The Making of Irish Traditional Music

this informative thought provoking study is an excellent addition to the existing literature on Irish music. ~CHOICE

Many myths about Irish traditional fiddle music and the rural idle are burst in the pages of this book as it becomes evident that the diaspora s influences can alter the soundscape of Irish traditional music sounds within Ireland. Nationalism like nostalgia is compelling and highly emotive but only up until the point where the nationalist mirage vanishes precisely because it lacks substance and cannot stand up to close scrutiny when tested against the historical and sound recording evidence. All musicians performing Irish traditional music need to talk about their traditions its actual past its influences its ongoing metamorphosis its politicisation and its transformation over time. Musicians need to hear O Shea s critique however uncomfortable and confronting at times the locals may find it to be. What is most impressive about parts of this book is O Shea s own journey and as she states her greatest reward as a scholar has been to penetrate the thick skin of received knowledge about Ireland and Irish traditional music p. 4 . This she has certainly done in part and it is now up to others musicians and cultural historians to unflinchingly head off in the myriad of directions she has pointed them towards to continue the quest to unravel what makes and remakes Irish traditional music. ~Dolly Mackinnon Australasian J of Irish Studies

This book is a welcome contextualization of Irish musical culture within European intellectual history since 1700. It is an exemplary ethnomusicological study, and musicologists will find O'Shea's arguments ring true; but it will be most valuable for established scholars in the cognate fields of Irish studies. This book has been written with great care for the sensibilities of Irish musicians and tradition-bearers...O'Shea's argument contains exemplary musical analyses that are aimed at a general audience and accomplished without using musicological jargon. This is one of the best books currently available on traditional Irish music ~Ann Spinney Boston College

The Making of Irish Traditional Music provides a valuable, theoretically informed cultural history of the retrieval and codification of Irish music in the context of an emergent Irish nationalism. It offers a valuable critique of notions of identity and authenticity at the very inner sanctum of an essential mode of Irish self-expression, but does so with considerable sensitivity to the pressures that draw people to adhere to notions of ethnic or national identity. The historical dimension of this work, from Bunting in the late eighteenth century and O'Neill in the late nineteenth to the emergence of independent state cultural institutions and their effect on the formation of 'traditional' and official versions of Irish music, is one of the very best continuous accounts available. ~David Lloyd, University of Southern California