Article

“Pretty Young Artistes” and “The Queen of Irish Fiddlers”: Intelligibility, Gender, and The Irish Nationalist Imagination

Tes Slominski

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 2 (2013)

Pages: 1-21 | Published Online: 2013

https://doi.org/10.64208/DSZM9798

Abstract

This article begins to investigate the historiographical disjuncture between the documented public activity of women traditional musicians in early twentieth-century Ireland and their subsequent erasure from the narrative of Irish traditional music history. After a brief exegesis of the categories by which we can understand women's musical participation in the past, I argue that metaphorical connections between women and nation in force in the early twentieth century rendered some women intelligible as traditional musicians but prevented others from participating in public music-making.

Keywords: Irish traditional music, women, nationalist imagination

Author: Tes Slominski