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| | Irish Music, Roots and Branches | PopMatters Music Feature |
 | | Instead of asking what Irish music is, consider the history of its genres, musical conceptions, lyrical texts, vocal and playing styles, instruments, melodies, rhythms, modes of learning and cultural transmission, dance forms, performance contexts and -- as Raymond Williams might have put it -- the structure of musical feeling. |
 | | All that is beyond this essay's thrust, but what we know of Irish roots music comes from the work of aficionados who have asked just those kinds of questions, while listening carefully to and documenting older folk forms to appreciate what might qualify a given music as distinctively Irish. |
 | | Interested in oral and lyrical traditions, seeking old Gaelic songs, epic ballads, hornpipes, jigs, reels and other dances, lullabies, work songs and the keening death laments, Lomax hooked up with the BBC folk music documentation office, and engaged Dublin native, folklore collector and virtuoso singer and multi-instrumentalist Seamus Ennis as his Irish research collaborator. |
| www.popmatters.com /music/features/020315-stpatrick-stone.html (1659 words) |
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