Download or read book A Happy Type of Sadness written by Kevin Martin and published by Mercier Press Ltd. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Country music fandom is at an all-time high in Ireland; social dancing has never been as popular. New artists, bands and venues proliferate; it seems each week 'Ireland's latest country sensation' is brought to the public's attention through the ever-widening media outlets populated by the genre. This book provides a comprehensive history of the genre looking at the artists and their music and seeking to contextualise the genre within the wider context of Irish culture. It demonstrates the significant role Ireland has played in the history and development of American country music and how, as an old classic country song says, the circle has remained unbroken. It also analyses the associated media, dance and social cultures. Irish country music is now a significant industry on a continuous upward curve. It earns a lot of money for a lot of people. It deserves a work of record. This book is the first of its kind. It is written in an easy to understand language to appeal to the widest possible demographic. It is also written from a neutral point of view but in a way that appeals to the fans of country and Irish music. Artists covered include Big Tom, Daniel O'Donnell, Nathan Carter, Philomena Begley, Susan McCann and Robert Mizell. The author is an established writer with extensive media experience including RTÉ Radio 1, TV3, Irish Independent, The Irish Times, New York Times, The Irish Post and a plethora of local and regional radio stations.

Download or read book In Another World written by Gerald Dawe and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Another World is a unique trip through Belfast, mapped into the mystic through the timeless music of Van ‘the Man’ Morrison. The aptly soulful and inventive prose stems from the electric wit of acclaimed poet and fellow Belfast man, Gerald Dawe. Struck by the extraordinary brand of rhythm and blues that was Morrison’s brainchild, Dawe’s book is a celebration of the inspirations that underlie Morrison’s music. Silhouetted in the work is Belfast, moody and vibrant, and the formative influence of the pre-Troubles northern capital on Morrison’s musical direction. Dawe’s writing transmutes the tender and unforgettable strains of Morrison’s work, from the release in 1968 of Astral Weeks to the publication in 2014 of Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics. A powerful tribute to mark Van Morrison’s accomplishments, In Another World taps into his legacy’s eclectic soul and is kin to its enchantments.

Download or read book Stewart Parker written by Marilynn Richtarik and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Belfast during World War II, raised in a working-class Protestant family, and educated on scholarship at Queen's University, writer Stewart Parker's story is in many ways the story of his generation. Other aspects of his personal history, though, such as the amputation of his left leg at age 19, helped to create an extraordinarily perceptive observer and commentator. Steeped in American popular culture as a child and young adult, he spent five years teaching in the United States before returning to Belfast in August 1969, the same week British troops responded to sectarian disturbances there. Parker had developed a sense of writing as a form of political action in the highly charged atmosphere of the US in the late 1960s, which he applied in many and varied capacities throughout the worst years of the Troubles to express his own socialist and secular vision of Northern Irish potential. As a young aspiring poet and novelist, he supported himself with free-lance work that brought him into contact with institutions ranging from BBC Northern Ireland to the Irish Times (for which he wrote personal columns and the music review feature High Pop) and from the Queen's University Extramural Department to Long Kesh internment camp (where his creative writing students included Gerry Adams). It is as a playwright, however, that Parker earned a permanent spot in the literary canon with drama that encapsulates his experience of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Marilynn Richtarik's Stewart Parker: A Life illuminates the genesis, development, and meaning of such classic plays as Spokesong, Northern Star, and Pentecost - works that continue to shed light on the North's past, present, and future - in the context of Parker's life and times. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this critical biography rewards general readers and specialists alike.

Download or read book Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity written by Lauren Onkey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity analyzes the long history of imagined and real relationships between the Irish and African-Americans. Onkey examines how Irish and Irish-American identity is often constructed through or against African-Americans, mapping this through the work of writers, playwrights, political activists, and musicians.

Download or read book Made in Ireland written by Áine Mangaoang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology and musicology of 20th- and 21st-century Irish popular music. The volume consists of essays by leading scholars in the field and covers the major figures, styles and social contexts of popular music in Ireland. Each essay provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance to Irish popular music. The book is organized into three thematic sections: Music Industries and Historiographies, Roots and Routes and Scenes and Networks. The volume also includes a coda by Gerry Smyth, one of the most published authors on Irish popular music.

Download or read book Music and Irish Identity written by Gerry Smyth and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Albert Reynolds written by Conor Lenihan and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach’s fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds’ determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland’s best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds’ extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and impatience that became the hallmark of his success and his failure. Appointed as Taoiseach in 1992, by 1994 he had been drummed out of office, yet in that brief period he confounded his critics by fast-tracking an end to the violence of the Troubles, with the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires. In the first complete biography of Reynolds, former Minister of State Conor Lenihan delivers an insider’s account that reveals the courageous personal risks Reynolds took to create the template for peace in Ireland, and the highs and lows of a tempestuous, risk taking life.

Download or read book Jim Reeves written by Larry Jordan and published by JIM REEVES: HIS UNTOLD STORY. This book was released on 2011 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 672 page, award-winning biography of country music singer Jim Reeves based on hundreds of interviews and Jim's private diaries. Virtually a day by day account of the life of this internationally renowned star.

Download or read book Paddy Cole written by Paddy Cole and published by The O'Brien Press Ltd. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The colourful story of the 80-year-old saxophone player and singer affectionately know as The King of The Swingers. Paddy Cole has taken his style of Jazz, Dixieland and Swing band music all over the world – and back home too. Paddy Cole is the grand old man of Irish Showbiz who still is young at heart and has built a new radio career with his show on Dublin's Sunshine Radio every Sunday. His story is as heart-warming as it is hilarious!

Download or read book The Irish in Us written by Diane Negra and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-02-22 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVA colleciton that looks at how Irishness has become a discursive commodity within popular culture./div

Download or read book William Trevor written by Paul Delaney and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Trevor: Revaluations offers a comprehensive examination of the oeuvre of one of the most accomplished and celebrated practitioners writing in the English language: the author of fifteen novels, three novellas and eleven volumes of short stories, as well as plays, radio and TV adaptations and film screenplays. Drawing on the talents of a team of distinguished international scholars, this volume shines a critical light on Trevor’s core concerns with individuality and the family, and cultural and national identity, extending significantly the scope of current scholarship. Essays scrutinise the author’s prolonged concern with domestic, communal and national violence, his interrogation of patterns of inheritance and ideological heritage, and the impact of the past on choices his characters make. William Trevor: Revaluations is a groundbreaking collection of essays, and will also be seen as a definitive introduction to the work of a major contemporary novelist and short-story writer.

Download or read book Send em Home Sweatin written by Vincent Power and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insight into the glamour and excitement of the ballrooms of romance of the 1960s.

Download or read book And the Healing Has Begun written by Katrin Pietzonka and published by Author House. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For anyone interested in Northern Ireland, its history, its culture, its music.... finally here comes a book that offers a new approach into understanding the complex diversity that has shaped Northern Irish society and its people during the times of the Troubles and beyond. Like poems, songs, in their own right, should be recognised as historical documents. From Mickey McConnells Only our Rivers Run Free and Phil Coulter The Town I loved so Well to Tommy Sands There Were Roses - political & social developments inspired Northern Irish poets and songwriters alike. By incorporating a great amount of background information on the artists mentioned above and resulting from personal interviews with the author a very unique insight into the history of Northern Ireland is given. In addition, the vast amount of songs written from an outsiders perspective and in particular in the Rock and Popmusic Genre such as Paul McCartneys Give Ireland back to the Irish, John Lennons Sunday, Bloody Sunday to James Taylors Belfast to Boston and Katie Meluas Belfast, also required appropriate recognition. Together, all these songs compiled and discussed in this book will provide the reader with a better understanding of Northern Irelands history, its society, its people past and present. Whether it is for further academic research or simply used as reference material for anyone interested in Irish Music and Songs about and from Northern Ireland, this book will remain an essential guide and reference book in years to come.

Download or read book Bernard MacLaverty New Critical Readings written by Richard Rankin Russell and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of such works as Lamb, Cal, and Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty is one of Northern Ireland's leading-and most prolific-contemporary writers. Bringing together leading scholars from a full range of critical perspectives, this is a comprehensive survey of contemporary scholarship on MacLaverty. Covering all of his novels and many of his short stories, the book explores the ways in which the author has grappled with such themes as The Troubles, the Holocaust, Catholicism, and music. Bernard MacLaverty: Critical Readings also includes coverage of the film adaptations of his work.

Download or read book The New York Irish written by Ronald H. Bayor and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1997-09-30 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of the country's oldest ethnic groups, the Irish have played a vital part in its history. New York has been both port of entry and home to the Irish for three centuries. This joint project of the Irish Institute and the New York Irish History Roundtable offers a fresh perspective on an immigrant people's encounter with the famed metropolis. 37 illustrations.

Download or read book Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture written by Conn Holohan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger's Tales is an interdisciplinary collection of essays by established and emerging scholars, analysing the shifting representations of Irish men across a range of popular culture forms in the period of the Celtic Tiger and beyond.

Download or read book Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond written by Mark Fitzgerald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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