Ethnomusicology

Ireland

Ethnomusicology Ireland is a peer-reviewed online journal for research on music in its social and cultural context. Although it serves primarily as a forum for the research community based in Ireland, it welcomes submissions from all other locations and relevant disciplines.

Ethnomusicology Ireland is committed to identifying, addressing, and opposing all forms of racism and discrimination.

The journal is produced by an editorial team working under the Irish national committee of the ICTMD. You can contact the editor at editorei@ictmd.ie and the reviews editor at reviewsei@ictmd.ie.

Call for Contributions - Ethnomusicology Ireland 11 2026 Special issue “Broadcasting Music and Dance”

Ethnomusicology Ireland is the open-access, online, and peer-reviewed journal of ICTMD Ireland. We are now accepting contributions for the planned publication of a special issue in 2026, with the theme of “Broadcasting Music and Dance”. For this guest-edited issue, Ethnomusicology Ireland welcomes new research on the topic of broadcasting music and dance (contributions addressing any form of traditional or new media broadcasting are encouraged). We are particularly interested in contributions that address one or more of the following themes:

  • History and commemoration: 2026 coincides with the 100th year anniversary of the establishment of 2RN (as Irish public broadcaster RTÉ was first named). To mark this milestone – one shared by many public broadcasters around the world in this decade – we invite contributions that reflect on local and international histories, approaches to commemoration, archives, and the futures of music and dance in public service broadcasting.

  • Sustainability: This theme invites contributions that address the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of broadcasting, of music, and of dance traditions. This could include addressing public policy, regulatory frameworks, changing funding models, precarity, DIY culture and aesthetics, and curatorial practices.

  • Technologies of sound and space: This theme invites historical and historiographic reflection and theorisation on mediations between sounds, technologies, and human and non-human worlds. Contributions might consider continuities and disjunctures that continue to define making and broadcasting sound and movement, the relationship between old and new technologies (e.g., analogue and digital radio, television, podcasting, streaming platforms), preservation modalities, and human agency and aesthetics.

  • Remembering and forgetting broadcast experience: This theme invites consideration of archives in their many guises – from institutional repositories and listener-generated recordings, to the embodied knowledge that is passed between practitioners and their apprentices. Contributions might consider the formation of archives, preservation policies, collecting practices, and un/intentional mechanisms for forgetting, as well as the relationships that shape how knowledge and experience are transmitted between generations of broadcasters, musicians, dancers, and their audiences.

  • Reception and audiences: From models of radio as a two-way medium (Bertholt Brecht, 1932) to models of cross-platform, crowdsourced, and interactive content production in the 21st century, the nature of audiences has been a persistent concern for broadcasters, policy makers, scholars, and critics alike. This theme invites consideration of how audiences are imagined, relationships with and between audiences, exploration of participatory models of production, the audience’s role in remembering and in (re)constructing archives of content, or any new research related to reception and audiences.

  • New research addressing theories, histories, and practices at the intersection of broadcasting, music, and dance.

Submissions from all levels of research are welcome and guest editors particularly encourage submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers. Articles should be between 5000 and 8000 words (including all endnote and bibliographic material). Journal information and style guide is available at https://www.ictmd.ie/journal. 

This issue of the journal is guest-edited by Helen Gubbins and Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw, along with the Ethnomusicology Ireland general editorial team working under the Irish national committee of the ICTMD.

Final articles for consideration should be submitted to specialissue@ictmd.ie by 1 September 2025. Interim inquiries/proposals are gladly received by the editors. Fáilteofar roimh iarratais i nGaeilge.

Ethnomusicology Ireland is also now commissioning and accepting suggestions for reviews in 2026. Please direct your queries to reviewsei@ictmd.ie.

The editorial team looks forward to reviewing your submissions.

Issue 9 2024

Previous Issues

  • Band Practice: Class, Taste and Identity in Ulster Loyalist Flute Bands - Gordon Ramsey

    Technology, Performance, and Presence - Karen Power

    From Donegal to Senegal: An experience of the process of collaboration in intercultural ensemble practice - Desi Wilkinson

    The Linguistic Turn at the Turn of the Tune: the language of ‘contemporary ensemble’ in Irish traditional music - Niall Keegan

    Playing Together and Solitary Play: Musicking and Surfing - Timothy J. Cooley (Cuailgne)

    General Editor: Colin Quigley
    Web Editor: Tony Langlois

    Editorial Board: Aileen Dillane, Suzel Reily, Thérèse Smith, Desi Wilkinson 

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  • "Pretty Young Artistes" and "the Queen of Irish Fiddlers": Intelligibility, Gender and the Irish Nationalist Imagination - Tes Slominski

    North Indian Classical Music and the Kolkata Experience: Alchemical Schismogenesis and Being-in-the-world in a Musical Way - Matthew Noone

    Hooks and New Tunes: Contemporary Irish Dance Music in its Transnational Context - Andy Hillhouse

    Regions, Regionality and Regionalisation in Irish Traditional Music: The Role of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann - Daithí Kearney

    Musical Development in Irish Traditional Music: An Exploration of Family Influences - Jessica Cawley

    In Search of the Original "Screwball" - Seán Ó Cadhla

    General Editor:  Colin Quigley 
    Web Editor:  Ray Casserly 

    Editorial Board: Thérèse Smith, Desi Wilkinson, Aileen Dillane, Suzel Reily, Roxanne O’Connell, Tony Langlois

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  • Dancing in Southwest Donegal: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives - Conor Caldwell

    Teaching the Tunes: Understanding the Role of Irish Traditional Music in Higher Education in North America - Colin Harte

    Singing the Way: Music and Pilgrimage in Maharashtra - Jaime Jones

    Poetic Versus Linear Learning - Caoimhín Mac Aoidh

    Performing local identity: Place, community and dance in Timişoara, Romania - Liz Melish

    'Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch': Authentic Ceòl Mór in New Zealand - Daniel Milosavljevic

    Studying the 'step' of a Donegal fiddler: Examining methodologies for the ethnographical study of issues of tuning, intonation and inflection with specific regard to the fiddle music of Co. Donegal - Aidan O'Donnell

    Interdisciplinary in Irish Music Pedagogy - Sean Williams

    Book reviews:

    • Robert Faulkner, Icelandic Men and Me: Sagas of Singing, Self and Everyday Life (Ashgate, 2013) - Rikhardur H. Fridriksson

    • Suzel Ana Reilly and Katherine Brucher (eds.), Brass Bands of the World: Militarism, Colonial Legacies, and Local Music Making (Ashgate, 2013) - Jaime Jones

    • Um Haekyung, Korean Musical Drama: P'ansori and the Making of Tradition in Modernity (Ashgate, 2013) - Lonán Ó Briain

    Editors:  Tony Langlois and Liz Doherty  
    Reviews Editor:  Méabh Ní Fhuartháin 
    Technical Editor:  Seán McElwain 

    Review Panel: Barley Norton, Fintan Vallely, Desi Wilkinson, Jaime Jones, Lonán Ó Briain, Aileen Dillane, Rikhardur H. Fridriksson, Colin Quigley, Orfhlaith Ni Bhriain, Simon McKerrell, Adam Kaul, Suzel Ana Reily, Roxanne O’Connell, Niall Keegan, Matt Cranitch, Thomas Johnston and Thérèse Smith.

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  • The Mongrel metaphor; an arts practice response to understanding musical hybridisation - Matthew 'Mattu' Noone

    A New Track for Paddy's 'Race-Horse': Political Song in Shaping Pittsburgh's Irish Diaspora - Peter Gilmore

    Bulgarian tracks: the road to the Koprivshtitsa Festival (and back again, and again) - Liz Mellish

    "If You play the talking drum they will be happy": The Role of the Gángan in Christ Apostolic Church Dublin - Rebecca Uberoi

    Locality, Identity and Practice in Choral Sining: The Queen's Island Victoria Male Voice Choir of Belfast - Sarah Jane Gibson

    Book Reviews: Mary Louise O'Donnell, Ireland's Harp: The Shaping of Identity (UCD Press, 2014) by Emily Cullen; and John Baily, War, Exile, and the Music of Afghanistan: The Ethnographer's Tale (Routledge, 2015) - Nasruddin Saljuqi

    Recording Review: Cork Gamelan Ensemble, The Three Forges (Diatribe, 2015) - Anaïs Verhulst

    Editor:  Tony Langlois 
    Deputy Editor:  Aileen Dillane 
    Reviews Editor:  Méabh Ní Fhuartháin
    Technical Editor:  Seán McElwain 

    Peer Review Panel: Helen Phelan, Steve Coleman, Byron Duek, Ciaran Ryan, Thérèse Smith, Niamh Nic Ghabhann, Laudan Nooshin, Desi Wilkinson, Jaime Jones, Áine Mangaoang, Verena Commins, Michael G Kelly, Colin Quigley. 

    Reviews Panel:
    Emily Cullen, Sandra Joyce, John Millar, Nasruddin Saljoqi, Anaïs Verhulst

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  • Do We Still Need To Think Musically? (Musings about an Old Friend, Fishing Nets, Templates, and Much More) – Marcello Sorce-Keller

    Encoding authenticity in radio music: Renfro Valley Barn Dance and Kentucky folk music - Helen Gubbins

    The Aesthetics of sean-nós song through the Gaze of the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Adjudicators – Eamonn Costello

    Radical Ethnomusicology: Towards a politics of “No Borders” and “insurgent musical citizenship” – Calais, Dunkerque and Kurdistan – Ed Emery

    Choreographing the Self: Staged Folklore and Popular Music in Rural Tajikistan – Federico Spinetti

    A Destabilising Pleasure: Representations of Alternative Music in Irish Fanzines – Ciaran Ryan

    Antonis’ Wedding: The Moment, The Music and Rites Between Tradition and Modernity in Cyprus – Michalis Poupazis

    Listening to dissonance: Invoking a reflexive listening practice in researching musical experience – Helen O’Shea

    Collecting Folk Music in the Land of the Zemzems: Report on the Turkmen expedition of 2011 – János Sipos

    Singing the Memory of Sepharad: Traditional Sephardic Song and its Interpretation – Katerina Garcia


    Reviews

    Desi Wilkinson, Call to the Dance: An Experience of the Socio-Cultural World of Traditional Breton Music and Dance - Aoife Granville

    Sandra Joyce & Helen Lawlor (Eds.), Harp Studies - Tristan le Govic

    Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, Flowing Tides. History & Memory in an Irish Soundscape - Niall Vallely

    Tommy Peoples - Ó Am go hAm/From Time to Time: Tutor, Text and Tunes - Verena Commins

    Editor: Tony Langlois
    Deputy Editor: Aileen Dillane
    Reviews Editor:  Méabh Ní Fhuartháin
    Technical Editor: John Millar

    Peer Review Panel: John O’ Flynn, Ioannis Tsioulakis, John Morgan O’Connell, Rosemary Day, Aileen Dillane, Robin Parmar, Griffith J. Rollefson, Liz Mellish, Kevin Dawe, Aoife Granville, Martin J. Power, Alan Dormer, Christopher Smith, Razia Sultonova

    Review Panel: Aoife Granville, Tristan le Govic, Niall Vallely, Verena Commins

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  • “Trutz, Blanke Hans” – Musical and Sound Recollections of North Sea Storm Tides in Northern Germany - Britta Sweers

    Gender and Culture: Revoicing Traditional Song in Context - Lillis Ó Laoire

    (Hy-)Brazil, Celtic land? An Ethnomusicological Study of the Formation and Characteristics of the Irish-Celtic Music Scene in Brazil - Caetano Maschio Santos

    From Ethnic to Sonic Irishness: The Reception of Irish Traditional Music in Germany - Felix Morgenstern

    ‘This is Jiving Country’: Country Music Dancing in the Northwest of Ireland - John Millar

    “It really has pushed the boundaries”: The Role of the Violin in the Transformation of Karnatak Music - Anaïs Verhulst

    Reviews

    Stuart Baile, Trouble Songs: Music and Conflict in Northern Ireland - Michael Lydon

    Úna Monaghan, For - Clíona Doris

    John O’Keeffe, The Masses of Seán and Peadar Ó Riada: Explorations in Vernacular Chant - Stephanie Ford

    Helen Phelan, Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual, and the New Irish - Susan Motherway

    Tommie Dell Smith, The Groove Is Not Trivial - Kathryn Alexander

    Timothy D. Taylor, Music in the World: Selected Essays - Felix Morgenstern

    Brian Schrag and Kathleen J. Van Buren, Make Arts for a Better Life–Working with Communities - Fran Garry

    Editor:  Jaime Jones 
    Deputy Editor:  Aileen Dillane 
    Reviews Editor:  Méabh Ní Fhuartháin
    Technical Editor:  John Millar

    Peer Review Panel: Kate Bevan-Baker, Aileen Dillane, Eileen Hogan, Simon Keegan-Phipps, John Millar, Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, Adrian Cahill, Ioannis Tsioulakis and Harry White.  

    Review Panel:
    Kathryn Alexander, Clíona Doris, Stephanie Ford, Michael Lyon, Felix Morgenstern, Susan Motherway.

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  • Special Issue: Women and Traditional/Folk Music

    Women and Traditional/Folk Music: Building a Research Field - Méabh Ní Fhuartháin

    Taming “The Tradition Bear”: Reflections on Gender, Sexuality and Race in the Transmission of Irish Traditional Music - Tes Slominski

    121 Stories: The Impact of Gender on Participation in Irish Traditional Music - Úna Monaghan

    American Folk Music by Shaker Women and Girls: The Case of Ann Maria Love - Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett.

    “The Man and his Music”: Gender Representation, Cultural Capital and the Irish Traditional Music Canon - Verena Commins

    “Clap Your Hands”: Gender Role Distribution in Flamenco Guitar - Massimo Cattaneo

    Where She Stands: Conversations with Nóirín Ní Riain - Sarah Fons

    A Woman and her Cello: Ilse de Ziah's Approach to Irish Traditional Music - Kaylie Streit

    Commercialisation, Celtic and Women in Irish Traditional Music - Joanne Cusack

    Mother Music: Socially Embedded Creative Practice and the Marketisation of Irish Traditional Music - Tríona Ní Shíocháin

    The (Non-)Gendered Practice of Irish Traditional Lullabies - Ciara Thompson

    Unheard - Paula Ryan

    Truth is the Daughter of Time - Karan Casey

    Reviews

    Music as Creative Practice by Nicholas Cook - Anna Falkenau

    The Bodhrán: Experimentation, Innovation, and the Traditional Irish Frame Drum by Colin F. Harte - Cormac Byrne

    The Housekeepers: Irish Music Played on Fiddle and Concertinaby Doireann Glackin and Sarah Flynn - Aileen Dillane

    Editor:  Jaime Jones 
    Deputy Editor:  Aileen Dillane 
    Reviews Editor:  Méabh Ní Fhuartháin
    Technical Editor:  John Millar

    Special Issue Editors: Verena Commins, Síle Denvir, Úna Monaghan, Méabh Ní Fhuartháin

    Peer Review Panel: Ann Byrne, Ann-Marie 'Annie' Hanlon, Jaime Jones, Sandra Joyce, Adam Kaul, Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Rebecca Miller, Lillis Ó Laoire, Helen O’Shea, Adrian Scahill, Thérèse Smith, Sean Williams

    Review Panel: Cormac Byrne, Anna Falkenau, Aileen Dillane

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  • Feminist Musical Activism in Ireland (2018-2021) and Feminist Musicology -Laura Watson

    Who Owns the Songs? Voice, Songs, and Ownership - Thérèse Smith

    In Pursuit of Haunting Noises: Two Case Studies from Irish Popular Music in the Digital Era - Michael Lydon

    Intimacy without Proximity: What COVID can Teach us about Community, Ecology, and Musicking - Kevin McNally

    Carnage at the Trisco: an Ethnographic Account of the Trad Disco at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann - Pamela Cotter

    Reviews

    Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit by Matt Brennan - Georgina Hughes

    Genealogies of Music and Memory: Gluck in the Nineteenth-Century Parisian Imagination by Mark Everist - Michael Lee

    Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music edited by Áine Mangaoang, John O’Flynn and Lonán Ó Briain - Méabh Ní Fhuartháin

    Sounding Dissent: Rebel Songs, Resistance, and Irish Republicanism by Stephen R. Millar - Adrian Scahill

    Collecting Music in the Aran Islands: A Century of History and Practice by Deirdre Ní Chonghaile - Mairéad Conneely

    Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Irish Traditional Music by Tes Slominski - Kate Spanos

    Music and Sound in the Life and Literature of James Joyce: Joyces Noyces by Gerry Smyth - Kevin Farrell

    Editor:  Jaime Jones 
    Deputy Editor:  Aileen Dillane 
    Reviews Editor:  Michael Lydon
    Technical Editor:  John Millar

    Peer Review Panel: Aileen Dillane, Daithí Kearney, Jaime Jones, Maria Mendonça, John Millar, Anne Mulhall, Lonán Ó Briain, Jonathan Stock, Adrian Scahill, Anaïs Verhulst

    Reviews Panel: Mairéad Conneely, Kevin Farrell, Georgina Hughes, Michael Lee, Méabh Nı́ Fhuartháin, Adrian Scahill, Kate Spanos

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ETHNOMUSICOLOGY IRELAND EDITORAL TEAM 2024-26

  • Méabh Ní Fhuarthaín

    EDITOR

    Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin is Head of Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway, specializing in Irish Music and Dance Studies. She co-edited a special issue of Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies (2019) and also, the special issue 'Women and traditional/folk music' Ethnomusicology Ireland 7 (2021). Other recent publications include research on commemorative representations of Ireland through music; pop music and emigration; masculinities and Irish popular music and dance genealogies in Galway. Méabh has a monograph forthcoming, Heading to the Fleadh: Festival, Cultural Revival and Irish Traditional Music, 1951–1969 (CUP, 2024).

  • Felix Morgenstern

    DEPUTY EDITOR

    Dr Felix Morgenstern is an ethnomusicologist and Irish traditional music practitioner from Berlin. He currently works as lecturer in ethnomusicology at the University of Würzburg and as guest lecturer in Irish music studies at the University of Vienna. Felix’ research interests include global/translocal Irish musics, intercultural musical transactions, the interstices between music and nationalism, and the performance of intersectional masculinities. From 2021 to 2023, he was PI on the FWF-funded postdoctoral research project “Irish Folk in Austria” at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and held an IRC doctoral scholarship at the University of Limerick from 2018 to 2020.

  • Joanne Cusack

    REVIEWS EDITOR

    Dr Joanne Cusack is a researcher, musician, and FairPlé activist. She is a first-class honours graduate of Dundalk Institute of Technology specialising in Irish traditional solo performance, and holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Maynooth University. Her research interests include applied ethnomusicology, cultural/critical studies, identity studies, feminist activism, and performance. As an activist, Joanne has contributed to the creation of numerous policy and support documents, and has been invited to speak at several events including most notably before the Oireachtas Joint Committee to discuss a safe and respectful working environment for the arts in October 2021. Aside from this, Joanne has an active record as an Irish traditional musician having performed both nationally and internationally.

  • William Kearney

    TECHNICAL EDITOR

    William Kearney is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar and Hume scholar at the Department of Music, Maynooth University, Ireland. His PhD research takes a choreomusicological approach to the study of embodiment in participatory Irish set dancing contexts with a particular focus on the traditions of the Cork/Kerry/Limerick border region of Ireland.