Article

Learning by Ear: Multimodal Listening and the Embodiment of Irish Traditional Music and Dance

William Kearney

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 10 (2025)

Pages: 74-90 | Published Online: 30 June 2025

https://doi.org/10.64208/LBFX7142

Abstract

This article forwards the case for a more holistic understanding of the process of listening and its influence on the development of individual style and aesthetic in Irish traditional music and dance. While listening is seen as being vital to embodying key technical, stylistic and aesthetic traits of the tradition, it is typically understood as being an audible experience. However, aside from listening to audiorecordings, listening experiences also include visual and any other co-present sensory information. Asrecent thought on listening shows, this information is processed based on the prior experiential knowledge of the listener. In becoming a musician or dancer, the individual develops a unique prior experiential knowledge which associates sound (gesture) with physical gesture articulated in specific ways. As such, it is argued here that during the enculturation process, a musician or dancer develops certain expectations which account for their individual sense of style and aesthetic. Similarly, because these expectations have been developed in tandem with an association between sound and the manipulation of their instrument/body, it follows that even monomodal sources, such as audio recordings, are listened to from an embodied multimodal perspective.

Author: William Kearney | ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3006-9872