Rock and Popular Music in Ireland Before and After U2

Rock and Popular Music in Ireland Before and After U2 PDF Author: Noel McLaughlin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780716530763
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This volume explores Irish rock's relationship to the wider world of international popular music through detailed analysis of the island's most prominent artists and bands such as U2, Van Morrison, Sinéad O'Connor, The Boomtown Rats, and Horslips - and key musical movements including the beat scene and the folk revival.

Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond

Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond PDF Author: Mark Fitzgerald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131709249X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond represents the first interdisciplinary volume of chapters on an intricate cultural field that can be experienced and interpreted in manifold ways, whether in Ireland (The Republic of Ireland and/or Northern Ireland), among its diaspora(s), or further afield. While each contributor addresses particular themes viewed from discrete perspectives, collectively the book contemplates whether ’music in Ireland’ can be regarded as one interrelated plane of cultural and/or national identity, given the various conceptions and contexts of both Ireland (geographical, political, diasporic, mythical) and Music (including a proliferation of practices and genres) that give rise to multiple sites of identification. Arranged in the relatively distinct yet interweaving parts of ’Historical Perspectives’, ’Recent and Contemporary Production’ and ’Cultural Explorations’, its various chapters act to juxtapose the socio-historical distinctions between the major style categories most typically associated with music in Ireland - traditional, classical and popular - and to explore a range of dialectical relationships between these musical styles in matters pertaining to national and cultural identity. The book includes a number of chapters that examine various movements (and ’moments’) of traditional music revival from the late eighteenth century to the present day, as well as chapters that tease out various issues of national identity pertaining to individual composers/performers (art music, popular music) and their audiences. Many chapters in the volume consider mediating influences (infrastructural, technological, political) and/or social categories (class, gender, religion, ethnicity, race, age) in the interpretation of music production and consumption. Performers and composers discussed include U2, Raymond Deane, Afro-Celt Sound System, E.J. Moeran, Séamus Ennis, Kevin O’Connell, Stiff Little Fingers, Frederick May, Arnold

Invisible Kingdom

Invisible Kingdom PDF Author: Richard S. Briggs
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532607830
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Book Description
In the mid 1980s the Waterboys took a sudden turn away from their climb up the ladder of UK rock stardom and headed out to Ireland—and eventually the rural West of Ireland—to record the remarkable Fisherman’s Blues album. They drew together traditional Irish music; folk, gospel, and blues stylings; and a joyful sense of storied wonder. This tale of the rediscovery of an enchanted musical and lyrical kingdom serves as the framework for Richard Briggs to explore gospel re-enchantment, in dialogue with the worlds of myth and fairy. Drawing on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and others, just as did the Waterboys themselves, Invisible Kingdom finds theological wisdom to the soundtrack of the rock band and the fiddle, in celebrating a life-giving Irish odyssey.

The Frontman

The Frontman PDF Author: Harry Browne
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781684820
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Celebrity philanthropy comes in many guises, but no single figure better encapsulates its delusions, pretensions and wrongheadedness than U2's iconic frontman, Bono-a fact neither sunglasses nor leather pants can hide. More than a mere philanthropist-indeed, he lags behind many of his peers when it comes to parting with his own money-Bono is better described as an advocate, one who has become an unwitting symbol of a complacent wealthy Western elite. The Frontman reveals how Bono moved his investments to Amsterdam to evade Irish taxes; his paternalistic and often bullying advocacy of neoliberal solutions in Africa; his multinational business interests; and his hobnobbing with Paul Wolfowitz and shock-doctrine economist Jeffrey Sachs. Carefully dissecting the rhetoric and actions of Bono the political operator, The Frontman shows him to be an ambassador for imperial exploitation, a man who has turned his attention to a world of savage injustice, inequality and exploitation-and helped make it worse.

Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War

Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War PDF Author: Michael J. K. Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351764489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Eric Bogle has written many iconic songs that deal with the futility and waste of war. Two of these in particular, ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘No Man’s Land (a.k.a. The Green Fields of France)’, have been recorded numerous times in a dozen or more languages indicating the universality and power of their simple message. Bogle’s other compositions about the First World War give a voice to the voiceless, prominence to the forgotten and personality to the anonymous as they interrogate the human experience, celebrate its spirit and empathise with its suffering. This book examines Eric Bogle’s songs about the Great War within the geographies and socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and consumed. From Anzac Day in Australia and Turkey to the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and from small Aboriginal communities in the Coorong to the influence of prime ministers and rock stars on a world stage, we are urged to contemplate the nature and importance of popular culture in shaping contemporary notions of history and national identity. It is entirely appropriate that we do so through the words of an artist who Melody Maker described as ‘the most important songwriter of our time’.

Ireland and Cinema

Ireland and Cinema PDF Author: Barry Monahan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137496363
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
The volume offers a broad range of academic approaches to contemporary and historical Irish filmmaking and representations of nationality, national identity, and theoretical questions around the construction of Ireland and Irishness on the screen.

Music and Irish Identity

Music and Irish Identity PDF Author: Gerry Smyth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317092430
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
Music and Irish Identity represents the latest stage in a life-long project for Gerry Smyth, focusing here on the ways in which music engages with particular aspects of Irish identity. The nature of popular music and the Irish identity it supposedly articulates have both undergone profound change in recent years: the first as a result of technological and wider industrial changes in the organisation and dissemination of music as seen, for example, with digital platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and iTunes. A second factor has been Ireland’s spectacular fall from economic grace after the demise of the "Celtic Tiger", and the ensuing crisis of national identity. Smyth argues that if, as the stereotypical association would have it, the Irish have always been a musical race, then that association needs re-examination in the light of developments in relation to both cultural practice and political identity. This book contributes to that process through a series of related case studies that are both scholarly and accessible. Some of the principal ideas broached in the text include the (re-)establishment of music as a key object of Irish cultural studies; the theoretical limitations of traditional musicology; the development of new methodologies specifically designed to address the demands of Irish music in all its aspects; and the impact of economic austerity on musical negotiations of Irish identity. The book will be of seminal importance to all those interested in popular music, cultural studies and the wider fate of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

U2 Above, Across, and Beyond

U2 Above, Across, and Beyond PDF Author: Scott D. Calhoun
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498501303
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
U2’s success and significance are due, in large part, to finding inventive, creative solutions for overcoming obstacles and moving past conventional boundaries. As it has embraced change and transformation over and over again, its fans and critics have come to value and expect this element of U2. These new essays from the disciplines of organizational communication, music theory, literary studies, religion, and cultural studies offer perspectives on several ways U2’s dynamic of change has been a constant theme throughout its career. These essays came from the U2 Conference 2013 exploring the music, work, and influence of U2, and to further the scholarship on U2.

Religion Around Bono

Religion Around Bono PDF Author: Chad E. Seales
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271086270
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 95

Book Description
For many, U2’s Bono is an icon of both evangelical spirituality and secular moral activism. In this book, Chad E. Seales examines the religious and spiritual culture that has built up around the rock star over the course of his career and considers how Bono engages with that religion in his music and in his activism. Looking at Bono and his work within a wider critique of white American evangelicalism, Seales traces Bono’s career, from his background in religious groups in the 1970s to his rise to stardom in the 1980s and his relationship with political and economic figures, such as Jeffrey Sachs, Bill Clinton, and Jesse Helms. In doing so, Seales shows us a different Bono, one who uses the spiritual meaning of church tradition to advocate for the promise that free markets and for-profits will bring justice and freedom to the world’s poor. Engaging with scholarship in popular culture, music, religious studies, race, and economic development, Seales makes the compelling case that neoliberal capitalism is a religion and that Bono is its best-known celebrity revivalist. Engagingly written and bitingly critical, Religion Around Bono promises to transform our understanding of the rock star’s career and advocacy. Those interested in the intersection of rock music, religion, and activism will find Seales’s study provocative and enlightening.

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music

Historical Dictionary of Popular Music PDF Author: Norman Abjorensen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538102153
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 695

Book Description
This book seeks to trace the rise of popular music, identify its key figures and track the origins and development of its multiple genres and styles, all the while seeking to establish historical context. It is, fundamentally, a ready reference guide to the broad field of popular music over the past two centuries. It has become a truism that popular music, so pervasive in the modern world, constitutes a soundtrack to our lives – a constant though changing presence as we cross thresholds and grow from children to teenagers to adults. But it has become more than a soundtrack; it has become a narrative. Not just an accompaniment to our daily lives but incorporating our lives, our sense of identity, our lived experiences, into it. We have become part of the music just as the music has become part of us. The Historical Dictionary of Popular Music contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on major figures across genres, definitions of genres, technical innovations and surveys of countries and regions. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about popular music.