Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond

Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume of essays contemplates whether ‘music in Ireland’ can be regarded as one interrelated plane of cultural and/or national identity, given the various conceptions and contexts of both Ireland and Music that give rise to multiple sites of identification. Arranged in interweaving sections of ‘Historical Perspectives’, ‘Recent and Contemporary Production’ and ‘Cultural Explorations’ its various chapters act to juxtapose the socio-historical distinctions between the major style categories - traditional, classical and popular - and to explore a range of dialectical relationship(s) between these musical styles in matters pertaining to national and cultural identity.