The invention of ethnicity: traditional music and the modulations of Irish culture

Abstract

The history of traditional music in Ireland remains to be written. This task cannot be undertaken until Irish musicology emancipates itself from the constraints of a scholarship which concentrates upon collection and analysis at the expense of critical discourse. A vital first step in this emancipation is to recognize and resolve the abiding difficulty of relying upon an unformulated "insider" knowledge of traditional music which inhibits the transmission of Irish musical scholarship within the wider domain of musicology.

Keywords

• tradition
• ethnicity
• ireland
• social anthropology
• narrative
• cultural history