Sounding Dissent: Rebel Songs, Resistance, and Irish Republicanism (Music and Social Justice)

by: Stephen Millar (Author)

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Publication Date: 2022/4/5

Language: English

Print Length: 264 pages

ISBN-10: 0472038877

ISBN-13: 9780472038879

Book Description

The signing of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998, marked the beginning of a new era of peace and stability in Northe Ireland. As the public overwhelmingly rejected a retu to the violence of the Troubles, loyalist and republican groups sought other outlets to continue their struggle. Music, which has long been used to celebrate cultural identity in the North of Ireland, became a key means of facilitating the continuation of pre-Agreement identity narratives in a “post-conflict” era. Sounding Dissent draws on three years of sustained fieldwork within Belfast’s rebel music scene, in-depth interviews with republican musicians, contemporary audiences, and former paramilitaries, as well as diverse historical and archival material, including songbooks, prison records, and newspaper articles, to understand the history of political violence in Ireland.The book examines the potential of rebel songs to memorialize a pantheon of republican martyrs, and demonstrates how musical performance and political song not only articulate experiences and memories of oppression and violence, but also play a central role in the reproduction of conflict and exclusion in times of peace.

About the Author

The signing of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998, marked the beginning of a new era of peace and stability in Northe Ireland. As the public overwhelmingly rejected a retu to the violence of the Troubles, loyalist and republican groups sought other outlets to continue their struggle. Music, which has long been used to celebrate cultural identity in the North of Ireland, became a key means of facilitating the continuation of pre-Agreement identity narratives in a “post-conflict” era. Sounding Dissent draws on three years of sustained fieldwork within Belfast’s rebel music scene, in-depth interviews with republican musicians, contemporary audiences, and former paramilitaries, as well as diverse historical and archival material, including songbooks, prison records, and newspaper articles, to understand the history of political violence in Ireland.The book examines the potential of rebel songs to memorialize a pantheon of republican martyrs, and demonstrates how musical performance and political song not only articulate experiences and memories of oppression and violence, but also play a central role in the reproduction of conflict and exclusion in times of peace.