IRISH & IRISH-AMERICAN MUSIC IN THE LATE 20TH CENTURY
INTRODUCTION
The past forty years of the twentieth century witnessed an increasing commercialization and globalization of Irish music and dance, and a range of responses from Irish and Irish American musicians. Established award winning group Cherish the Ladies are preservationists, innovating within the tradition, while others such as Clannad invent a mystical Celtic brand. Michael Hayes has brought elements of jazz and minimalism into his compositions. Irish dance competitions and festivals take place in the U.S. and around the world, and the instantaneous access to cultural products through the Internet has brought Irish music and dance forms to millions. Irish dance has also expanded far beyond its traditional forms and institutional social settings, becoming a worldwide brand.PRESERVATION / INNOVATION
The longest-running and most successful of Irish-American traditional bands is Cherish the Ladies, an all women band brought together in 1983 and sponsored by the Ethnic Folk Arts Center and the National Endowment for the Arts. The group is led by the award-winning Bronx-born flute and whistle player Joanie Madden. Cherish the Ladies has played all over the world and have worked with various symphony orchestras. With fourteen albums, the band "occupies a highly symbolic role in Irish-American cultural life: at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, they represented Irish music and culture at the Cultural Olympiad, their work was nominated as a top Album of the Year by The New York Times, Washington Post, The Village Voice and other U.S. media outlets." They have made numerous TV and radio broadcasts on mainstream shows, and on national public radios shows in the United States, Ireland, and England. [Vallely]
COMMERCIALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION OF IRISH DANCE AND DANCE MUSIC
The phenomenon that is Riverdance changed the world of Irish dance and music in 1995 when Irish-American dance champions Michael Flatley and Jean Butler created a full-length show of Irish-inspired choreography. Riverdance has been touring non-stop ever since by companies throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. The show has been seen by over 100 million people, and earned its producers hundreds of millions of dollars. [Cathy Hayes, "Amazing Facts about the Irish Dance Phenomenon 'Riverdance'" Irish Central, January, 2015] [independent.ie]While Flatley may have broken conventions and demonstrated astonishing techniques in Irish step dance, Bill Whelan's score was disconnected from traditional Irish music. And reactions were not uniformly positive. A reviewer for the Irish Times asked whether the Irish media view Flatley "as an American who has taken a single element of Irish culture and commercialised it, glamorised it, bastardised it, without having any appreciation of the culture from which he draws his inspiration? Has the man brought a Big Mac bun attitude and wrapped it around one of Ireland's sacred cultural cows?"
On the other hand, Flatley's breakaway production Lord of the Dance "took Irish music and dance to unprecedented theatrical heights" in 1996.
Using a dizzling display of cinematographic effects and a precarious composite of mythological motifs, Lord of the Dance featured a battalion of step dancers, with Flatley dancing as well as playing concert flute. Unlike its precursor, this production incorporated genuine dance music and figure dances from the living tradition.
Riverdance and Lord of the Dance have both generated a paradigm shift in Irish step dancing. Since 1994, this formulaic bastion of national dance has changed from an old competitive world of medals and feaseanna [festivals], to a new commercial milieu of theatrical extravaganza. In the resulting cocktail of Celtic twilight and Broadway panache, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood, Irish musicians and dancers, like their vaudevillian predecessors, are retailoring their art for a radically new and intensely competitive international stage.
[Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, O'Brien's Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music]
Flately's shows brought on an explosion of interest in Irish step dance in the U.S. and worldwide. In 2017 Chicago native Peter Dziak made history as three-time consecutive champion in the Irish Dance Worlds Competition.
An estimated 50,000 Americans participate in local, regional, national, regional, and international Irish step dance competitions, culminating in the World Competition. This 2012 documentary follows the six top contestants from the United States:
Fusion Fighters are a dance crew rooted in traditional Irish step dance whose 30-plus members are skilled in other dance forms as well, including "Tap, Contemporary, and Body Percussion." Composer/Producer/Pianist Brian McGrane's music likewise mixes the traditional fiddling of Benedict Morris and Aisling Parslow with more contemporary genres. Altogether, over twenty musicians are associated with the crew.
In 2010, [artistic director] Chris [Naish] branched away from what had become the typical Irish Dance show experience and co-created an experimental street level project called ‘Sneaky Steppers’, a public ambush crew that would break into several styles of spontaneous dance for unsuspecting audiences. Notable achievements include co-organising a Flash mob in Sydney Central Station with Tourism Ireland (20+ Million Views) and providing entertainment for the 2012 London Olympics. When taking breaks from the touring shows, Chris spent his time living in New York City and began to choreograph for various dance projects and collaborations including dance crew Hammerstep.
He was also invited to be a choreographer for ‘Studio2Stage’ in New Jersey for a cast of more than 80 dancers and teaching over 600 dancers at the original Irish Dance Camp 'Camp Rince Ceol'. [fusionfightersdance.com] ["Irish Dance Group Make Music with Their Feet" The Irish World, February 2015]
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This page references:
- Clannad - Theme from Harry's Game
- Cherish the Ladies PBS special
- Lord of the Dance - Lord of the Dance HD
- Fusion Fighters Performance - World Championships 2018 Glasgow
- Trinity Irish Dance - Peter Dziak
- Fusion Fighters: 'Mission2Manhattan' featuring the cast of Studio2Stage 2014
- The Gloaming
- Intro to 2012 Worlds Irish Dance Competition Documentary