From the mythological harp of the Dagda to Riverdance, this concise history of Irish traditional music and dance explores a rich spectrum of historical sources and folklore. It uncovers the contribution of the Normans to Irish dancing, the rote of the music maker in Penal Ireland, and the popularity of dance tunes and set dancing from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. It also follows the music of the Irish diaspora from the music halls of vaudeville to the musical tapestry of Irish America today.

The history of Irish traditional music, song and dance from the mythological harp of the Dagda right up to Riverdance and beyond. Exploring an abundant spectrum of historical sources, music and folklore, this guide uncovers the contribution of the Normans to Irish dancing, the role of the music maker in Penal Ireland, as well as the popularity of dance tunes and set dancing from the end of the 18th century. It also follows the music of the Irish diaspora from as far apart as Newfoundland and the music halls of vaudeville to the musical tapestry of Irish America today.

Written from the perspective of a scholar and performer, Traditional Music and Irish Society investigates the relation of traditional music to Irish modernity. The opening chapter integrates a thorough survey of the early sources of Irish music with recent work on Irish social history in the eighteenth century to explore the question of the antiquity of the tradition and the class locations of its origins. Dowling argues in the second chapter that the formation of what is today called Irish traditional music occurred alongside the economic and political modernization of European society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dowling goes on to illustrate the public discourse on music during the Irish revival in newspapers and journals from the 1880s to the First World War, also drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan to place the field of music within the public sphere of nationalist politics and cultural revival in these decades. The situation of music and song in the Irish literary revival is then reflected and interpreted in the life and work of James Joyce, and Dowling includes treatment of Joyce’s short stories A Mother and The Dead and the 'Sirens' chapter of Ulysses. Dowling conducted field work with Northern Irish musicians during 2004 and 2005, and also reflects directly on his own experience performing and working with musicians and arts organizations in order to conclude with an assessment of the current state of traditional music and cultural negotiation in Northern Ireland in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

This volume presents extracts from a number of documents from the long nineteenth century that pertain to the history of music in Ireland. The documents fall into one of three categories: musical notation, text, image. Each chapter contains a copy of a document (or an extract) along with an essay that provides context, explanation and interpretation. The editors have sought to represent a broad range of documents that address aspects of the history of music in Ireland: social history; the economics of musical life; performance practice; musical taste and repertoire; theory and aesthetics; the historiography of Irish music history; national identity, the traditional repertoire. The Irish Musical Studies series is published in association with the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Collecting Music in the Aran Islands, a critical historiographical study of the practice of documenting traditional music, is the first to focus on the archipelago off the west coast of Ireland. Deirdre Ní Chonghaile argues for a framework to fully contextualize and understand this process of music curation.

The last century has seen radical social changes in Ireland, which have impacted all aspects of local life but none more so than traditional Irish music, an increasingly important identity marker both in Ireland and abroad. The author focuses on a small village in County Clare, which became a kind of pilgrimage site for those interested in experiencing traditional music. He begins by tracing its historical development from the days prior to the influx of visitors, through a period called "the Revival," in which traditional Irish music was revitalized and transformed, to the modern period, which is dominated by tourism. A large number of incomers, locally known as "blow-ins," have moved to the area, and the traditional Irish music is now largely performed and passed on by them. This fine-grained ethnographic study explores the commercialization of music and culture, the touristic consolidation and consumption of "place," and offers a critique of the trope of "authenticity," all in a setting of dramatic social change in which the movement of people is constant.

Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland’s spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.