Music in Ireland: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture [With CDROM]

This outstanding book fills a long-standing lacuna. It will immediately become the standard introductory text for Irish music, and it should remain so for the forseeable future--it's hard to imagine what could surpass it. The material is elegantly organized and very well presented. I particularly like the way that the reader is welcomed into real traditional music events; in these sections the material truly comes alive. The recorded examples are lovely.

In a new volume in Oxford's Global Music Series, the subtitle `Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture' emphasises the musical force gained by Irish music from its being rooted in the local. Dorothea Hast and Stanley Scott, practitioners and scholars both, visit a seisiun at Gleesons pub in Clare near the Miltown Malbay centre of melodic pilgrimage, interview traditional singers Len Graham from Glenarm and his wife, Padraigin Ni Uallachain, from Louth, and analyze a performance held at Trinity Inn near the college in Dublin under the auspices of the Goilin Singer's Club. By concentrating on these three manifestations of the current Irish scene, emphasising in turn the instrumental, the sean-nos and song tradition, and the song as both perpetuating the tradition and welcoming the innovative, Hast and Scott provide an overview easily enjoyed in a couple of sittings along with the accompanying 28-track CD, keyed to their informative text. Although designed for the classroom, this volume can inform anyone about the background, current context, and permutations of Irish music. I was impressed by the ease in which musicologists Hast and Scott integrate technical terms into their text designed for the rank novices like me to musical terminology. The activities allow you to learn from the CD track at specified moments in your reading, and particularly impressive I found one example. Piper Jerry O'Sullivan offers multiple versions of "Garrett Barry's Jig." The first is a stripped-down version transcribed for the beginning student. The notes simplify the melody. The second version adds ornaments. The third time through, with the use of the regulators of the instrument, adds even more intricacies. As a careful listener to the pipes, the combination of the three scores and the three takes added immeasurably to my comprehension of what, if I had been presented only with the audio tracks, would have sounded like lots of flash added to a straightforward tune. The connection of the pub session and the repertoire with the local emerges strongly in these pages. Hast and Scott could have wandered all 32 counties and given a thumbnail rundown of famous players or notable tunes in these 150 pages. Instead, they study the etiquette, the passing on of tunes, the respect paid the elders, and the democracy of the audience and players, as all who play and sing thus gain appreciation in turn. The incident down the road or up the lane, as so many titles show, the inspiration of a particular player, and the commemoration of battles and courtships long faded remain memorialised but never mummified. The context emerges in the playing and the singing, ever-shifting but still reified. Each playing and recital changes the structure but leaves the scaffolding in place for the next builder. Eschewing the gazateer approach, the authors' choice to zero in on three locales heightens their primacy of the community within what continues to be passed on within the Irish traditional repe

I've always enjoyed Irish music when I've had the opportunity, but I didn't have any formal knowledge about it. This book was very accessible and covered a lot of bases -- the music itself, the key instruments (the harp gets its due along with the more commonly seen fiddle and others), the relationship between Irish music and Irish history and culture, and an intro to various types of traditional Irish music. And a real sense of the Irish people and personality comes through. (Conversations with many of Ireland's leading performers are reported in the book). The accompanying CD is great: again part education, part performance. Some recently performed pieces and some fascinating recordings from decades past. Recommended.