Dr Deirdre Ní Chonghaile
Collecting Music in the Aran Islands:
A Century of History and Practice
Winner of the 2021 Michael J. Durkan Prize, American Conference for Irish Studies
Reviews - Léirmheas
"“Collecting Music in the Aran Islands” is an extraordinary book. The scholarship Ní Chonghaile has brought to the subject is inspiring and she’s written what I believe is one of the most important and fascinating books about Irish traditional music in recent memory. Research like this is hard to conceive of in the first place, but realizing it with such skill and sensitivity is a different thing all together. This book is very, very highly recommended to fans of traditional music, but it should be read by anyone who has any interest in understanding the music’s history. Top shelf stuff."
—Daniel Neely, The Irish Echo, https://www.irishecho.com/2021/8/inspiring-fascinating-scholarship
“A compelling and highly original study of Irish traditional music collecting. No author has previously undertaken such a comprehensive local study of music collections in Ireland, locating them both in terms of Irish cultural and wider disciplinary history. This is a major contribution.”
—Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, University of Notre Dame
“Ní Chonghaile's expertise in both musical scholarship and the Irish language adds value to her innovative contribution. Singers, musicians, and collectors emerge in their full humanity, their emotional attachment to their culture clearly apparent.”
— Lillis Ó Laoire, National University of Ireland, Galway
“Elegantly written... rapping more than a few sacred knuckles... it jolts the reader into modernizing their strict view of Irish singing culture.”
— Fintan Vallely, Folk Music Journal
"Deeply reflective... a timely contribution to current conversations on music collecting, cultural heritage, ownership, and dissemination."
— Adrian Scahill, Journal of Music, https://journalofmusic.com/opinion/many-sides-music-and-song-collecting
"This book is a must for all serious students, and amateurs like myself, of Aran Islands cultural history."
— Andrew McNeillie, Clutag Press
"Is staidéar eiseamláireach ó scoláire eitnicheoleolaíochta é Collecting Music in the Aran Islands agus tarraingítear ann ar mhórán gnéithe den léann comhaimseartha. Ní beag mar chúnamh don staidéar é a bheith curtha i gcrích ag duine de mhuintir Árann féin... Éacht thaighde."
— Proinsias Ó Drisceoil, Feasta (Lúnasa 2021): 14-15.
"“Collecting Music in the Aran Islands” is an extraordinary book. The scholarship Ní Chonghaile has brought to the subject is inspiring and she’s written what I believe is one of the most important and fascinating books about Irish traditional music in recent memory. Research like this is hard to conceive of in the first place, but realizing it with such skill and sensitivity is a different thing all together. This book is very, very highly recommended to fans of traditional music, but it should be read by anyone who has any interest in understanding the music’s history. Top shelf stuff."
—Daniel Neely, The Irish Echo, https://www.irishecho.com/2021/8/inspiring-fascinating-scholarship
“A compelling and highly original study of Irish traditional music collecting. No author has previously undertaken such a comprehensive local study of music collections in Ireland, locating them both in terms of Irish cultural and wider disciplinary history. This is a major contribution.”
—Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, University of Notre Dame
“Ní Chonghaile's expertise in both musical scholarship and the Irish language adds value to her innovative contribution. Singers, musicians, and collectors emerge in their full humanity, their emotional attachment to their culture clearly apparent.”
— Lillis Ó Laoire, National University of Ireland, Galway
“Elegantly written... rapping more than a few sacred knuckles... it jolts the reader into modernizing their strict view of Irish singing culture.”
— Fintan Vallely, Folk Music Journal
"Deeply reflective... a timely contribution to current conversations on music collecting, cultural heritage, ownership, and dissemination."
— Adrian Scahill, Journal of Music, https://journalofmusic.com/opinion/many-sides-music-and-song-collecting
"This book is a must for all serious students, and amateurs like myself, of Aran Islands cultural history."
— Andrew McNeillie, Clutag Press
"Is staidéar eiseamláireach ó scoláire eitnicheoleolaíochta é Collecting Music in the Aran Islands agus tarraingítear ann ar mhórán gnéithe den léann comhaimseartha. Ní beag mar chúnamh don staidéar é a bheith curtha i gcrích ag duine de mhuintir Árann féin... Éacht thaighde."
— Proinsias Ó Drisceoil, Feasta (Lúnasa 2021): 14-15.
Order online:
IRELAND
Via Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, Galway Ireland
Via Kenny's Bookshop, Galway, Ireland
USA
Via Chicago Distribution Center - enter Code AA220 until 30 May 2022
UK / EUROPE
Via Eurospan - enter ARAN20
Via Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, Galway Ireland
Via Kenny's Bookshop, Galway, Ireland
USA
Via Chicago Distribution Center - enter Code AA220 until 30 May 2022
UK / EUROPE
Via Eurospan - enter ARAN20
Podcasts:
The Rolling Wave, RTÉ Radio 1, 6 March 2022 interview by Aoife Nic Cormaic
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/the-rolling-wave/programmes/2022/0306/1284798-the-rolling-wave-sunday-6-march-2022/
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/the-rolling-wave/programmes/2022/0306/1284798-the-rolling-wave-sunday-6-march-2022/
Seascapes, RTÉ Radio 1, 22 April 2022 interview by Lorna Siggins (from 13'36")
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/seascapes/programmes/2022/0422/1293782-seascapes-friday-22-april-2022/
https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/seascapes/programmes/2022/0422/1293782-seascapes-friday-22-april-2022/
New Books Network podcast, 18 March 2022 interview by Aidan Beatty
Michael J. Durkan Prize 2021 Judges' Citation:
"Deirdre Ní Chonghaile's fascinating, scholarly, and impassioned study, Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice, impressed the Durkan judges as outstanding, first for the acumen with which it brought careful academic research to bear on a topic about which the author herself has extensive personal knowledge through her own family and background. The book unites a broad academic awareness with a commitment to the particular and the local; it therefore resonates with some of the most distinctive scholarly writing from Ireland in recent decades. The judges were impressed by the astonishing array of disciplinary tools used here to construct a complex picture of the philosophies and practices of music collection on Aran from the nineteenth century to the present. Weaving between archival research and personal narrative, the study assembles a thoroughly nuanced account of the dialectic of preservation and destruction inherent in practices of collection. It is also a work alive to performance and transcription as creative acts. It is in many regards a meditation on dúchas, the internalized histories that attach to a place — and on what happens to dúchas once it is broached by scholarly collectors. It is also a book about how the broader scholarly interest in musical folklore has molded the culture of the Aran Islands — indeed, it may be the first full book-length study of Aran music.
It explores how, despite what the author terms 'the ephemerality of music,' it is still recorded, transcribed, and transmitted far beyond the moment of its performance. This astute and sophisticated critical historiography never loses sight of the flexible, dialectical, uneven, and productively messy nature of the encounters between musicians and collectors. From O'Curry and Petrie to Séamus Ennis, to Sidney Robertson Cowell and Bairbre Quinn, the collectors of each phase, each working with different transcription and recording media, strove to overcome the perceived distances between the musical culture they recorded and their own worlds. This book offers itself as an intricately and at times intimately involved overview of this endeavor. Combining scholarly acumen and scrupulous research with a close-grained look at the dramas of music-collecting fieldwork, it itself engages with a musical tradition that is improvisatory, opportunistic, always-developing — and continuing to grow and evolve."
It explores how, despite what the author terms 'the ephemerality of music,' it is still recorded, transcribed, and transmitted far beyond the moment of its performance. This astute and sophisticated critical historiography never loses sight of the flexible, dialectical, uneven, and productively messy nature of the encounters between musicians and collectors. From O'Curry and Petrie to Séamus Ennis, to Sidney Robertson Cowell and Bairbre Quinn, the collectors of each phase, each working with different transcription and recording media, strove to overcome the perceived distances between the musical culture they recorded and their own worlds. This book offers itself as an intricately and at times intimately involved overview of this endeavor. Combining scholarly acumen and scrupulous research with a close-grained look at the dramas of music-collecting fieldwork, it itself engages with a musical tradition that is improvisatory, opportunistic, always-developing — and continuing to grow and evolve."