7 - ‘American Notes’

Summary

Although the reception history of American influence in Irish musical affairs has sometimes been a negative one (as in the hostile resistance to jazz in the early years of the Irish Free State), the impact of American retrievals and recordings of Irish traditional music is another matter. This chapter examines the entirely positive influence of Francis O’Neill (Chicago) and Michael Coleman (New York) in the recovery and dissemination of traditional dance music in 1900–35, partly through the agency of two cultural paradigms which shaped the revival of this music throughout much of the twentieth century. The first of these paradigms is one of remembrance, in which the ingathering of O’Neill’s published collections defined the repertory and meaning of Irish traditional music to an exceptional degree. The second is that of stylistic authority, effectuated by the influence of Coleman’s recordings on the development of fiddle playing in Ireland. Taken together, these characteristically American agents of recovery and reproduction allow us to reconsider the history, meaning and influence of ‘Americanisation’ in an Irish musical context. They also illuminate the more recent history of traditional music practice, in which the exemplary influence of jazz (as a definitively American art form) is apparent.