Rockin' Rebels: Popular Irish Music from Traditional to Punk

Catalog description

Offered every other spring semester. This course explores the concept of Irishness through generative works of music by artists such as Seán Ó Riada, The Wolf Tones, The Pogues, Sinéad O’Connor, U2, The Cranberries, Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, and Soulé (not an exhaustive list). To do this the class will begin with an examination of traditional Irish music as a cultural form. Next, we will move through genres and decades charting political and cultural shifts as represented in folk, rebel, rock, punk, and pop music. We will explore concerns of authenticity and hybridity in Irish popular music and apply theoretical ways of understanding the reproduction and marketing of Irishness in a global context.