Come Gather Ye, Kinfolk
by xaosseed
For the question’s been raised – “Does the ‘real’ Ireland still exist?” in a rather long article that makes me suspect Bord Failte has a man on the inside at the NY Times…
And in fairness, I have been present at spontaneous outbreaks of song at parties and I know what pubs to go to for a fairly high chance of by-locals-for-locals trad music in Sligo – but is it that simple? Is real Ireland the place where the traditions are the same as our grandparents time? Is it where the live music tradition has been turned into the band scene with everyone jammed into places like Whelans in Dublin or McGarrigles in Sligo?
I can see why it might be hard to tell whats really real when Irish pubs are sold in boxes so I throw it open to the floor – is there such a thing as ‘real Ireland’ or is whatevers there, be it Brazilians in Gort or superpubs a la globalisation, by definition real since thats what *is* there?
Comments
Truth be told, most of the harkening back to simple times is a blinkered, punctuated view. It’s worth taking a look at How culture and tradition are inventions, rather than natural, evolved truths.
Countries with a tradition of emigration have a specific and peculiar problem: people leave, set up shop somewhere else, have kids, and tell their kids about “home.” As the kids grow up, saturated in both the culture of their birth and their parents’ tales, “home” moves on and develops. So when the parents or (more often) the kids show up, the image in their minds has aged 20 or 30 years and they’re confused when the landscape before them has little to do with the stories they’ve been told.
That article (I read it too) was written for an American audience that has generations-old memories. The author, I suspect, has had to come to terms with the disconnect and wrote the article from that perspective.
As for the music culture in Ireland, I have longer views on that, but y’all will have to wait until I’ve lived there a little longer before you get to hear them. ;)
I tend to be deeply suspicious of the “real Ireland”, mainly because I dislike the agenda that often goes with it. Also in an imagined sense I live outside it to an extent.
Benedict Anderson has some good stuff on the idea, but you’ll catch the highlights here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_Communities)
It could be mere contrariness on my part of course.