Notes & Narratives: Conor Caldwell

Conor Caldwell – “Garryowen in the morning: Hybridity in Irish traditional music“

As fiddlers and pipers began to adapt the Gaelic song airs on their instruments, the nineteenth century music collector George Petrie could not hide his disdain. For him, these musicians indulged in ‘barbarous licenses and conventionalities … often rendering even [the essential features of songs] undeterminable with any degree of certainty.’

But this development in Irish music would prove to be crucial in saving many songs from extinction in the context of the rapidly decreasing number of Irish speakers throughout the country. It is through this process that we can also examine the idea of hybridity in Irish music – tunes that exist in more than one state, such as ‘Garryowen’, ‘Paidín Ó Rafartaigh’ and ‘Bundle and Go’.

This talk examines hybridity in Irish traditional music, looking at evidence from the canon of British military music, Irish and Scottish collections, and taking into account the work of individual composers who began to exploit the commercial opportunities that emerged as music publishing boomed in the nineteenth century.

Conor Caldwell is a fiddle player from Belfast. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Irish Traditional Music at the University of Limerick.

Notes & Narratives will take place at Na Píobairí Uilleann, 15 Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, starting at 8:30pm on Thursday 15th February 2024. Admission is €10 (unwaged / student / retired €5). For those unable to attend in person, it will also be live streamed for free through our channel NPU-TV.

Na Píobairí Uilleann presents Notes & Narratives – a series of monthly performance-based lectures on traditional music, song and dance by some of Ireland’s finest traditional artists.

Supported by The Arts Council.