Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry

“Structured into three eloquent chapters and a conclusion, the book features a detailed appendix section containing the Irish compositions, the English translations and the music transcriptions, as well as a list of sound recordings, bibliography and discography. As readers, we are left with a thirsty ear, craving to listen to Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire’s musical makings, perhaps hoping to gain an aural glimpse into those ‘liminal moments of sheer potentiality’ that have inspired generations of women, and men, before us.” • Scenario

“Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics, and Oral Poetry, presents an innovative take on researching the ephemeral, non-textual archives of oral tradition…Ní Shíocháin’s weaving of frameworks from philosophy and literature in Singing Ideas will be useful to anyone studying performance of the subaltern, embodiment, and unjust political structures of power.” • Ethnomusicology Review

“This excellent book gives a concise, comprehensive overview of oral poetry in a crisply written style, confidently delivered and supported by rigorous scholarship.” • Lillis Ó Laoire, National University of Ireland, Galway

Description

Considered by many to be the greatest Irish song poet of her generation, Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O’Leary; 1774–1848) was an illiterate woman unconnected to elite literary and philosophical circles who powerfully engaged the politics of her own society through song. As an oral arts practitioner, Máire Bhuí composed songs whose ecstatic, radical vision stirred her community to revolt and helped to shape nineteenth-century Irish anti-colonial thought. This provocative and richly theorized study explores the re-creative, liminal aspect of song, treating it as a performative social process that cuts to the very root of identity and thought formation, thus re-imagining the history of ideas in society.

Tríona Ní Shíocháin is a whistle-player, singer and interdisciplinary scholar specializing in performance theory, oral theory and Irish-language song and poetry. She is Professor of Modern Irish and Performing Arts at Maynooth University, and was previously Lecturer in Irish Traditional Music at University College, Cork. She is author of Bláth’s Craobh na nÚdar: Amhráin Mháire Bhuí (2012).

Subject: Performance Studies History: 18th/19th Century Anthropology (General)Literary Studies

Area: Europe

Subject Codes

LC: ML3917.I74 N53 2018

BL: DRT ELD.DS.238363

BISAC:
MUS020000 MUSIC/History & Criticism;
MUS017000 MUSIC/Genres & Styles/Folk & Traditional;
SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social;
HIS018000 HISTORY/Europe/Ireland

BIC:
DCF Poetry by individual poets;
JPW Political activism

(Un)doing History: The Authority of Literacy and the Performativity of Thought
Oral Trouble and Women’s Voices: Searching for Intellectual
Traditions Beyond the Written Word
Singing Politics and Power in Society: Some Comparative Examples
Seizing Agency: Women of Song
Beyond the Limits of Textuality: Performing the Past and Performing Thought

Chapter 2. ‘Where Everything Trembles in the Balance’: Song as a Liminal Ludic Space

The Theory of Liminality
Performing Liminality: Poetry as a Symbolic Marker for Liminality in the Irish Tradition
A Journey to the Sacred and Back: The Liminality of the Aisling (Vision)
Song and Oral Poetic Performance as Ritual
Separating from the Profane: Ekstasis and Song
Moments of Potentiality: The Antistructure of Melody and Verse in the Irish Tradition
The Ritual Powers of (Song) Poetry: Satire, Insult and Fearlessness
The Potentiality of the Play-Sphere: The Challenging Discourse of Song
The Singer of Ideas as ‘Seer of Communitas’: The Liminality of Song and the Generation of Ideas

Chapter 3. Singing Parrhesia: Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire, Song Performance and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire: Nineteenth-Century Song Poet
Irish-Language Song-Making: Poetry as Performance and the Aesthetics of Orality
Multiformity and Oral Formulaic Techniques
Local Agrarian Agitation and the Creation of the Poetic Radical
Crisis and Charisma: The Song Poet as Prophet and Truth-Teller
Identity and the Aesthetics of Orality: New Ideas and the Narrative of Belonging
Framing the Revolution: Performing Antistructure and the Vision of the Revolution through Song
From Generation to Generation to Regeneration: The Legacy of Ideas through Song

Conclusion: Singing Ideas in Society: Experience, Song and ‘Passing Through’

Appendix of Songs and Lore

Bibliography
Index

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Volume 12

Dance and Performance Studies

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Singing Ideas

Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry

Tríona Ní Shíocháin

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Description

Subject: Performance StudiesHistory: 18th/19th CenturyAnthropology (General)Literary Studies

Area: Europe

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Subject: Performance Studies History: 18th/19th Century Anthropology (General)Literary Studies