Contents
7. The Tiger: Reappraising Global Clare  217
Packaging Tradition: Clare Music and the Celtic Tiger 220
To Rule and Guide: Clare Comhaltas at Century’s End 231
Another Clare: Virtual, Vicarious, and Prosthetic 235
L’épilogue: Remembering and Forgetting  241
Appendix I: Field Notes— The Hesitation Step 251
Appendix II: A Century of Clare Céilí Bands  253
Appendix III: Hereditary Musical Families in Clare  257
Notes  259
Glossary of Irish- Language Terms  273
Discography  275
Archives/W ebsites  279
References  281
Index  299
FOREWORD
Within the past thirty years, the ascendancy of traditional and popular musical
cultures in Ireland has only rarely entailed a commensurate degree of scientific
or scholarly criticism, notwithstanding the global prestige which now attaches
to these cultures and the surfeit of journalistic commentary which attends them
both. In the domain of Irish traditional music, the work of ethnomusicologists
such as Lillis Ó Laoire, Martin Dowling, Sean Williams, and Adrian Scahill is
distinguished by its receptivity to the belief that music speaks eloquently to the
history of Irish ideas, and that this history in turn enriches our understanding
of music in Ireland far beyond the purview of rancorous debate and atavistic
assertion, which often impair the transmission (and the mere narrative) of Irish
music itself.
Flowing Tides is a book which warmly subscribes to this enrichment. It com-
pellingly engages with the history of music in Clare over two centuries, and
in this enterprise it enlists a host of disciplines— political, social, and cultural
history; theories of memory and narrative; social anthropology; folklore; and
ethnomusicology— to create a densely layered critique adequate to the complex
fabric of musical soundscapes which is its constant focus and preoccupation. In
its immensely persuasive reading of music in Clare as a formative microcosm of
Irish musical history since 1800, Flowing Tides attends with surpassing skill on
the vicissitudes of music making as a via media on the western seaboard and
the hinterland of Clare. It contextualizes its detailed disclosure of those sing-
ers, instrumentalists, teachers, pedagogues, and institutions which dominated
this astonishing soundscape through the agency of a narrative which moves
easily between music and the circumstances which shaped and determined its
sounding form, its social significance, and its larger address upon the world.
A “periphery on the edge of a periphery,” Clare nevertheless emerges from
this vibrant and passionate reading as a seminal and absolutely central con-
duit of musical experience on both sides of the Atlantic. Throughout Flowing
Tides there is an abiding sense (concentrated, singular and sharply attentive to
Ireland’s changing complexion in the world, from the Napoleonic Wars to the
venality and greed which produced the economic catastrophe of the present
day) of music as a soundboard for Irish experience. The author of this book is
one of the great authorities on Irish music and its migration to Canada and the
United States, and his erudition and empathy in this regard authenticate the re-
ception history of music in Clare, which he constructs and interprets with such
memorable panache, intellectual versatility, and generosity of insight.