Article

Locality, Identity and Practice in Choral Singing: The Queen's Island Victoria Male Voice Choir of Belfast

Sarah Jane Gibson

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 4 (2016)

Pages: 95-111 | Published Online: June 2016

https://doi.org/10.64208/XEXB3358

Abstract

The Queen's Island Victoria male voice choir is a local music-making group in Belfast that has sustained itself for over one hundred years. The choir was founded in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in 1912 and continues to operate despite the decline of the original shipbuilding industry. This article considers why the initial group of working class men chose to form a choir. It examines various factors that influenced the choir’s formation and how the members have reimagined themselves during over a century of practice. Ethnographic research suggests that the identity of the choir may be drawn from members’ religious and musical communities of practice rather than a locality. Their musical practice connects them with the male voice choral traditions of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, whilst regular performances in Protestant churches around the Province provide them with a religious performance context. Throughout this discussion attention is drawn to the complexity of their Northern Irish identity and to how this group negotiates this identity through their musical practice.

Keywords: Male voice choirs, identity, locality, so far Northern Ireland

Author: Sarah Jane Gibson