Overview

Irish music enjoyed popularity across Europe and North America in the second half of the twentieth century. Regional circumstances created a unique reception for such music in the English Midlands. This book is a musical ethnography of Birmingham, 1950 2010. Initially establishing geographical and chronological parameters, the book cites Birmingham s location at the hub of a road and communications network as key to the development of Irish music across a series of increasingly visible, public sites: Birmingham s branch of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann was established in the domestic space of an amateur musician; Birmingham s folk clubs encouraged a blend of Irish music with socialist politics, from which the Dublin singer Luke Kelly honed his trade; Irish solidarity was fostered in Birmingham s churches. Each of these examples begins with a performance at Birmingham Town Hall in order to show how a single venue also provides musical representations that are mutable over time. The culmination is Birmingham s St Patrick s Parade. This, the largest Irish procession outside Dublin and New York, manifests an incoherent blend of sounds. The audio montage, nevertheless, creates a coherent metanarrative: one in which the local community has conquered a number of challenges (most especially that of the IRA bombings of the area) and has moved Irish music from private arenas to the centre of this large civic event.

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9781299658769

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