Article

A New Track for Paddy’s ‘Race-horse’: Political Song in Shaping Pittsburgh’s Irish Diaspora

Peter Gilmore

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 4 (2016)

Pages: 24-43 | Published Online: June 2016

https://doi.org/10.64208/XFAV7762

Abstract

Irish immigrants in the United States in the 1790s brought with them a revolutionary republican ideology and knowledge of the United Irish songbook Paddy's Resource. Reprinted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Paddy’s Resource suggests both contemporaneous political and social views and the songs and tunes which would have been known in Ulster and among emigrants. A number of these tunes were collected from Pennsylvania fiddlers and fifers in the mid-twentieth century. The political songs published in Paddy’s Resource helped to shape a diasporic community while supplying and reinforcing the corpus of tunes traded among traditional musicians.

Keywords: Traditional song, politics, Ireland, USA, James Porter

Author: Peter Gilmore