Music on the Island of Ireland

In this module (ESA3012), taught by Gordon Ramsey, we examine a range of musics in Ireland from historical and ethnographic perspectives. We consider the ways that musicking – the process of engaging in music as performer, composer, facilitator or audience – not only expresses, but enacts and produces identities through practice within particular social environments. In so doing, we explore a broad range of musical genres, from the Harp to the Lambeg Drum; from “Irish Traditional Music” to “Celtic Soul” and from the Flute Band to Electronic Dance Music. We consider the kinds of identities that these musics both represent and produce in relation to dimensions of power and inequality including gender, social class, race, ethnicity and nationality. In exploring the social conditioning of taste and the different material and emotional rewards produced by different forms of musicking, we find opportunities both to critically explore our own tastes and to develop deepened understandings of the tastes of others.