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Identifier
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InterD in Irish Music Pedagogy
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Title
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Interdisciplinarity in Irish Music Pedagogy
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Date
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2015
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Creator
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Sean Williams
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extracted text
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Interdisciplinarity in Irish Music Pedagogy
Sean Williams
Abstract
This article examines one aspect of pedagogy – interdisciplinarity – in connection with
learning Irish tunes and songs at the university level. This approach is not categorically
superior to any other method, but it may well be worth trying in some form, particularly for
those who live and teach outside of Ireland. It includes descriptions of situating musical
material in the context of sections on Irish history, politics, literature, and other fields. While
few courses in Irish music include the type of full-time work that this programme requires, I
include case studies, suggestions on (and examples of) assignments, and tips on how to
incorporate interdisciplinary work in performance classes. Finally, I argue that
interdisciplinarity has its benefits for those who teach Irish music in Ireland, particularly as
Irish student lives become increasingly cosmopolitan and saturated in international media.
Key words: pedagogy, interdisciplinarity, Irish language, songs, tunes
Introduction
Irish music pedagogies run the gamut from painstaking phrase-by-phrase learning
with a teacher to absorption by ear before ever picking up an instrument, and from ‘abc’
notation or sheet music to lessons online to poring over piles of tunebooks (or
songbooks) in the privacy of one’s own home. For some students of Irish music, learning
to play tunes is simply an aspect of learning to play a musical instrument, with tunes
increasing in difficulty as one’s instrumental facility increases. For those who study
songs, listening to living singers and their recordings can be an essential method, while
others sight-read out of songbooks. This article examines one aspect of pedagogy –
interdisciplinarity – in connection with learning Irish tunes and songs at the university
level. This approach is not categorically superior to any other method, but it may well be
worth trying in some form, particularly for those of us who live and teach outside of
Ireland. Finally, I will argue that interdisciplinarity has its benefits for those who teach
Irish music in Ireland, particularly as Irish student lives become increasingly
cosmopolitan and saturated in international media.
The philosopher Seneca believed that “education should produce citizens who could
call their minds their own through study of the subjects and methods best suited for
enlightened decision-making. That idea and the ancient Greek values of synthesis and
developing the ‘whole person’ became part of the legacy of integrative values in
humanities, liberal education, general education, and many programs of interdisciplinary
studies” (Rhoten et al 2000, web source). The integrative nature of interdisciplinary
teaching and learning is not new. What is new is that it has had to undergo a process of
revitalisation and legitimising in 21st century education to be taken seriously again.
I teach at The Evergreen State College in Washington State, 7,000 kilometers from
Ireland. In seven different iterations, every three years since 1994, I have taught Irish
music within an interdisciplinary, year-long, full-time Irish Studies programme titled
“Ireland in History and Memory” that includes two months of study abroad experience in
Ireland. Because the institute where I work privileges interdisciplinarity as opposed to
discipline-specific teaching, my work with Irish music necessarily appears interwoven
with other disciplines as part of our Irish Studies work rather than as an isolated
performance course. Irish music appears within that programme in the learning of songs
in Irish and English, and two hours weekly of tune playing across twenty weeks.i By
receiving and performing Irish songs and tunes within the context of Irish Studies,
students have the opportunity to contextualise these items in ways that leaning
exclusively on the notes, rhythms, and styles would not provide. It also allows students
without a music focus (the majority, in fact) to weave music into their larger
understanding of Irish culture. When our academic structure is built on a disciplinary
approach, that approach necessarily informs the way we understand our subject
material. However, ethnomusicology is inherently interdisciplinary, which means what we
do and how we teach may directly clash with not only academic structure, but academic
epistemologies regarding education.
“Disciplines provide the rationale for the departmental structure of U.S. colleges and
universities and strongly influence faculty appointments; hiring, promotion, and tenure
practices; teaching assignments; student recruitment and enrollment, and even
accounting practices. ( . . . ) Moreover, despite increases in interdisciplinary activity in
postsecondary education, disciplinary frameworks still organise most faculty members’
understandings and interpretations of information and experience” (Lattuca 2001: 1).
Using an interdisciplinary approach with Irish music connects the students to the
tunes and songs along with other aspects of Irish culture within the framework of history,
including such diverse topics as politics, class, theatre, spiritual practices, emigration,
literature, alcohol, gender, dance, food, natural history, film, race, poetry, the Irish
diaspora, family dynamics, colonialism, archaeology, identities, vaudeville and
minstrelsy, language, urban/rural divisions, labour, the Travelers, modernisation, etc.
Recognising the Gaelic League’s connection to the Church, and understanding that
building a nation required the censure of popular (French-based) quadrille dancing in
favour of the celebrated image of the prepubescent step-dancing girl is part of this work.
Interdisciplinarity means physically standing in front of the statue of CúChulainn at the
GPO one April evening and recognising not only himself but Pádraig Pearse and Jesus
Christ in that statue, while the Irish person walking past pauses, sings the chorus of
“Óró, Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile”, then crosses himself, mutters “Tiocfaidh ár lá”, and
leaves.ii Bringing depth and understanding to that experience is the point of
interdisciplinarity.
A typical 16-hour week in this particular context for Irish music would begin with a
two-hour lecture about an aspect of Irish history, then a two-hour seminar in which
students carry most of the discussion. In preparation for that seminar, the students will
have read several hundred pages of texts of various kinds (non-fiction, creative nonfiction, and fiction). The next day might begin with a film (sometimes an Irish- or
American-made documentary, sometimes a feature film) with time for discussion,
followed by a hands-on workshop. The third day would include a two-hour tune-learning
session, followed by a reader’s theatre performance of a relevant play. The fourth day
begins with a lecture on a conceptual theme (liminality, ideals of authenticity, land and
language, shame vs. guilt, etc.) and concludes with an integrative seminar in which
faculty and students sum up the week’s work together. Note that in the context of a
week, every day includes singing in Irish and English (depending on the subject matter),
and every day includes instruction in the Irish language. After twenty weeks of working in
roughly chronological order from pre-Celtic Ireland to the present, the students leave for
Ireland in the spring to put theory into practice.
Teaching Irish Tunes and Songs
Few students have the opportunity to learn to play an instrument prior to enrolling in
Irish Studies, so I teach them various instruments (usually pennywhistle and fiddle, but
also DADGAD guitar, mandolin, and for those who request it, bodhrán) during our class
meetings. I use both learning by ear and the use of sheet music for those who need it; I
have found that even those who can’t read music want to at least look at the sheet music
in the hope that the notes will become clear over time. After a few weeks I suggest that
the sheet music be put away.iii Beginning-level tunes include the song “Did the Rum Do”
(Figure 1), which I learned during the several years that I spent studying with the seannós singer Joe Heaney. I teach it to them to simultaneously give them skills in lilting and
get a tune into their heads before they touch their instruments. Once they are very
comfortable with the vocabulary of lilting, they can apply that vocabulary to many other
tunes in an unselfconscious way.
Figure 1: “Did the Rum Do?”
While “Did the Rum Do?” has a specific vocabulary dominated by words such as
“diddle” and its variants, other tunes lend themselves easily to lilting once the process
has been started with this first one. The fact that the song/tune is embedded in a story
further introduces students to the concept of the context of a musical item.iv Because
lilting a tune is an important bridge between tunes and songs, it serves the purpose of
engaging their voices without making them worry about the quality of their singing. In
fact, before they enroll in this programme, most American students are very comfortable
sounding out the melodies of songs in pop and rock. Lilting Irish tunes is simply an
extension of a skill they already possess (but don’t know they possess), and it connects
them to the large repertoire of dance tunes in Irish instrumental music in a fluid way.
Other tunes that serve as introductory materials for the students include “Wind That
Shakes the Barley”, “Máire Dhall”, “O’Keeffe’s Slide”, “Boys of Malin”, “Off to California”,
“Seán Ryan’s Polka”, “South Wind”, “Proinsias Ó Maonaigh’s Mazurka”, and “Drowsy
Maggie”. They introduce students to some of the different dance forms and standard
keys of the tunes, and introduce the idea of more regional-specific tune forms (slides,
polkas, barndances, mazurkas) beyond the overwhelmingly popular jigs and reels.
In teaching the songs, I notate one verse (and the refrain, if there is one), then supply
the lyrics for the remainder of the song. In the song “Is Trua Nach Bhfuil Mé in Éirinn”
(Figure 2), students can at least get a sense of which syllable belongs to which note in
the first verse. Because the songs are not published anywhere, I can alter them, make
corrections, and update as I learn more in each iteration. I have over a hundred Irishlanguage songs notated this way, from which I can draw as I change the focus of my
interdisciplinary class to highlight a particular aspect of Irish culture.
Figure 2: The first verse of “Is Trua Nach Bhfuil Mé in Éirinn”.
These students have never sung in Irish before, so below the notated verse I use a
tripartite system of the Irish language (bold, italicised), fake phonetics in brackets, and
an English translation for each line, as in this first verse:
Is trua nach bhfuil mé in Éirinn, san áit ar tógadh mé i dtús mo shaoil
[stroo-ah nah will meyn yer-rin, sunn atch air toe-goo meh doos mo he-ull]
It is a pity that I am not in Ireland, in the place where I began my life
Ná faoi bhruach na Binne Móire, ná ag an Éirne lena taobh;
[nuh fwee vroo-akh nah bin-ya moy-ra, nag unn air-nya leh-na tee-oo]
Nor under the bank of the Binne Móire river, nor at the Éirne by its side;
Sin an áit a bhfaighinn t-aos óg ann, a thógfadh an brón seo is an tuirse díom
[shin un atch ah ween tees oge unn, hoe-kunn brone sho sun ter-sha djee-um]
That is the place of the young people, that would lift the sorrow and tiredness from me
Is dá mbeinn bliain eile arís ní b’óige, go mbeinn ag gabháil leofa arís.
[sduh meyn blee-un yell-ya-reesh nee boy-gya, go meyn egg gowl lyo-fuh a-reesh.]
And if I were a year younger, I would be going back with you.
In addition to singing the songs myself, with the caveat that I am not a native Irish
speaker, I play several different versions of the song so the students hear the variations
inherent in a living tradition, and have a better sense of pronunciation than I can offer.v
Using regionally based songs allows the students to associate specific songs and styles
with specific areas, and to enhance their pronunciation so that it is more regionally
correct. In addition, the use of songs that cover a number of regions within Ireland allows
students to understand the broader relevance and migration patterns that occur with
those songs.vi
By the end of the six months prior to visiting Ireland, they can usually play two dozen
tunes and sing about thirty or forty songs in Irish and English, depending on that
particular year. They learn more songs and tunes during their visit to Ireland, of course,
but they have a foundation before they leave home. In teaching songs, I represent the
Munster/Connacht/Ulster spectrum of Irish-language songs and offer a variety of older
and newer songs in English... again, discussing the context of where they might be
sung. Furthermore, the songs run the gamut from love songs, laments, lullabies, aisling
songs, dialogue songs, comic songs, and many others. I sing the first verse several
times until they start humming along, and I encourage them to jump in when they’re able
and to “hydroplane” through the song, hitting as many of the correct notes as possible.
Once they have learned a song, we repeat it in the following weeks and months so that
they do not forget it. Each student is encouraged to learn a party piece, and understands
the importance of participation by invitation.
The Irish Language and Song
In addition to teaching the full-time, year-long programme that includes tunes as
well as songs, I also teach a summer evening class (“Irish Language and Song”) to
students who work during the day. For five weeks, eight hours each week in two fourhour blocks, I teach them the basics of the language (conversation and grammar) and
engage them in Irish-language songs that illustrate the grammatical principles that were
taught earlier in the evening. Teaching the Irish-language chorus of “An Crúiscín Lán”
(Figure 3) on the very first day of class, for example, illustrates the possessive pronouns
mo and do and the lenition of the nouns that follow. Meanwhile, the song itself is not just
a paean to alcohol, but an effective example of a macaronic song (English-language
verses, Irish-language chorus) and an illustration of emphasis on liminal elements in
Irish society. For students whose introduction to the language is all of two hours old, the
repetition in the chorus corrects their pronunciation almost immediately, softens the
awkward roughness of the lenited c in chroí and chrúiscín, and comfortably leads them
right through their initial phrases beyond introductions and “how are you” and “I am fine;
and yourself?” in Irish.
Figure 3: The first verse and chorus of “An Crúiscín Lán”.
“An Raibh Tú ar an gCarraig?” is one more example of using a song to indicate a
crucial grammatical issue. By the time the students have developed their understanding
of irregular verbs beyond tá, songs are the perfect illustration of the use of irregular past
tense verbs. Because irregular verbs in language are often the oldest verbs, they are the
ones that have evolved the most over time. Such irregular verbs also tend to be
associated with the body: sight, hearing, speech, moving, and being. While this song is
sometimes derided among Irish speakers as “nothing but a school song”, it serves
multiple purposes in teaching and learning. It represents a conversation, it opens up a
classroom discussion on the Penal Laws and the existence of Mass Rocks, and it
includes extensive vocal ornamentation usually associated with the Connemara
Gaeltacht.vii In addition, it privileges the use of metaphor – an important value in Irish
conversation – rather than the type of direct speech one would encounter in a much
more straightforward Irish history book. By using the irregular verb feic in two iterations
(an bhfaca tú and chonaic mé), students hear those verbs in the context of how they are
sung, not just how they appear in an Irish-language textbook.viii
An raibh tú ar an gcarraig
Nó an bhfaca tú féin mo ghrá?
Nó an bhfaca tú gile ‘s finne
Agus scéimh na mná?
Nó an bhfaca tú an t-ubhal
Ba deise is ba ghlaise bláth?
Nó an bhfaca tú mo Valentine
Nó an bhfuil sí dhá claoi mar táid a rá?
Ó bhí mé ar an gcarraig
Agus chonaic mé féin do ghrá
Agus chonaic mé gile ‘s finne
Agus scéimh na mná
Agus chonaic mé an t-ubhal
Ba deise is ba ghlaise bláth
Agus chonaic mé mo Valentine
Is tá sí dhá claoi mar táid a rá.
The summer class, which earns four credit hours, leaves the students with not only a
dozen or more songs in Irish,ix but also with basic conversational and reading skills along
with important contextual information. It is rather like a very compact version of the yearlong programme, but with complete emphasis on the Irish language and far less on
history (or memory).
Case Studies: The Famine and The Troubles
What follows are two separate approaches to different subjects in the Irish Studies
programme at The Evergreen State College; in the weeks dedicated to these events, I
situate tunes and/or songs in order to contextualise the music in ways that will connect
them in students’ minds. The subjects are the Famine and the Troubles. Any Irish
student who has family members born and raised in Ireland will have a set of received
stories from his or her family about each of those topics. In addition, between the
requirements of the Leaving Cert, the tendency to practically trip over an essential place
in Irish history simply by going for a drive (or, if one is in Dublin, a walk downtown), and
the vivid, engaged nature of the Irish popular imagination about matters historical, Irish
history is alive in people’s minds in Ireland in ways that it is not in the United States.x
Please note that most approaches to history are compromised by their inability to
reproduce everyone’s history to the satisfaction of all. The fact that they are so
compromised means that we are essentially free to put together a multifaceted window
through which our students can explore histories and perspectives that could not appear
in a single textbook.
The disciplinary grounding (a core principle of interdisciplinary work) that is essential
to understanding Irish traditional music cannot be lost in approaching an important
historical period in Ireland. Throughout the teaching of each era, students are still
learning songs and tunes, studying the Irish language, and making demonstrable
progress through participation and – in the case of the language – exams. However, the
songs and tunes are directed toward a connection with specific points in Irish history
rather than just a catalog of someone’s party pieces or session favorites.
The Famine
In most of North America, the Famine is not only completely misunderstood, but it has
none of the contested complexity attached to it that characterises teaching and learning
about it in Ireland (see Kinealy 1995, for example). Without detailing the potential failures
of the American educational system, let me just indicate here that American history
textbooks tend to relegate the Famine to a one-note phenomenon of agricultural failure.
In teaching about the Famine, then, I combine songs, poems, eyewitness accounts,
texts, films, visual art, and lectures. I show the entire four hours of the BBC Ulster
production of The Hanging Gale,xi complete with lengthy classroom discussion, and they
read (among other resources) the first half of Thomas Gallagher’s Paddy’s Lament
because of its extensive use of eyewitness accounts. Beyond those, I post a special
page on the class website that includes approximately a hundred eyewitness accounts
from as many sides of the tragedy as I can find.
Among the dozen poems that the students study to explore the Famine, I include
John Hewitt’s “The Scar” (“Yet in that woman’s death I found my nation”), Seamus
Heaney’s “At a Potato Digging” (“Live skulls, blind eyes”), and Eavan Boland’s “The
Famine Road” (“What is your body now if not a famine road?”). While it is easy to argue
that songs are merely sung poetry, and that the use of song without poetry might well do
just as good of a job, I would argue that presenting the undeniably wrenching images of
present-day Famine poetry sets the students up well to explore imagery of the era as it
appears in song.
The Connemara song “Johnny Seoighe” is regionally specific, speaks directly to
issues of shaming, naming names, the workhouse, the conditions, and the two-edged
sword of praise singing. It is a very challenging song to sing, and not only because of its
range of nearly two octaves. It illustrates aspects of the Famine that a mere lecture
would not accomplish, and its use in class exposes students to specific ways of
expressing profound emotion during a particular period of Irish history.
Agus lá arna mhárach a fuair mé an páipéar
‘S nach mé a bhí sásta, ‘s mé a goil chun siúil
Ach ‘s ní bhfuair mé freagra ar bith an lá sin
Ach mo bhean ‘s mo pháistí, is iad amuigh faoin drúcht.
Tá mé bruite, dóite, sciúrtha, feannta,
Liobraithe, gearrtha le neart an tsiúil
Is a Mhisther Joyce tá an workhouse lán
Is ní ghlacfar ann aon fhear níos mó.
And on the next day I got the piece of paper
And I wasn’t happy, me going on my way
But I got no answer at all that day
But my wife and my children left out under the dew.
I am tired, bitter, lashed, frozen
Upset and lacerated with the force of the walking
And Mister Joyce, the workhouse is full
And they won’t accept one more man.
Because each week includes one song in Irish and one in English, I use “The Fields
of Athenry”. Obviously, the song does not date back to the middle of the 19th century;
however, it shows up so frequently onstage and in the popular imagination that not to
include it would be to do a disservice to contemporary linkages of Irish identity and the
Famine. When Ireland lost to Spain on June 14 in the 2012 Euro Cup in Gdansk,
Poland, the Irish fans who had gathered celebrated their defeat by singing, over and
over, the chorus of “The Fields of Athenry”:
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing
It’s so lonely ‘round the fields of Athenry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuOYYHLZEQk
Because my students become so attuned to some of the subtleties of reactions to
trauma and the connections between written histories, received histories, and memory,
they understand the ways in which singing “The Fields of Athenry” is a complex reaction
to a fraught soccer match.
Finally, in response to all that they have learned, my students have to create a work
of visual art to turn in at the end of Famine Week. It can be in two or three dimensions,
but they have to be able to articulate for their colleagues in the classroom exactly what
they are trying to convey. Some students are exceptionally good artists, and for them,
this exercise is crucial to their expression of their understanding of the Famine (Figure
4). In the case of this particular piece of art, the student (Caroline Willard) explored the
idea of history being glossed over and obscured through the use of the bog as
metaphor. Her rendition of a post-Famine stone cottage with the evidence of death – the
barren trees – and the creeping bog covering up the evidence of the Famine enabled her
to speak in ways that her sometimes-minimal seminar participation would not have
revealed.
Figure 4: A post-Famine cottage being taken over by the bog (student Caroline
Willard – used with permission).
The Troubles
If there were ever a subject in Irish Studies that was more challenging to present, I
cannot envision it. Anyone trying to work their students through the conflict, regardless of
what they are trying to represent, has to confront dozens of “sides” (ideas, experiences,
opinions). Perhaps most importantly, there is no possibility of success as far as I have
been able to understand, because “success” is defined in so many different ways. I
change my presentation of the subject every time, but I retain its interdisciplinarity
because only that way can more perspectives be included. To begin with, the students
spend two weeks on the book Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in
Northern Ireland (David McKittrick and David McVea). In the past I have used Lost Lives
(David McKittrick and others), Living with War: a Belfast Year (Sally Belfrage), and
Trinity (Leon Uris) because the latter was read and discussed by prisoners in the HBlocks. Using Making Sense of the Troubles has allowed the students to start the
process of understanding with a relatively balanced sense of what happened without
bogging them down in name-calling in either direction.
It is the norm that half my students are Protestants (running the gamut from devout to
in-name-only), and half are Catholics (also devout to in-name-only). While it is easy to
agree on the Famine and on what happened in Irish America, the Troubles lead to
heated in-class discussions, with students trying initially to frame it as an exclusively
religious conflict rather than a conflict about power and resources, often written through
the lens of religious difference. My job, then, is to complicate every aspect of the conflict
without losing any of the students in the process. To that end, I have to work with poetry,
songs, plays, tunes, films, lecture materials, and discussion topics that lead to more light
than heat.
Depending on the year, I draw from films such as Some Mother’s Son, In the Name of
the Father, The Boxer, Cal, The Crying Game, Bloody Sunday and others. I am painfully
aware of the very low representation of women in representations of the Troubles (hence
my occasional use of Living with War by Sally Belfrage), and I use that disproportion as
a springboard for discussion on women’s roles in conflicts in the North and elsewhere. In
the article “The Politics of Defining ‘Armed Conflict’ in Northern Ireland”, authors Ann
Marie Gray and Elizabeth Law point out that “Mechanisms set up to deal with the legacy
of the conflict, such as Healing Through Remembering and the Consultative Group on
the Past, continue to be composed mainly of men with no recognition that women should
be equally represented” (Gray and Law 2014: web source).
Part of the assignment for this section of the programme requires that students
produce a piece of art in response to the Troubles. As is the case with the Famine,
expressing oneself in a two-dimensional way allows students to give “voice”, in a way, to
the unspeakable. In presenting and discussing their art, students explain what they are
trying to represent (for example, the way death has touched every side of the conflict) in
ways that their peers (and I) can understand. They do not have to write about it, just as
they do not have to write about the Famine, but they have to express some aspect of
their understanding of it.
The plays Freedom of the City (Brian Friel) and Quietly (Owen McCafferty) offer rich
territory for complex understanding and discussion in a (mostly) post-conflict situation.
The entire block on the Troubles includes about a dozen poems, such as Heaney’s
“Casualty” and “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing”, Eavan Boland’s “The War Horse” and
“Child of Our Time”, Ciaran Carson’s “Belfast Confetti”, Michael Longley’s “Ceasefire”,
and Padraic Fiacc’s “Enemy Encounter”. Kate Newmann (born in Co. Down) has led
poetry-writing workshops with children affected by the Troubles; her publication of
children’s poetry from those workshops, I Am, is a rich resource for understanding the
impact of acts of public (and private) violence on the next generation. Again, the
materials change from year to year.
Few things are more cringe-worthy than the image of idealistic Yanks in Ireland,
loudly singing rebel songs with pints in hand. The one song I ask them all to learn is
Tommy Sands’ “There Were Roses”, but I usually play (and discuss) a selection of
others, including “O’Hara, Hughes, McCreesh and Sands” (Mick Moloney), “Four Green
Fields” (Tommy Makem), “Peter Pan and Me” (Mickey McConnell), “The Sash My Father
Wore”, “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”, “Men Behind the Wire”, “The Town I Loved So Well”
(Phil Coulter), “The Auld Orange Flute”, and “The H-Block Song (Francie Brolly)”.
Avoiding sectarian affiliation among the students is very challenging, at least partly
because the students have spent much of the previous six months understanding Irish
history from a largely Catholic orientation. Discussing Blood and Thunder bands and
watching the documentary Petrol Bombs and Peace: Welcome to Belfast,xii in which
Catholic journalist Alys Harte follows a Loyalist band in the days leading up to and
including the 2013 marching season, helps students to complicate some of their ideas.
One year we were very fortunate to welcome Laurence McKeown to talk to us in the
States. McKeown, one of the 1981 hunger strikers and former member of the Provisional
IRA, is now a playwright, screenwriter, and author, having earned his Ph.D. at Queen’s
University Belfast. Speaking directly with someone is a radically different experience
from hearing a lecture, so my students were dramatically more engaged when they
visited Derry, six weeks later.xiii Indeed, by visiting the Guild Hall, touring the walls with
someone born and raised there, visiting the Cultúrlann Uí Chanáin, and going through
the Derry City Museum, students are better able to put theory into practice and
imagination into reality. We have also visited Omagh and Claudy, depending on the
year. For the most part, such visits mark the first time that students have been physically
present in a location marked by conflict.
Building Assignments
Songs are incorporated into one of the programme’s main assignments: to write an
“integrative essay”. This approach requires the selection of a theme, such as gender,
family, death, love, power, class, truth-telling, sin, history vs. memory, spirituality,
hospitality, urban vs. rural, emigration, sexuality, humor, or some other important lens.
Then each student must write an essay examining a particular period in Irish history
through that lens and, most importantly, refer to at least one song, one poem, one play,
one film, one text, one class discussion, and one lecture as part of his or her essay. That
way the student has to integrate song lyrics into the essay and treat that set of lyrics as
an important point of reference. On a larger scale, this exercise requires students to take
non-print traditions (songs, poems, plays, films, and lectures) just as seriously as literary
ones.xiv While all the students struggle at first to make these integrative essays work,
they recognise the value of drawing from multiple fields and sources to explore a
particular issue.
The luxury of working with the students for a full year allows me to require four
interdisciplinary essays from them: on Ireland prior to 1300 CE (5-8 pages), on the
English conquest and Famine (5-8 pages), on Irish America (8-10 pages), and – at the
very end of the school year – on the theory and practice of Irish Studies (20-30 pages).
For the first three essays I give them a “cheat sheet” so that they will remember which
poems, films, texts, and other sources they have been exposed to. The following list is
from the Irish America segment of the programme:
Lectures: Irish and American Music
The “Real” Irish and the Scotch Irish
The Making of a Cracker
Irish-American Minstrelsy
The Irish and the American Civil War
Irish- and African-American musical exchanges
Irish-American Labor Issues
Making the Irish “Safe” for America through popular songs and films
Plays:
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Brian Friel)
Poetry: Love in the Western World (Kathy Callaway)
The Emigrant (Richard Tillinghast)
For My Irish Grandfather (Joseph Awad)
The Emigrant Irish (Eavan Boland)
Going Back (Eithne McKiernan)
Why My Grandmother Could Never Escape Ireland (Richard Broderick)
Traces (Mark Vinz)
Leavetaking (Greg Delanty)
Memories (A.D. Winans)
Films:
The Field
Sing the Dark Away
Songcatcher
The Molly Maguires
Selections: Gone With the Wind (opening scene between Scarlett and her
Irish father and “I’ll Never Be Hungry Again” scene), Going My Way (Bing
Crosby, “Substitute Right Fielder” scene), On the Waterfront (activist
priest scene – Father Barry), I Love Lucy (chocolate factory “Bridget”),
Singin’ in the Rain (opening scene: speaking lace curtain Irish with clips
of shanty Irish in the background, “Make ‘Em Laugh”, and the “Moses
Supposes” scene)
The Last Hurrah
Out of Ireland
Songs: Children’s songs: The Herring Song, I Love My Own Farm Too, etc.
Kilkelly, Ireland
Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender (western Kentucky version)
The Green Fields of America
Paddy’s Lament
Hard Times Come Again No More
Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
No Irish Need Apply
Paddy Works on the Railway
Muldoon, the Solid Man
Texts: Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
Focus: Irish Traditional Music, chapter 5 (Sean Williams)
Banished Children of Eve (Peter Quinn)
Irish America: Coming Into Clover (Maureen Dezell)
Developing the end-of-the-year essay is utterly daunting for the students, and not only
because of its sheer length. While producing an essay of between twenty and thirty
pages is more than any of them have ever been asked to do, it is the content that
concerns them more than anything else. The assignment is to take the theory of Irish
Studies (everything they have learned in the six months at home) and apply that to the
practice of living in Ireland for a couple of months in the spring. As is the case with all
significant writing, though, the task is made manageable (not necessarily easier, given
the enormity of detail possible) by breaking down the essay into shorter pieces. Each
student is instructed to write a three-to-five page essay on a series of connected
subjects, linking what they knew before they traveled to Ireland with what they
experienced or witnessed during their visit.
As an example, in one section a student might discuss issues of hospitality in The
Táin (the way Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad dressed each other’s wounds at night, or Medb’s
“friendly thighs”). Continuing with examples of hospitality in Irish (and Irish-American)
history, including the student’s own family, the essay could include the songs “Here’s a
Health to the Company” and “Óró, Sé do Bheatha ‘Bhaile”, issues of immigration
(drawing from Seán Lucy’s “The New Invasions”), the hunger strikers of 1981 and their
refusal of Margaret Thatcher’s “hospitality”, the tune “Jenny’s Welcome to Charlie”, (or
“Carolan’s Welcome”) and their own experience of being invited to sing a party piece at
a pub, or arriving at a B&B in Ireland and being presented with lively conversation and
more sandwiches than any mortal being could possibly consume.
By connecting that short essay with five or six others on related topics, each student
uses an approach that grounds their experiences in Ireland (different for each student)
with what they learned at home (the same for each student). A logical next subject for
the student might be women in Ireland and Irish America (given their importance in
providing hospitality), or food in Irish and Irish-American culture (given the importance of
food and drink in acts of hospitality). From food (which would logically include a
discussion of the Famine), one could go on to alcohol in Ireland and Irish America. Each
larger subject follows logically to the next in the ideal essay.
Depending on the students, the songs I teach, and the year, sometimes I require
them to select one quoted section of a song (or all, in a given assignment)xv and discuss
it in a short essay, as follows:
Discuss these quotations from songs in English and Irish, naming the context (historical,
political, or social) and what each one tells you about Irish or Irish-American culture
during a particular era:
1. “She would eat meat on Friday and Saturday”.
2. “Is a Mhister Joyce, tá an workhouse lán”.
3. “And it’s so good to hear that Michael’s returning, with money he’s sure to buy
land; for the crop has been poor and the people are selling at any price that they
can”.
4. “Tá Gráinne Mhaol ag teacht thar sáile, óglaigh armtha léi mar gharda; gaeil iad
féin ‘s ní Gaill ná Spáinnigh; ‘s cuirfidh siad ruaig ar Ghallaibh”.
5. “So come with me and I will treat you decent, I’ll sit you down and I will fill your
can; and along the street all the friends I meet say ‘There goes Muldoon, he’s a
solid man”.
6. Is tuirseach is is brónach a chaithimse an Domhnach, mo hata i mo dhorn is mé ag
osnaíl go trom; is mé ag amharc ar no bóithre a mbíonn mo ghrása ag gabháil
ann, is anois ag fear eile pósta agus gan í bheith liom”.
7. “When we got to Yankee land, they put guns into our hands, saying ‘Paddy, you
must go and fight for Lincoln”.
8. “A bhuinneáin bhuí, mo thrua thú sínte, tá do chnámha reoite faoi bhun na dtom; tá
do ghob is do scórnach ar dhath an óir bhuí, is do bhéilín ró-dheas ‘na leaca
lom”.
9. “Well, fear it filled the countryside, there was fear in every home, when the car of
death came prowling round the lonely Ryan Road; a Catholic would be killed
tonight to even up the score, oh Christ, it’s young O’Malley that they’ve taken
from the door”.
10. “Nach mise féin an fear gan chéill, a d’fhág mo chíos i mo scornaigh? D’fhág mé
léan orm féin, is d’fhág mé séan ar dhaoine eile”.
In each case, the student’s ability to write about a quotation from a collection of song
lyrics enables the interdisciplinarity grasp of the writer to be revealed and assessed. In
addition, it is much more likely that students who can express themselves effectively
about the content of a song won’t simply be mouthing a badly phoneticized version of a
song to which they have no connection other than the fact that they think the tune is
“cool”.
The Value and Applicability of Interdisciplinarity
It is daunting to shape a full school year (or a single semester or quarter) around an
interdisciplinary approach such as this one. Some things work, and are continued in the
next iteration, while elements that fall flat are dropped and replaced with new ideas.
Because my degrees are in ethnomusicology rather than Irish Studies (though I had
begun my parallel journey in Irish Studies by the late 1970s), I have relied on a broad
array of information to fill in my own missing pieces, including many visits to Ireland and
a continuous perusal of new works, conversations, and resources. For music
departments that favour a “just the notes and rhythms” approach, however, some
persuasion may well be in order. While at its most basic level, interdisciplinarity is about
the interaction between two or more disciplines, when considering ethnomusicology it is
clear that interdisciplinarity is central to what we do. In embarking on a fieldwork
experience, any prepared ethnomusicologist has already explored the field site’s
histories, political system(s), religion(s), language(s), and music(s). He or she will have
watched films, eaten food from the region, and (probably) learned something about
dance. Those are all normal activities for ethnomusicologists, and we do not take that
preparation lightly. However, it is the transference of that skill set to our students, who
lack our advantages, that challenges standard practices of assessment.
In their white paper from 2000 (“Interdisciplinary Education at Liberal Arts
Institutions”), Diana Rhoten and others examined the results of a survey of over one
hundred undergraduate liberal arts institutions with the aim of discerning the ways in
which institutes structure and support interdisciplinary learning. Important student
outcomes include the development of critical thinking skills, problem solving, and
analytical skills along with disciplinary depth. An Irish music pedagogy that focuses on
correct answers – such as a listening quiz to determine whether a tune is a jig or a
hornpipe – is easy to assess. Measuring other skills, such as the ability to think critically
and creatively, would require different means of assessment.
In addition to assessment of actual course content retention, it is worth wondering
whether the skills one develops through interdisciplinary thinking are applicable outside
of Irish music specifically, or ethnomusicology generally. In other words, when presented
with a problem in Irish traditional music, could a student apply those problem-solving
skills to a radically different situation?
“Would one assume that [a] student who majored in urban studies would also be able to
excel in a project that focused on another interdisciplinary topic area such as the AIDS
crisis; would one expect the student who studied ethnomusicology to be better equipped
than her disciplinary counterparts to complete the task in urban renewal?” (Rhoten et al
2000: web source).
Because the focus of interdisciplinary education is one of asking good questions, it is
possible that someone trained in ethnomusicology could ask the right questions and
solve problems outside of academia.
In her book on interdisciplinarity titled Creating Interdisciplinarity, Lisa Lattuca
specifies multiple types of interdisciplinarity on a spectrum from primarily disciplinary but
drawing on other disciplines to “conceptual interdisciplinarity”, which draws from a
variety of perspectives and, in doing so, “emphasises the synthesis of knowledge”
(Lattuca 2001: 11). I would argue that in an ethnomusicological exploration of Irish
music, it is not just appropriate but important to make explicit these interdisciplinary
connections to history, politics, dance, film, and others.
What about this approach is possible to achieve in the context of a regular course on
Irish traditional music in academies outside the admittedly progressive “one full-time
programme per year” approach of my institute? Granted, 16 hours a week is out of the
question for most institutes, considering that most students don’t pursue 16 hours a
week in the sum total of their university education. However, something as simple as
including interdisciplinary information in classroom discussions and asking essay
questions in exams can help to build some of those critical analytical skills and add
strength to their understanding of the music’s context. Each of us could come up with a
dozen interdisciplinary questions in a heartbeat, but these could be a starting point for
discussion or written work. Assessing their ideas here allows and encourages them to go
not only beyond the notes and rhythms, but also beyond the borders of Ireland in some
cases.
• What are the elements of an “international language” of music,
and why doesn’t that concept work most of the time? Why
might it work in Irish traditional music?
• How can a “folk music” (e.g., sean-nós singing) be considered
a nation’s contribution to classical music? What do those
terms mean to you?
• Why is it that the Celts are always the most celebrated of the
early Irish, when they were actually comparatively late to
arrive on the scene?
• Is there any one instrument (besides the harp) that symbolises
for you a nation and its people? What would that be, and
why?
• Does it matter, in playing Irish traditional music, whether you
are a Catholic or a Protestant? Why or why not? What about
whether you are an Irish citizen or not?
• If you could write a broadside ballad today, what would it be
about? Create the first two stanzas.
• When Irish people play a polka created in Ireland, is it still a
polka? What about a mazurka or a waltz?
At the beginning of this article I mentioned that this approach might be particularly
useful to those who live and work outside of Ireland because there, unlike in Ireland
itself, one has to assume a starting point of zero understanding on the part of our
students. Although Ireland’s population obviously comprises people of many heritages,
the majority of those Irish-born citizens enrolled in Irish music courses in Ireland will
have at least some knowledge of – for example – the provinces, counties, cúpla focal,
and basic Irish history. And yet, how many Irish students are familiar enough with the
major Irish and Irish-American poets, playwrights, and films – beyond the requirements
of the Leaving Cert – to make that interdisciplinary leap of connection? We assume a
great deal about their knowledge at our own risk.
Furthermore, although it is easy to assume that family legacies of musical instruction
form the backbone of Irish music within Ireland, processes of traditional pedagogies (or
lack thereof) are much more diverse; see, for example, the fascinating study of the role
of the family in Irish music pedagogy by Jessica Cawley, 2013. Clubs, festivals,
recordings, online resources, individual musicians, and general exposure all contribute
to musical development, and the comparatively rarified air of ethnomusicology in Irish
academia is fairly new in terms of direct musical instruction and degree acquisition in
Irish traditional music.xvi Why not build interdisciplinarity into our curricula from the
beginning?
REFERENCES CITED
Cawley, Jessica. (2013) “Musical Development in Irish Traditional Music: an Exploration
of Family Influences”, Ethnomusicology Ireland 2/3: 95-111.
Gray, Ann Marie and Elizabeth Law. (2014) “The Politics of Defining ‘Armed Conflict’ in
Northern
Ireland”.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/elizabeth-law-ann-mariegray/politics-of-defining-armed-conflict-in-northern-ireland/. Accessed: 7 July 2014.
Kinealy, Christine. (1995) “Beyond Revisionism: reassessing the Great Irish Famine”,
History Ireland 4(4).
Lattuca, Lisa. (2001) Creating Interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary Research and
Teaching among College and University Faculty. Vanderbilt University Press.
Rhoten, Diana, Veronica Mansilla, Marc Chun, and Julie Thompson Klein. (2000)
“Interdisciplinary
Education
at
Liberal
Arts
Institutions”.
http://www.evergreen.edu/washingtoncenter/docs/natlproject/2006ssrcwhitepaper.pdf/
Accessed: 22 June 2014.
i
For a textbook on Irish music, I recently began using my own (semi-interdisciplinary) Focus: Irish
Traditional Music (Routledge 2010) after being frustrated in my experiments with using other texts
and articles. I wrote it because, as the American saying goes, “If you want something done right
you have to do it yourself”.
ii
Several of my students witnessed this occurrence in the late 1990s.
iii
I am not always successful in convincing them to let go of the sheet music, especially if they are
classically trained.
iv
“This man had three daughters; their mother was dead. They were the apples of his eye, and he
was the apple of their eye. And they always looked after him as a daughter should look after a
father. And one night he came home, feeling awful bad. And the daughters put their three heads
together and said, ‘Daddy doesn’t feel well today. What are we going to do with him?’ So they
decided the best thing to do, to make him a glass of punch, and put him to bed. So they got the
biggest glass they could find in the house, and they filled it up to there with rum. A spoon of
sugar, and a spoon of boiling water, and they topped it off with rum. And they gave it to him in the
bed. And the following morning he was jumping on top of the stair. And the eldest daughter came
up to him and said, ‘Did the rum do?’ That means, did the rum do the job. Did the rum do. And the
second daughter, she came up and she said, ‘Did the rum do, Da?’ And the youngest girl she
came up and said, ‘Did the rum do, Daddy?’ And he started tapping his feet, like that”. [Joe
Heaney starts singing at this point.] This transcription is from a concert Heaney performed in
Sydney, Australia in the late 1970s.
v
In other words, I am the first to point out the flaws inherent in learning to sing in Irish from a nonnative speaker.
vi
An easy example of a region-specific song is something from Donegal, which would allow me to
discuss the influence of Scottish music as a part of the migration patterns of Donegal workers
who spend time in Scotland and bring home not just songs but also stylistic features in their
singing.
vii
As a matter of full disclosure, I spent a considerable amount of time in the early 1980s studying
directly from the Carna sean-nós singer Joe Heaney (Joe Éinniú) while he was in residence at the
University of Washington in Seattle.
viii
This English translation by Virginia Blankenhorn appears on the website
http://www.joeheaney.org:
Were you at the rock?
Did you see my love?
Did you see the brightness, the fairness,
And the beauty of the woman?
Did you see the apple
That is loveliest and freshest of blossom?
Did you see my Valentine
And is she still being persecuted as they say?
I was at the rock
I saw your love
I saw the brightness, the fairness,
And the beauty of the woman
I saw the apple
That is loveliest and freshest of blossom
I saw your Valentine
And she still being persecuted as they say.
ix
Irish-language songs for the class vary each summer, but might include “An Crúiscín Lán”,
“Bean a’ Leanna”, “Siúil Arúin”, “Óró mo Bháidín”, “Níl ‘na Lá”, “Slán agus Beannacht le
Buaireamh an Tsaoil”, “Éileanóir a Rún”, “Péigín agus Peadar”, “Tá Mé mo Shuí”, “Bean Pháidín”,
“An Cailín Deas Donn”, “Críocha ‘n Oilean Úr”, “Róisín Dubh”, “Is Trua Nach Bhfuil Mé in Éirinn”,
“An Maighdean Mhara”, “Éiníní”, “Bríd Óg Ní Mhaile”, “Cailleach an Airgid”, “Dónal Óg”, and “An
Raibh Tú ar an gCarraig”. The mix is obvious, from easy to challenging and from more than one
region of Ireland.
x
For example, many Americans like to ignore the American Civil War, which dramatically
changed the emotional and intellectual landscape of the States. Yet it continues to shape and
distort American political and social interactions to this day.
xi
I would argue that there is no “perfect” text, film, poem, song, or anecdotal remembrance of the
Famine. My choices tend toward items that will lead to fruitful discussion rather than agreement,
because I place a higher value on my students’ ability to defend their ideas than their ability to
replicate something from a lecture or text.
xii
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTY0guPwKAw
xiii
I took him out to dinner at a local Thai restaurant, which was one of the most difficult moments
of my professional life simply because of the abundance of food all around us. The most pressing
question my students had asked (privately, to me) was “What is his relationship to food today?” I
had to ask him on behalf of my students, and his response was (of course) gracious and
reasonable: that when he was young, he hadn’t had many chances to have good food, so letting
go of it for a time was not such a big deal (he was mainly sleepy all the time during the strike). It
wasn’t until much later that he enjoyed all kinds of food.
xiv
Note that plagiarism is impossible with this assignment.
xv
1. “Cailleach an Airgid”. 2. “Johnny Seoighe”. 3. “Kilkelly, Ireland”. 4. Óró, Sé do Bheatha
‘Bhaile”. 5. “Muldoon, the Solid Man”. 6. “Bríd Óg Ní Mhaille”. 7. “Paddy’s Lamentation”. 8. An
Bhuinneáin Bhuí”. 9. “There were Roses”. 10. “Níl Sé ina Lá”.
xvi
At the same time, presenting “Irish music” as exclusively dance tunes and songs leaves out
entire bodies of music enjoyed by Irish people and Irish-descended people in the diaspora. They
are worth discussing as well.
Author Biography
Sean Williams teaches ethnomusicology, Irish Studies, and Asian Studies at The
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She received the Ph.D. in
ethnomusicology from the University of Washington (1990), with an emphasis in
the musics of Indonesia and Ireland. Her books include The Sound of the
Ancestral Ship: Highland Music of West Java (Oxford, 2001), The
Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook (Routledge, 2006). Irish Traditional Music
(Routledge, 2010), and Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song-Man
(Oxford, 2011). She has had articles published in The New Hibernia Review,
Béaloideas, Asian Music, The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, Current
Musicology, The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Yearbook for Traditional
Music, The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, and several edited volumes. Every
three years she teaches a year-long, interdisciplinary “program” in Irish Studies
that culminates with a spring-term stay in Donegal, to teach her students how to
put theory into practice.
