Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Research blog: http://www.aransongs.blogspot.ie/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aransongs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AranSongs
CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDE:
* Historiography of Irish traditional music and song, primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in particular documentation and dissemination, music collectors and music-collecting
* The transnational practice of the Irish language and its cultural legacy among the diaspora, migrants, and those at home in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the transatlantic network of Irish-language song scholarship by native speakers, language activists, and language learners, featuring Irish-language speakers in fin-de-siècle North America, many of whom emigrated in the Famine and post-Famine period, and investigating the significance of their songs and singing.
* Amhráin Árann - Aran Songs is a bilingual project that aims to publish an edition of songs composed in Aran - supported by accompanying CDs/mp3s and by a partner website - and to enable the people of Aran to preserve these endangered songs and to create easy access to them.
* The music, song, and dance of the Aran Islands, Co. Galway, and on Ireland's other offshore islands
FORTHCOMING BOOK:
* Collecting Music in Ireland presents new readings of some familiar sources and introduces some other, entirely new sources relating to traditional music in the Aran Islands. It renders a new paradigm in which to interpret music collections and the activities of the people who create them and offers an interdisciplinary reappraisal of some of the narratives that have dominated Irish traditional music for decades.
"exhaustive research... a landmark contribution to our understanding of the rich musical traditions of the Aran Islands."
- Committee for 2010 Adele Dalsimer Prize for Distinguished Dissertation in Irish Studies by the American Conference for Irish Studies
"an astonishingly thorough, insightful, and readable accomplishment."
- Prof James P. Leary, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"detailed and thought-provoking... a fascinating read, very well written."
- Dr John S. O'Neill, Cambridge University
COLLABORATIVE WORK:
* Local folklore project Bailiúchán Béaloideas Árann
* A 12-part radio series Bailiúchán Bhairbre (2006-2007) for RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta
* Musical director for Journey to Aran, Irish Film Institute (2011)
AWARDS:
Blog Ireland Awards – Best Blog in the Irish Language 2013
Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship 2012-14
Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies 2012, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC
NEH Keough Fellow 2011-2012, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame
Profile pic by Anne Burke.
Supervisors: Dr Lillis Ó Laoire
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aransongs
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AranSongs
CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS INCLUDE:
* Historiography of Irish traditional music and song, primarily in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in particular documentation and dissemination, music collectors and music-collecting
* The transnational practice of the Irish language and its cultural legacy among the diaspora, migrants, and those at home in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the transatlantic network of Irish-language song scholarship by native speakers, language activists, and language learners, featuring Irish-language speakers in fin-de-siècle North America, many of whom emigrated in the Famine and post-Famine period, and investigating the significance of their songs and singing.
* Amhráin Árann - Aran Songs is a bilingual project that aims to publish an edition of songs composed in Aran - supported by accompanying CDs/mp3s and by a partner website - and to enable the people of Aran to preserve these endangered songs and to create easy access to them.
* The music, song, and dance of the Aran Islands, Co. Galway, and on Ireland's other offshore islands
FORTHCOMING BOOK:
* Collecting Music in Ireland presents new readings of some familiar sources and introduces some other, entirely new sources relating to traditional music in the Aran Islands. It renders a new paradigm in which to interpret music collections and the activities of the people who create them and offers an interdisciplinary reappraisal of some of the narratives that have dominated Irish traditional music for decades.
"exhaustive research... a landmark contribution to our understanding of the rich musical traditions of the Aran Islands."
- Committee for 2010 Adele Dalsimer Prize for Distinguished Dissertation in Irish Studies by the American Conference for Irish Studies
"an astonishingly thorough, insightful, and readable accomplishment."
- Prof James P. Leary, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"detailed and thought-provoking... a fascinating read, very well written."
- Dr John S. O'Neill, Cambridge University
COLLABORATIVE WORK:
* Local folklore project Bailiúchán Béaloideas Árann
* A 12-part radio series Bailiúchán Bhairbre (2006-2007) for RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta
* Musical director for Journey to Aran, Irish Film Institute (2011)
AWARDS:
Blog Ireland Awards – Best Blog in the Irish Language 2013
Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship 2012-14
Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies 2012, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC
NEH Keough Fellow 2011-2012, Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame
Profile pic by Anne Burke.
Supervisors: Dr Lillis Ó Laoire
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Books by Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
I am a musician and researcher from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. This blog follows my progress on a project I have based at NUI Galway. The aim of this bilingual project is to publish an edition of songs composed in Aran. Supported by accompanying CDs/mp3s and by a partner website, the aim of the project is to enable the people of Aran to create easy access to these endangered songs, to preserve them, and to present them to communities beyond Aran.
"Bailiúchán Bhairbre is a twelve-part radio series that was first broadcast from November 2006 to February 2007 on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, and that has been available since for online listening http://www.rte.ie/rnag/bailiuchanbhairbre.html Created by the author, in collaboration with veteran broadcaster Máirtín Jaimsie Ó Flaithbheartaigh, the series introduces the eponymous private collection of reel-to-reel recordings created by Bairbre Quinn (1935-1987) to an Irish-speaking listenership. This chapter considers the multi-faceted impact of the series. The series has effectively revived a collection of recordings that lay dormant for decades. It continues to introduce these recordings to a new generation of listeners, in Bairbre’s native Aran Islands and beyond, and to highlight the historical and cultural significance of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, which captures in music the cultural clashes of a period of great change in Ireland. It also helps to counteract the historical marginalization of the music of Aran.
This chapter observes how the life of these recordings has been transformed by radio. It traces the creation, dormancy, rediscovery and reappraisal of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, and examines the decision taken by the author, with the approval of the Quinn family, to broadcast a selection of the recordings on RnaG, a station that represents an unorthodox medium in that it functions both as a community radio station and as a national broadcaster. Addressing the impact of the series – at times positive, at times negative – on the author’s research, this chapter ultimately makes a case for using radio as a tool for researching Irish traditional music. It presents the findings of one methodology, and suggests that other scholars of Irish traditional music – or, indeed, of other genres of music – might create their own methodologies that take advantage of the unique and visceral nature of the experience of listening to recordings."
Together, George Petrie (1790-1866) and Eugene O’Curry (1794-1861) collected a large body of Irish traditional music. The volume of manuscripts Petrie and O’Curry left behind, the breadth of their interests, and the different languages they used all contribute to the physical separation of their collaborative work and to the separate disciplinary study of their achievements. Most studies of their collaboration focus on Petrie’s contribution to the neglect of O’Curry’s contribution. Few have engaged with the Irish song lyrics O’Curry collected for Petrie. Irish-language scholars have traditionally treated Irish song lyrics as poetic texts and few of them have had the inclination or the skills of music scholarship to study the airs that accompany song lyrics. Also, historically, few Irish music scholars have been Irish-speakers. For the first time, this lecture combines Petrie and O’Curry’s respective manuscripts to learn about their collaborative fieldwork and about traditional music in the Aran Islands. There, in 1857, the pair transcribed over thirty-three songs to create a collection that is unusual if not unique as a record of nineteenth-century music on Ireland’s offshore islands. In combining these manuscripts, I have resurrected five songs that have since disappeared from the local repertoire. This lecture discusses the difficulties and merits of trying to combine song words and their airs that have been poorly identified and documented separately. Combining these sources allows for greater historical accuracy in music scholarship, and also enables repatriation. This lecture discusses the repatriation to Aran in August 2007 of this 150-year-old music.
WWII submarine warfare encouraged developments in sound technology that brought an unforeseen boon to peacetime folk-music collecting activities. The portability of battery-powered tape recording machines brought collectors to new places further afield, places that lacked electricity. These machines produced good-quality recordings that are invaluable to our present research on past performance styles and repertoires of Irish traditional music. Such tape recordings also reveal collectors’ working methods, their motivations and their attitudes towards orality in the music they collected. In creating their catalogues of traditional music, collectors created canons and preserved therein their opinions about orality, authenticity and literacy in traditional music. These opinions reverberate through today’s traditional music. This essay surveys and contextualises the work of three collectors who sought traditional music on the Aran Islands, Co. Galway between 1945 and 1956 – Séamus Ennis of the Irish Folklore Commission, BBC’s W.R. Rodgers, and Sidney Robertson Cowell, whose ethnomusicological collecting in America spanned over twenty years. The inclusions and omissions of these collections are noteworthy. The collectors display a regard for the orality of Aran’s traditional music, prizing it as a sign of the music’s authenticity. This essay examines how these collections reflect the collectors’ opinions of orality in traditional music, and questions the implications of their opinions for traditional music. This last question is particularly pertinent in the case of Séamus Ennis, whose countrywide experience of collecting and making music conferred him with an authority that influenced opinions thereafter on the traditional music of certain localities.
This is the first collection of material, prose and poetry, from some of the members of Cumann Scríbhneoirí Óga agus Úra na Gaeilge - new singular voices in Irish literature.
Papers by Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
I am a musician and researcher from the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. This blog follows my progress on a project I have based at NUI Galway. The aim of this bilingual project is to publish an edition of songs composed in Aran. Supported by accompanying CDs/mp3s and by a partner website, the aim of the project is to enable the people of Aran to create easy access to these endangered songs, to preserve them, and to present them to communities beyond Aran.
"Bailiúchán Bhairbre is a twelve-part radio series that was first broadcast from November 2006 to February 2007 on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, and that has been available since for online listening http://www.rte.ie/rnag/bailiuchanbhairbre.html Created by the author, in collaboration with veteran broadcaster Máirtín Jaimsie Ó Flaithbheartaigh, the series introduces the eponymous private collection of reel-to-reel recordings created by Bairbre Quinn (1935-1987) to an Irish-speaking listenership. This chapter considers the multi-faceted impact of the series. The series has effectively revived a collection of recordings that lay dormant for decades. It continues to introduce these recordings to a new generation of listeners, in Bairbre’s native Aran Islands and beyond, and to highlight the historical and cultural significance of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, which captures in music the cultural clashes of a period of great change in Ireland. It also helps to counteract the historical marginalization of the music of Aran.
This chapter observes how the life of these recordings has been transformed by radio. It traces the creation, dormancy, rediscovery and reappraisal of Bailiúchán Bhairbre, and examines the decision taken by the author, with the approval of the Quinn family, to broadcast a selection of the recordings on RnaG, a station that represents an unorthodox medium in that it functions both as a community radio station and as a national broadcaster. Addressing the impact of the series – at times positive, at times negative – on the author’s research, this chapter ultimately makes a case for using radio as a tool for researching Irish traditional music. It presents the findings of one methodology, and suggests that other scholars of Irish traditional music – or, indeed, of other genres of music – might create their own methodologies that take advantage of the unique and visceral nature of the experience of listening to recordings."
Together, George Petrie (1790-1866) and Eugene O’Curry (1794-1861) collected a large body of Irish traditional music. The volume of manuscripts Petrie and O’Curry left behind, the breadth of their interests, and the different languages they used all contribute to the physical separation of their collaborative work and to the separate disciplinary study of their achievements. Most studies of their collaboration focus on Petrie’s contribution to the neglect of O’Curry’s contribution. Few have engaged with the Irish song lyrics O’Curry collected for Petrie. Irish-language scholars have traditionally treated Irish song lyrics as poetic texts and few of them have had the inclination or the skills of music scholarship to study the airs that accompany song lyrics. Also, historically, few Irish music scholars have been Irish-speakers. For the first time, this lecture combines Petrie and O’Curry’s respective manuscripts to learn about their collaborative fieldwork and about traditional music in the Aran Islands. There, in 1857, the pair transcribed over thirty-three songs to create a collection that is unusual if not unique as a record of nineteenth-century music on Ireland’s offshore islands. In combining these manuscripts, I have resurrected five songs that have since disappeared from the local repertoire. This lecture discusses the difficulties and merits of trying to combine song words and their airs that have been poorly identified and documented separately. Combining these sources allows for greater historical accuracy in music scholarship, and also enables repatriation. This lecture discusses the repatriation to Aran in August 2007 of this 150-year-old music.
WWII submarine warfare encouraged developments in sound technology that brought an unforeseen boon to peacetime folk-music collecting activities. The portability of battery-powered tape recording machines brought collectors to new places further afield, places that lacked electricity. These machines produced good-quality recordings that are invaluable to our present research on past performance styles and repertoires of Irish traditional music. Such tape recordings also reveal collectors’ working methods, their motivations and their attitudes towards orality in the music they collected. In creating their catalogues of traditional music, collectors created canons and preserved therein their opinions about orality, authenticity and literacy in traditional music. These opinions reverberate through today’s traditional music. This essay surveys and contextualises the work of three collectors who sought traditional music on the Aran Islands, Co. Galway between 1945 and 1956 – Séamus Ennis of the Irish Folklore Commission, BBC’s W.R. Rodgers, and Sidney Robertson Cowell, whose ethnomusicological collecting in America spanned over twenty years. The inclusions and omissions of these collections are noteworthy. The collectors display a regard for the orality of Aran’s traditional music, prizing it as a sign of the music’s authenticity. This essay examines how these collections reflect the collectors’ opinions of orality in traditional music, and questions the implications of their opinions for traditional music. This last question is particularly pertinent in the case of Séamus Ennis, whose countrywide experience of collecting and making music conferred him with an authority that influenced opinions thereafter on the traditional music of certain localities.
This is the first collection of material, prose and poetry, from some of the members of Cumann Scríbhneoirí Óga agus Úra na Gaeilge - new singular voices in Irish literature.
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of The John W. Kluge Center, the Center hosts the first-ever #ScholarFest, a unique mixture of rapid-fire dialogues, panels and scholarly conversations on Capitol Hill.
This paper draws on the history of Aran’s most famous song, the Famine-era composition Amhrán Shéamuis Uí Chonchubhair or Seanmóir Uí Chonchubhair [James Connor’s Sermon], to offer insight into life in Aran and Conamara in the mid-nineteenth century. Building on the work of other scholars including Fr Eoghan Ó Gramhnaigh (1890), Antoine Powell (1983), and Brian Ó Catháin (2012), the paper will present a contextual study of the life of the song to reveal how the poet’s circumstances and particular aspects of contemporary life - including poverty, church control, and the power of the local land agent - inspired his composition. It will demonstrate the spread of Protestantism in the region, the conflict between it and Catholicism, the effect on the local community, and the efforts of some to resist the exploitation they endured. The impact of its legacy will be assessed in relation to the remembering and forgetting of the song, which survived for a time in Aran and in Philadelphia but gained a stronger foothold in Conamara thanks to its subversive purpose: that is, to fight persecution.
Ag tarraingt ar stair an amhráin is cáiliúla dar cumadh in Árainn, amhrán a cumadh in aimsir an drochshaoil, Amhrán Shéamuis Uí Chonchubhair nó Seanmóir Uí Chonchubhair, roinnfear léargas ar an saol in Árainn agus i gConamara i lár an naoú céad déag. Ag tógáil ar shaothar scoláirí éagsúla – ina measc, an tAthair Eoghan Ó Gramhnaigh (1890), Antoine Powell (1983), agus Brian Ó Catháin (2012) – díreofar ach go háirithe ar chomhthéacs an amhráin. Pléifear cúlra an fhile agus na gnéithe éagsúla de shaol na linne a spreag cumadh an amhráin, ina measc, an bochtanas, smacht na cléire, agus cumhacht na ngníomhairí talún. Bronnfar léargas ar scaipeadh an Phrotastúnachais, ar an gcomórtas idir na creidimh éagsúla, ar an tionchar ar an bpobal áitiúil, agus ar iarrachtaí na ndaoine cur in aghaidh an dúshaothraithe a d’fhulaing siad. Fiosrófar an éifeacht a bhí ag an gcomhthéacs seo ar chuimhne agus ar dhíchuimhne an amhráin, a mhair seal in Árainn agus seal eile in Philadelphia Mheiriceá, ach a fuair saol níos faide i gConamara mar gheall ar fheidhm threascarthach an amhráin: is í sin, seasamh i gcoinne na géarleanúna.