Music and the Irish Imagination

Irish music holds pride of place among the cultural attributes defining
Ireland, and its role in shaping national identity is undisputed. To question
these certainties which tend to convey a restrictive notion of a so-called
Irish music, the first Irish music studies conference in France, which took
place at the université de Caen Basse-Normandie on September 10th-12th, 2008,
brought together Irish studies scholars, musicologists and musicians from
Ireland and from France. Proceeding from this conference, this collection of
essays places itself in the context of the fairly recent development of music
studies as an area of scholarship within Irish studies. After an introductory
essay by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, head of the Irish World Music Academy and
chair of Culture Ireland, other articles look at issues such as (re-)defining,
instrumentalising, performing, staging and listening to Irish music. In this
volume, studies of form, setting, repertoire, political and ideological
exploitation and government policy sit alongside explorations of music motifs
and themes in literature and on the stage.