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  • Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song Man

    Bright Star of the West by Williams, Sean; Laoire, Lillis Ó;

    Joe Heaney, Irish Song Man

    Series: American Musicspheres;

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 54.00
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    25 798 Ft

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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 14 April 2011

    • ISBN 9780195321180
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages264 pages
    • Size 155x236x27 mm
    • Weight 567 g
    • Language English
    • Illustrations 16 halftones, 32 music examples
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    Short description:

    Bright Star of the West examines the life, repertoire, and influence of Ireland's greatest sean-nos (old-style) singer, Joe Heaney (1919-1984). Best known for popularising this form of Gaelic a cappella folk song in the United States, authors Seans Williams and Lillis O Laoire reveal the ways in which Heaney's life story demonstrates the intertwining of music with political memory and cultural understanding.

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    Long description:

    Bright Star of the West traces the life, repertoire, and influence of Joe Heaney, Ireland's greatest sean-nós ("old style") singer. Born in 1919, Joe Heaney grew up in a politically volatile time, as his native Ireland became a democracy. He found work and relative fame as a singer in London before moving to Scotland. Eventually, like many others searching for greater opportunity, he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a doorman while supplementing his income with appearances at folk festivals, concerts and clubs. As his reputation and following grew, Heaney gained entry to the folk music scene and began leading workshops as a visiting artist at several universities. In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Heaney America's highest honor in folk and traditional arts, the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship. Heaney's works did not become truly popular in his homeland until many years after his death. Today he is hailed as a seminal figure of traditional song and is revered by those who follow traditional music.

    Authors Sean Williams and Lillis Ó Laoire address larger questions about song, identity, and culture. They explore the deep ambivalence both the Irish and Irish-Americans felt toward the traditional aspects of their culture, examining other critical issues, such as gender and masculinity, authenticity, and contemporary marketing and consumption of sean-nós singing in both Ireland and the United States. Comingling Heaney's own words with the authors' comprehensive research and analysis, Bright Star of the West weaves a poignant critical biography of the man, the music, and his continuing legacy in Ireland and the United States.

    ...this is a labour not just of love but of theoretically informed expertise and intimate knowledge. It will be a rich resource for ethnomusicology and for questions of migration, identity, and gender, while students of Irish music and oral poetry will find it indispensable.

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    Table of Contents:

    Introduction: Singing the Dark Away
    Sean-nós Singing
    1. Sean-nós Singing in Theory and Practice
    2. The Performance of Sean-nós in Connemara
    The Iconic Repertoire
    3. Singing the Famine
    4. The Religious Laments
    5. The Medieval Transformed
    Masculinity in a Musical Context
    6. Irish Masculinities: The Irish Tenor and the Sean-nós Singer
    7. Fighting Words, Fighting Music: The Performative Male
    Joe Heaney in America
    8. The Irishman at the Threshold
    9. The Folk Revival and the Search for Authenticity
    Guide to Pronunciation
    References
    Discography
    Index

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