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Evading National Identity: On Translocal Irish Folk Music in Austria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2023

FELIX MORGENSTERN
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Abstract

This article assesses how translocal Irish folk-music practices and their consumption in Austria elide the traumatic legacy of extreme nationalism in modern European history. Furthermore, it teases out the degree to which the affinity of Austrian performers and audiences with Irish folk music might provide an alternative sphere of cultural identification to indigenous Austrian folk-music practices. Combining ethnographic and historical inquiry, the article unravels how various nostalgically sustained imaginaries of Irishness find complex refractions in the Austrian present, while also interrogating the stakes of an emerging insistence upon the primacy of “the music itself” in ethnographic voices.

Zusammenfassung

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Artikel ergründet, inwiefern die translokale Praxis und Rezeption von irischer Folkmusik in Österreich das Erbe des extremen Nationalismus in der modernen europäischen Geschichte umgeht. Des Weiteren wird hinterfragt, in welchem Ausmaß die Affinität von österreichischen Künster*innen und deren Publikum mit irischer Folkmusik eine alternative kulturelle Identität zu einheimischen österreichischen Volksmusiktraditionen bietet. Auf der Grundlage ethnographischer und historischer Untersuchungen werden zudem nostalgisch-geprägte Vorstellungen von irischer Identität und deren Widerspiegelung in der österreichischen Gegenwart genauer betrachtet. Abschließend wird der in ethnographischen Interviews mit österreichischen Musiker*innen thematisierte Fokus auf „die Musik an sich“ untersucht.

Type
Research Article
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , July 2023 , pp. 51 - 68
Copyright
© International Council for Traditional Music 2023

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