Paper presented to the Sean O Riada International Conference on World Music. University College, Cork. 2nd March 1996.
© S. C. Hamilton 1996

The basic arguments put forward in this paper are:

1/ That Irish traditional music having experienced a revival in the mid 1950s which has been maintained until the present day is currently best described as experiencing a post-revival.

2/ This post revival can be readily identified by looking at how various aspects of phonograms have changed and are in a process of ongoing change.

3/That public perception of Irish traditional music in this post revival phase is largely informed via the medium of phonograms, and that an essential change in the relationship between the record industry, musicians, and the public, made possible by technological innovation, has led to a sense of alienation among some groups of Irish traditional musicians, who feel that public perception is increasingly misled as to the real nature of Irish traditional music by a commercially motivated recording industry.

I must assume that most people present are aware of the existence of a revival of Irish traditional music, which began to happen in the 1950s and which led to a resurgence of traditional music activity which is still very obvious in today’s Ireland. In fact this was one of a series of booms and declines which traditional music in Ireland appears to have gone through at various times.
Since the invention of sound recording towards the end of the last century and the first production of commercial recordings of Irish traditional music in 1898, phonograms have provided a very useful insight into the history and development of this tradition. Irish traditional music shared to a great extent in the ethnic recording boom which occurred in the US up to the early 1940s, and our knowledge of the tradition in the 20th century would be immeasurably poorer in the absence of these recordings.
However it is with the recordings which began to appear in Ireland from 1956 on, accompanying the development of the revival that I am concerned here. In the course of research over the last five years I have examined upwards of 2000 recordings of Irish music and on the basis of this I believe that the revival is phasing into a post-revival. There is no clear division between the two periods, but I would argue that the weakening or disappearance of certain factors which were evident in the early revival period and the appearance and reinforcement of others irrevocably lead to that conclusion. I now want to look at some of these:

1/ Cultural motivation/commercial motivation
A very prominent feature of the early revival was the appearance of record companies whose motivation was to a large extent cultural. This is not to say that they did not realise that they were operating in a commercial world and that records had to be sold and profits made to stay solvent, but they were often prepared to allow the profits from a commercially successful recording support the production and release of recordings which on their own would not justify a commercial release. This phenomenon, while it still happens to a small extent, has been replaced to a great extent by purely commercial motives. For example performers who, despite obvious talent are not in a position to play professionally and hence promote a recording, may find it difficult to get a contract. Again performers who began by recording with this type of company tend to gravitate towards the large multinationals as their own success becomes more commercial. The Chieftains move from local Irish company Claddagh eventually to the multinational RCA Victor is a good example of this.

2/Technology
In the early revival period the production of recordings tended to proceed in a way which had changed little since the fading days of the 78 era despite the fact that technology had undergone radical change in the intervening years. Even with the advent of the electrical recording process in 1925 all recordings were still monoaural and single track until the arrival of editing and multitrack facilities which tape recording ushered in.
Illustration, see page 10
This state of affairs, where although there is some distortion of th####e music sound engendered by the proccess of recording, still ensures that every recording is, as we would now call it. “live” The use of tape introduced two new elements into the recording process. Firstly its editing capability allowed the assembly of one performance from several. Secondly the availability of more than one track, and the potential of mixing them together in varying proportions, and this allied with the above allowed for the first time creative input from those other than the musicians and composers.

see illustration, page 10

A notable characteristic of the early revival recordings is that even though these capabilities were available, ( n.b. perhaps only theoretically) a long series of recordings by various companies were made with only limited use of the new technology. Even where this was used, the approach was to give the impression of a live recording. This is connected to the next point.

3/ The concept of Traditionality
By traditionality I mean the way in which a piece of music is seen as being central to, and/or supportive of the tradition or alternatively marginal to it, or even damaging. I have discussed elsewhere how the notion of traditionality can be a controlling factor in the behaviour of Irish traditional musicians, and I believe that it was likewise a factor in the behaviour of some of the recording companies in the early revival. The sleeve notes of many recordings of this period are at pains to establish the traditional credentials of both the selections of music or song, their origin, and the performers. In contrast to this, many current recordings show evidence of the opposite. Two points illustrate this:

1/ Material newly composed in a traditional style is increasingly part of many releases. For example this recent release from Green Linnet of the Irish-American group Trian has 27 different tunes, including song airs. Of these 15 are recent compositions by mostly by the group members themselves. Some would claim that although these new pieces are in a traditional style, they can sometimes introduce elements that are extraneous to the tradition, and that therefore their traditionality is in doubt.

2/ Material which is not only un-traditional but overtly from another tradition is commonly included on more recent recordings. This can be from other closely related traditions ranging from Scottish, through Cape Breton, to French Canadian and Cajun, to those as apparently unrelated as Classical and Rock.

4/ The fourth point has to do with what might be called the urban or rural “focus” of the music. In the early revival although much of the activity was urban based, with urban youth being drawn towards traditional music via related types such as ballad and folk, the focus of interest as distinct from this, was distinctly rural. Again this is evident from an examination of recordings which show that a large majority of the early recorded performers were not only rural, but from west of the Shannon.
As the revival progressed this focus began to turn away from the countryside and become more concerned with the urban music as an entity in its own right which was less and less judged in comparison to rural music. The passing on of the older generation of rural musicians helped this process. Many of the skilled younger urban traditional musicians were semi-professional or professional, and more and more of their performances began to be in Britain or on mainland Europe. Thus not only did the focus of interest begin to be more urban, but it also began to look out beyond Erin’s Green Shamrock Shore, to Europe and beyond, international instead of national. This last aspect is less obvious from an examination of recordings, but one 1979 LP of the Bothy Band, “Afterhours”, was recorded live in Paris, and this fact was featured in the notes.

5/ One final observation in trying to separate the revival from the post-revival is concerned with the treatment of song. A remarkable aspect of the early American “78 era” recordings was the complete absence of traditional song sung in a traditional style, or “sean-nós” as it would now be termed. The early revival set about righting this omission, and there were approximately 125 albums featuring solo, unaccompanied singing of this type released between 1956 and 1980. As the period progressed fewer and fewer albums of this type appeared, and even singers who had made these unaccompanied solo albums began to record accompanied traditional song, or to include contemporary “folk” songs in their performances. In the last few years several groups have recorded albums where the instrumental tracks are strongly traditional-dance music based, and the songs are entirely of contemporary or popular origin. I will play an example of this later.

How has the above affected the public/popular perception of traditional music in Ireland. Is there an awareness of any of the changes outlined above? How is public opinion on this matter informed? In fact what is the level of public awareness of this music? I do not propose to supply answers to all of the above in this short paper, but I would like to suggest a connection between the music and the musicians who play it, the recording companies and their activities, and both the level of public awareness and nature of public perception of this music.

Measurement of such things in any meaningful way is notoriously elusive. One such attempt was the Arts Council sponsored 1983 survey
“Audiences, Acquisitions, and Amateurs” which was carried out by Lansdowne Market Research. In brief, the results of this survey indicated that after cinema-going, attendance at a performance of traditional music was the most popular form of public entertainment in the Republic of Ireland, at a level of 21% . In a separate question 23% claimed to have purchased a traditional recording in the previous year. These results, accepted by some as a vindication of the popularity of Irish traditional music, were greeted with incredulity by significant numbers of the performers themselves. In response to this I carried out a survey in the city of Waterford in 1994 with the assistance of my students, which instead of allowing the respondents to define traditional music for themselves as the previous study had done, asked them to define it by naming performers that they saw as traditional. They were also asked to name the recording if they had claimed to buy a traditional recording in the previous year. The comparison of the results of the two surveys is interesting ( these have been explained in detail in a paper read to the American Conference for Irish Studies in Philadelphia, 1995 ). There is obviously not time here to go into this in detail, and at the risk of being accused of “cherry picking” I believe the following figures were significant. 57% claimed to listen to traditional music, but on further analysis only just under 6% were aware of performers from the non or marginally commercial solo tradition. 20% named performers from the related but distinct ballad group tradition. Even more importantly of all the performers named 25% are accounted for by only two, The Chieftains, and Sharon Shannon, whose recordings are widely played and who have a high profile in the Irish media. Of those who claimed to have bought a traditional recording in the previous year 44% named only two recordings, one of which was a non-traditional compilation and the second was the seemingly ubiquitous Sharon Shannon. I would argue that the conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the public perception of traditional music in Ireland is mediated almost entirely through commercial recordings. I would also argue that a significant proportion of traditional musicians on the ground feel this perception is increasingly misled as to the real nature of Irish traditional music by a commercially motivated recording industry.
I would like to finish by playing two recordings which I hope will illustrate the differences between the early revival period and what I argue must now be seen as the post-revival.

The first, the earliest one, is of The McPeake Family, from Belfast, one of the earliest “groups”, who were widely influential not only in the revival in Ireland, but in Britain as well. This recording dates from 1962 and I would venture to suggest that a performance like this would not be considered for commercial release today.
The second recording dates from 1994 and is a track from a Green Linnet CD of American fiddle player Eileen Ivers. The tune is a newly composed one, and the arrangement, with its use of many “untraditional” instruments typical of many recent recordings.