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'Imagining Ireland' Conference, Dublin, October 30th-31st 1993
Author(s): Barbara Bradby
Source:
Popular Music,
Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 107-109
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Middle Eight 107
of a musical tradition and its Englishness came over rather well, even if class issues
were muted.
Trevor Herbert's piece on Victorian brass bands was better at tracing the
relation between music and class, looking at how brass instruments became widely
available with the invention of the piston valve and industrial production tech-
niques, and brass bands blossomed into a movement, often encouraged by the
bourgeoisie as a 'useful diversion' for the working classes. The image of the colliery
band as patronised by the top-hatted owner was by no means the only form,
however, and works and town bands run by local people were also common: the
relation between class and culture was, as usual, not a simple one.
Some of the better known speakers were a little predictable: Iain Chambers
and Christopher Norris both gave stimulating talks; there was a sense of ddjIa
vu about them as well. Chambers' view that ideas of authenticity anchored in
uncontaminated tradition are "rendered homeless" by such innovations as Bhan-
gra rap is a useful, but fairly familiar idea, at least in the academic context. How
discourses of authenticity are used to command loyalty is, however, another ques-
tion. Norris argued that a postmodernist retreat from cross-cultural evaluative
criteria was too weak, and thus proceeded to give us his criteria for judging excel-
lence in music, based on ideas of complexity and challenging listeners' expecta-
tions and drawn, it seemed, from his own taste for classical music - an exercise
which not surprisingly provoked disagreement from the audience.
On the other hand, while it was excellent to have some papers by people
starting or in the middle of doctoral research, a little more selectivity could have
been exercised by the organisers. Jon Binnie, Katie Milestone and Joanne Hollows
were interesting, but Mark Thurstain-Goodwin's paper was based on undergrad-
uate research and did not say anything new, while Ewan Allison, on hip-hop, had
swallowed so completely the self-representation of this particular strand of black
culture during his fieldwork that he couldn't stand outside it at all and subjected
us to a rant on how whites were not able to understand hip-hop (even though he,
a white, was trying to tell us about it .. .). Meanwhile, the grape-vine had it
that several people in the audience, with arguably better qualifications, had had
proposals for papers turned down.
'Imagining Ireland' Conference, Dublin, October 30th-31st 1993
Barbara Bradby
This was a very lively and well-attended conference organised jointly by the
Dublin-based Irish Film Centre, and the Belfast-based Fortnight Educational Trust.
Its major focus was on the representation of Ireland in film, and on public policy
towards film and television, North and South. However, the organisers were keen
to include popular music in the discussions, in part in order to contest the almost
canonical place occupied by film in intellectual thought in Ireland, in part so as to
explore issues around Irish rock, and its relationship to pop.
A panel discussion was therefore put on with the perhaps unfortunate title
of 'Sham rocks?', and the sub-title 'Irish pop music - a contradiction in terms?'
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108 Middle Eight
While the sub-title begged a lot of interesting questions around, for instance,
Ireland's triple success in Eurovision, the discussion focussed mainly on the notion
of Irish rock, and whether its Irishness is established on the basis of nationality,
musical features, or simply marketing. A couple of years ago, for instance, Philip
King made a TV documentary series called 'Bringing it all back home', which
traced the influence of Irish traditional music through emigration to the United
States and Britain. Speaking on the panel, he developed the idea of an interaction
between parallel traditions of American and Irish music, with rock'n'roll now
having assumed the status of a 'traditional' music. He sees Irish music as following
its own internal growth, while influenced by external factors, some of them already
incorporating Irish features. He described Irish culture as a 'strong, vibrant cul-
ture', and the 'spirit of Irishness' as coming through the strength of singing voices,
and through the particular tradition of singing itself.
Niall Stokes has been closely concerned with the growth of Irish rock music
over the last 15 years. As editor of Hot Press, he has sustained a forum which has
been both important as the nurturer of Irish rock and rock journalism, but also as
a consistently liberal publication, particularly through the political dark ages of the
1980s in the Republic. Niall took the line that, although rock music is an interna-
tional form, one does not lose one's 'Irishness' by playing it, a line that tends to
boil down to the idea that Irish rock is defined simply by the nationality of the
people who do it. This kind of nationalism is an inclusive, abundantly generous
nationalism, quite unfamiliar perhaps to those who only know Ireland through
sectarian versions of its Northern conflict. For Niall, the history of Irish rock as
the history of the growth of Irish self-confidence, the latest stage of which is that
successful Irish musicians no longer have to emigrate permanently in order to
achieve world success. Ireland is now at the centre of the agenda for the industry
A&R people. And locality is in turn acquiring importance within Ireland [the Saw
Doctors as a 'Tuam band', the Cranberries as 'from Limerick'].
Feeling not a little 'set up' in the role of international expert, Dave Laing
then dared to question whether the music known as 'rock' can have an ethnic
dimension. Rock, he argued, is now a set of musical conventions, albeit the domin-
ant ones, parallel to the conventions of 'Hollywood cinema'. How far can one mix
in 'local' elements to a music with 'global' pretensions? One way is to use local
languages, but this is complicated in Ireland by the use of the English language.
The punk movement was partly the inspiration to do something local, against the
globalism of the rock industry in the seventies. [And then? .. .]
Dave then talked about the impact of Irish music abroad, and read out a list
demonstrating the huge range of musics which have been seen as Irish, which
was unfortunately largely lost on those in the room, who were far too young to
have heard of Ruby Murray or Val Doonican, but produced the predictable laughs
at the mention of Daniel O'Donnell [and left out the Nolan Sisters .. .]
He ended with a discussion of the appropriate economic infrastructure for
the nurturing of local music industries. Some questions about quotas for radio
play produced fascinating comparisons between the way different countries define
what is to count for national music, with the French emphasising language, and
the Canadians' location of the production and nationality of those involved. How-
ever Niall Stokes, who has just been appointed Chairperson of the Independent
Radio and Television Commission, rejected the need for quotas, and said that the
existing legislation could be enforced to achieve the same effect.
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Middle Eight 109
Voices then pleaded from the floor for the notion of the 'constructed-ness'
of Irish rock music and its 'authenticity'. An academic well known for the size of
his record collection challenged the panel with the fact that, in his opinion, the
best two records ever to come out of Ireland had nothing whatever to do with
Irishness [Them's 'Gloria' and the Undertones 'Teenage Kicks', the latter being
John Peel's absolutely top Desert Island Disc also]. Inevitably that question never
got answered as it provoked a discussion about the exclusion of women from the
new notion of Irish identity embodied in 'Irish rock'. A female 'clubber' then spoke
up for cosmopolitan pop and at last embodied the contradiction in the title of the
session, immediately afterwards belying her point by asking what was 'Banghra
Dub' which she'd seen on a poster [particularly mystifying if you live in a city
where 'Dub' is slang for a Dubliner]. For Niall Stokes, the answer to the cosmopol-
itan challenge is that there are now Irish dance outfits appearing - inclusive Irish-
ness can encompass everything.
An American remarked that far from all Irish bands proclaiming their Irish-
ness in the USA, some, like the Cranberries [who have just gone 'gold' in the US]
seem to play it down. Others, like House of Pain, who are patently not Irish in
the generally accepted sense, construct an artificial Irishness. [Irish-people-who-
live-in-Ireland talk in the same way about the Pogues, as 'not Irish']. And we
could ask at what point in their career will a band like the Cranberries be able to
do a 'back to our roots' album, incorporate 'Celtic' elements and 'rediscover' their
Irishness for an international audience.
Having chaired this session, and being somewhat of a fan of House of Pain,
I might end this report by saying that I find them interesting in part because they
don't appear to give a damn about Ireland, or about what anyone thinks of them
here [which is not much]. Is their 'Irishness' then just a marketing ploy for a white
rap group who claim some Irish-American descent? Their rapper is called 'Danny
Boy' and they advertise their 'fine malt lyrics'. Their appropriately titled 'Sham-
rocks and Shenanigans' is in the charts at the moment. But then what they are
sending up is not Ireland, but Irish America. The shamrock is an embarrassingly
overworked symbol of Irishness perhaps precisely because of its associations with
Irish America through sentimental ballads, and a form of nationalism which cannot
be the publicly proclaimed one here. Not that Irish America is unchanging, as
House of Pain themselves demonstrate. And their comical-absurd challenging of
the black American homeboys' bacon 'n' cabbage and Guinness seems to me in
some ways a more interesting approach to the relationship between Irish and
black-American identities than the fantasy Dublin world of The Commitments.
But the gap between the emigrants' view of Ireland, and the view from
Ireland itself, has been a crucial dialectic in the ongoing story of Irish music. I am
tempted to argue that if one wants an explanation of the undeniable importance
of Irish musicians on the international scene, that rather than appealing to an
essential Irish ability to sing [which is surely a general human cultural ability]
as Philip King does, one should look sociologically to the enormous extent and
concentration of the Irish diaspora, at its strong links with home, and at the role
that music took on in defining Irish identity in America and Britain when the
language died out through assimilation. Within this context, the 'competitive Irish-
ness' which was decried elsewhere at the conference, acquires a more progressive
significance, as a more healthy process of creation, reaction, and recreation of
views of Ireland and Irishness.
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