Tag Archives: news

How Ireland Thinks About Music

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Does Ireland have its own way of thinking about music? How might this perspective have developed? And could it explain the current dynamism in Irish musical life? In this essay, the edited text of a talk given at Farmleigh House on 11 May, Journal of Music Editor Toner Quinn explores these questions and more.

Almost four months ago, I published the book What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and I realise this title may sound presumptuous, but in reality every country has something to teach the world about music, because every country has its own history and musical traditions. Ireland, therefore, should have something that it can offer the world, particularly given the impact our music has had, and even if, publicly, we tend not to talk too much about what that might be.

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SXSW Protest is About More than Palestine

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The national news cycle has already moved on: a brief appearance by Kneecap on Morning Ireland, followed by Soda Blonde on The Tonight Show and Newstalk, but apart from some coverage by what remains of the music press, the public discussion about the SXSW protest by Irish bands over Palestine has all but ended. We have become used to the conveyor belt nature of the news ticker and don’t expect more. It would be convenient for Ireland’s official agencies if the issues at the heart of the protest also went away once the bands came home, but they won’t. 

Palestine has become a flashpoint for the frustration of a generation, the high end of a line of grievances and clearly where their patience has run out. Ten Irish bands refused to play at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, because they learnt that it was being sponsored by the US Army and US arms manufacturers. The slaughter in Palestine, enabled by these entities, made the thought of performing in such a context ‘abhorrent’, as Faye O’Rourke of Soda Blonde said. 

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A review of my new book by Sherry Ladig in the Irish Arts Minnesota Newsletter

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An Leabhragán/The Bookcase

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and Other Essays
Toner Quinn (The Journal of Music, 2024)

This new book on Irish music has been a quarter of a century in the making. The fifty or so essays and articles are drawn from Toner Quinn’s work as editor of The Journal of Music in Ireland, first published in print form in 2000, now entirely online since 2010. Quinn saw that there was no real public discourse about music in Ireland; all Irish music, not just classical, jazz, traditional, or popular music. There have been separate forums for all of these. But where was the discussion about what it means to be an Irish musician of any kind in Ireland today? Toner Quinn saw a space for this discussion and created it. Twenty-four years later, the magazine has become a respected and valued place for musicians, composers, collaborators , organizers and listeners to discuss and inform on the topic of Irish music. Many subjects, some of them controversial, have come up: what, exactly, is trad music? How is its practice different from two or three generations ago? How do we value an art form which has been highly praised publicly, but underfunded and underpaid to those who create the music? What classical music is being created and performed in Ireland? How about jazz, collaborative works between classical and traditional artists, experimental music?

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Toner Quinn’s New Book Launched by Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive

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See a news item from the Journal of Music on the launch of my new book below. The original is here.

A new book by Toner Quinn, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, has been launched by fiddle player Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin.

A collection of writings on Irish music, the book contains more than fifty essays and articles drawn from Quinn’s work as Editor of the Journal of Music as well as a number of radio essays and public talks.

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