Music of Ireland

Irish Music is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres on the entire island of Ireland, North and South of border.

The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant throughout the 20th century despite globalising cultural forces. In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music influences from Britain and the United States, Irish music has kept many of its traditional aspects; indeed, it has itself influenced many forms of music, such as country and roots music in the USA, which in turn have had some influence on rock music in the 20th century. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres. Some of these fusion artists have attained mainstream success, at home and abroad.

In recent decades Irish music in many different genres has been very successful internationally. However, the most successful genres have been rock, popular and traditional fusion, with groups such as Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher, Clannad, The Boomtown Rats, The Corrs, The Chieftains, Enya, Ash, Christy Moore, Moving Hearts, Planxty, Horslips, Altan, Luka Bloom, Bewitched, Riverdance, Boyzone, Westlife, Daniel O'Donnell, Celtic Woman, The Irish Tenors, The Undertones, Van Morrison and U2 achieving success nationally and internationally.

Other genres, such as jazz and classical music, have benefitted in many ways from the synergy with traditional music forms.

Traditional music

Main article: Folk music of Ireland

In the seventeenth century harp musicians were patronised by the artistocracy in Ireland. This died out in the eighteenth century. Turlough Carolan (1670 - 1738) was the most famous, and over 200 of his compositions are known. He wrote in a baroque style that is usually classified as classical music, but is played by many folk musicians today. Edward Bunting collected some of the last-known harp tunes at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792. Other important collectors include George Petrie and Francis O'Neill. The earliest known descriptions of folk musicians are as soloists. By the middle of the nineteenth century ensemble playing was probably common.

Irish dance music at weddings and saint's days would have included reels (4/4), hornpipes and jigs (the common double jig is in 6/8 time). The polka arrived at the start of the nineteenth century, spread by itinerant dancing masters and mercenary soldiers, returning from Europe. Set dancing may have arrived in the eighteeenth century. Later imported dance-signatures include the mazurka and the highlands (a sort of Irished version of the Scottish strathspey). In the nineteenth century folk instruments would have included the bodhran, the flute the fiddle and the uilleann pipes. The latter is a uniquely Irish very sophisticated instrument, which was probably not played alongside other instruments until the twentieth century, because of the difficulty of tunings.

By the start of the twentieth century the button accordion and the concertina were becoming common. Irish stepdance was performed at ceilis, organised competitions and at some country houses where local and itinerant musicians were welcome. Irish dancing was supported by the educational system and patriotic organisations. An older style of singing called sean-nós ("in the old style") was still found, mainly for serious songs. The soloist would vary the tune to emphasise tragic events, leaving the words exactly the same each time. From 1850 to 1918 over one million Irish emigrated to the USA, creating a Celtic diaspora in Chicago (see Francis O'Neill), Boston, New York and other cities. Irish musicians who were successful in the USA made recordings which found their way around the world and re-invigorated musical styles back in the homeland.

There was a general decline in interest in traditional music in Ireland from the 1930s, when cinema and the radio became cheap alternatives, until the late 1950s, when The Clancy Brothers became famous in the USA. The explosion of interest also brough new instruments into Irish folk music: the guitar, the bouzouki and the mandolin. There was a moderate revivial in the uilleann pipes and the harp. The bodhran, almost unheard since 1900, returned because of its use by The Chieftains. Irish traditional music sessions became popular in the 60s, and folk festivals in the 70s.

Traditional music since 1960

The Dubliners had top-ten hits in the UK and toured heavily. The Chieftains recorded their first album in 1963. Dozens of groups and soloists followed: Clannad, Planxty, The Bothy Band,Enya, Christy Moore, Moving Hearts, Planxty, Horslips, Altan and others.

1994 saw a revival in stepdancing, due to the popularity of the show Riverdance. World-class performers of Irish music include Frankie Gavin and Martin Hayes (fiddle) and Matt Molloy and Kevin Crawford (flute). There is a guaranteed audience for Irish musicians who travel to the USA.

Late 20th century: Rock and more...

The Waterboys performing in Dublin in 2004.

Traditional music, especially sean-nós, played a major part in Irish popular music later in the century, with Van Morrison, Hothouse Flowers and Sinéad O'Connor using traditional elements in popular songs. Enya achieved enormous international success with New Age/Celtic fusions. The Pogues, led by Shane MacGowan, helped fuse Irish folk with punk rock to some success beginning in the 1980s, while the Afro-Celt Sound System achieved considerable fame adding West African influences and drum n bass in the 1990s.

In the 1980s, major bands included De Dannan, Altan, Arcady, Dervish and Patrick Street. Punk rock entered Ireland in full in the late 1970s, and flowered in the following decade with performers like Gavin Friday, Bob Geldof, while the Belfast scene inspired a legion of punk bands from Northern Ireland, of whom Stiff Little Fingers are the best known. Later in the 80s and into the 90s, Irish punk, like the scene in the UK, US and elsewhere, fractured into new styles of alternative rock, which included the critically acclaimed That Petrol Emotion, the renowned underground band My Bloody Valentine and the popular punk sound of Ash.

The '80s also saw the rise of Irish international stars. The biggest Irish musical performer of any kind is undoubtedly U2, who entered the mainstream beginning in 1980 with Boy, and continuing to incorporate a number of styles on later albums into the next century. Other rock bands of the era included Aslan, The Undertones, Energy Orchard and The Boomtown Rats. A growing interest in Irish music at this time helped many artistes gain more recognition abroad, including Mary Black, Andy White, Sharon Shannon, Hothouse Flowers and others. The BBC screened a documentary series about the influence of Irish music called Bringing it all Back Home (a reference to both the Bob Dylan folk song and the way in which Irish traditional music has travelled, especially in the New World following the Irish diaspora, which in turn has come back to influence modern Irish rock music). This series also helped to raise the profile of many artistes relatively little known outside Ireland. The fashionability of Irish folk music at this time may be judged from the huge success that non-Irish band The Waterboys enjoyed with their albums Fisherman's Blues and Room to Roam, both of which are full of Irish folk influences. Meanwhile, Sinéad O'Connor's confrontational style won her a legion of fans as well as controversy.

Country and Western music from the United States, which was influenced indirectly by Irish music, returned back over the ocean and is immensely popular in Ireland.

In the 1990s, pop bands like the Corrs manufactured bands like B*Witched, Boyzone and the somewhat rockier The Cranberries also became internationally renowned. Ireland had developed the Celtic metal scene, part of the black metal style which was common throughout much of Europe, and soon evolved into Celtic battle metal, Celtic doom metal and Celtic pagan metal. Artists included Waylander, Bran Barr, Cruachan, Geasa (band), and Primordial. Ireland was comparatively poorly-represented in the growing electronic music genre, but several groups did release albums, such as Skintone.

In 1998, a crew called Exile Eye released the Optic Nerve EP, which generated a great deal of interest in hip hop and inspired a number of newer hip hop crews, though Exile Eye was not the first Irish hip hop performers, as Scary Éire and others came first. These included Homebrew, Third Eye Surfers and Creative Controle.

In the 2000s Beoga, Gráda, Danú and Teada are among the youngest major instrumental bands of a largely traditional bent (although Gráda and Beoga are not so easily defined. While showing a strong understanding of their historical roots, they intertwine more contemporary sounds into their playing, bridging a gap between traditionalists and modern fusion groups).

New bands that promote the pub ballads and raucous instrumentals so familiar to Irish music fans include Flogging Molly, the Dropkick Murphys, and the LeperKhanz. There are many other Irish bands developing fusions of local and Irish music such as Skelpin, Flook, Kíla, Gráda, Bushplant (who include acclaimed fiddler Mary Custy) and Bad Haggis. These bands are no longer formed exclusively in Ireland.

A great place to hear traditional Irish music as part of a living and evolving traditions is at Ionad Cultúrtha (website - [1]) which is a regional cultural centre for the traditional and contemporary arts in Ballyvourney (near Macroom in County Cork). It holds many interesting music and visual art events and has a very progressive programming policy.

Top 5 biggest selling Irish acts of all time

Irish acts	Sold	Genre	Years active
1. U2	150 Million +	Rock	1977 - 2008 (30 Years)
2. Enya	75 Million +	New Age	1986 - 2008 (21 Years)
3. Van Morrison	55 Million +	Soul	1967 - 2007 (40 Years)
4. The Cranberries	45 Million +	Rock	1994 - 2001 (7 Years)
5. The Corrs	43 Million +	Pop	1996 - 2007 (11 Years)

Classical music in Ireland

Classical music in Ireland has always been in the shadow of other genres. Associated in the past with the ruling English class, it is only in recent years that it has begun to tentatively find its own voice. There is a clear division on the island between the North and the South of the Country, with Northern Ireland coming under the umbrella of the U.K. and the South being governed by the Republic of Ireland. Classical music, or Art music as it is sometimes known, has produced a number of successful composers including Thomas Moore and Turlough Ó Carolan. John Field, who lived in the early Romantic era has been credited with the creation of the nocturne form, later developed by the young Frédéric Chopin. Charles Villiers Stanford achieved great success in England in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but invariably success for composers has come mainly outside of the Irish state. Today, the best-known living Irish composer is Gerald Barry whose operatic works have been particularly successful in the U.K. and Europe.

Performers of classical music of note include Sir James Galway (b. Belfast, 1939) who is considered by many to be one of the finest concert flautists in the world today, while pianist Barry Douglas (b. Belfast, 1960) achieved fame in 1986 by claiming the International Tchaikovsky Competition gold medal and has become a successful soloist internationally. Singers Bernadette Greevy amd Ann Murray have also had success internationally.

The City of Belfast Youth Orchestra and the Dublin Youth Orchestra have both undertaken extensive tours to Europe and the United States in recent years. Both these orchestras have been the main contributing bodies to both the Ulster Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland. Professionally, Irish performance ensembles have gone from strength to strength with considerable success being achieved by the Irish Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Ireland on the international stage. There are two major symphony orchestras on the island, the Ulster Orchestra which is subsidised by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and BBC Northern Ireland, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, subsidised by RTÉ. Both orchestras have recorded successfully for labels such as Chandos and Naxos.

Early music is represented by the Irish Baroque Orchestra. Unfortunately, pre-orchestral music is very ill-served with little early music being performed since the demise of the Dublin Early Music Festival in the early 1990s. It is up to individuals such as the harpist Siobhán Armstrong and harpsichord player Malcolm Proud to maintain interest and dedication to this neglected era of music. There has been a recent raising of interest among younger musicians in this neglected period of music, with the formation of the choral group Crux and the international success of recorder player Kate Hearne.

In Northern Ireland the art of choral singing is very strong, with many choirs of very good quality both an junior and senior level. The story in the South is very different. Choral music has seen considerable neglect over the last number of decades. There is one professional choir The National Chamber Choir of Ireland which has been heavily subsidised over the last two decades by the state, but the lack of any choral strategy on the part of the Arts Council of Ireland has resulted in a general stagnation of the entire choral infrastructure. A study undertaken by the Council, begun in 2007, may help correct this. Despite this, choral music in Ireland has produced one of the most successful choirs in the world Anúna, who, while best known for their contribution to Riverdance in the early 1990s, have also been nominated for a Classical Brit Award in the U.K. and were invited to give the first ever Irish Prom at the BBC Proms series in the Royal Albert Hall in 1999. They have continued to tour internationally, most recently for a nine week tour of the USA. There is also a very strong amateur choral scene and one of the best-known choral festivals in the world takes place in Cork in early spring, The Cork International Choral Festival.

A recent trend in Irish Classical music has been a borrowing of style and forces between Traditional Music and Art Music. Seán Ó Riada is seen as one of the most significant writers in this field, with his soundtrack for the documentary "Mise Éire" having a profound effect on the general public in the 1960s. Although his writing encompasses contemporary Art music vocabulary, he also experimented with the integration of traditional modes and ornamentation. The classical composer Séoirse Bodley has done similar work in a more avant-garde field, and the composer Michael McGlynn has been successful at adapting modal forms to his choral compositions, many of which integrate contemporary techniques with more traditional ones. Perhaps the most successful writers in this field have been Micheál Ó Suilleabháin, Shaun Davey, Ronan Hardiman and Bill Whelan. Contemporary music is served by The Crash Ensemble, Concorde and various solo performers of note. As the contemporary style encompasses many of the new digital technologies, the line between the avant-garde and popular music has become blurred, with the size of the country allowing for some very interesting cross-pollenisation, one example being the popular singer Julie Feeney, who this year gave a performance of her latest record in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast of her debut album, entirely orchestrated by herself. While she is seen as the current darling of the popular music press in Ireland, she is also a trained composer and continues to work in the field of Art music despite her recent success.

See also

• List of Irish musicians
• Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann
• Sean nós
• List of All-Ireland Champions
• List of Irish Music Collectors
• Celtic music
• Irish rock
• Irish Recorded Music Association
• Irish topics
• Irish Rebel music
• Irish traditional music session
• List of artists who reached number one in Ireland
• List of songs that reached number one on the Irish Dance Chart
• List of songs that reached number one on the Irish Singles Chart
• One Hit Wonders in Ireland
• Top selling singles and albums in Ireland

References

• Vallely, Fintan. "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music" Cork University Press, ISBN 1 85918 148 1
• Carson, Ciaran. Irish Traditional Music. Appletree Press ISBN 0-86281-168-6
• O'Connor, Nuala. "Dancing at the Virtual Crossroads". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 170-188. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
• Mathieson, Kenny. "Ireland". 2001. In Mathieson, Kenny (Ed.), Celtic music, pp. 10-53. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-623-8
• Carson, Ciaran. "Last Night's Fun", Jonathan Cape ISBN 0-224-04141-X
• Geoff Wallis and Sue Wilson "The Rough Guide to Irish Music" ISBN 1-85828-642-5
• Barra Boydell: Music and Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland, 1985, ISBN 0-903162-22-9

External links

• POTEEN Irish folk band from DOWNPATRICK

• Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann A global movement promoting Irish traditional music and culture
• The Irish Traditional Music Tune Index A searchable database of traditional dance tunes which identifies sources for tunes on commercial recordings and in tune books
• TheSession.org an online tune database and discussion site for adherents of Irish Traditional Music
• Glens Music Recordings, music books, videos of Northern Irish traditional music & songs.
• Martin Dardis Web Site Irish folk and ballad song lyrics and guitar chords with videos
• Ceól Ólta News and actual information on Folk Music, with an accent on Irish/Celtic Music
• Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin Ireland's national resource and archive centre for contemporary Irish classical music.
• A History of Irish Music, by W. H. Flood
• CCUSA-Northeast Region The listing for Scottish, Irish,and Celtic concerts and tours for the Northeast United States and Eastern Canada