Article

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

John Millar

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 6 (2020)

Pages: 81-94 | Published Online: July 2020

https://doi.org/10.64208/DEGH4661

Abstract

An integral part of the country music dance circuit, ‘social dances’ take place in community halls, hotel ballrooms and lounge bars every weekend in the Northwest of Ireland. Throughout country music’s period of relative decline and into its contemporary resurgence in popularity, social dances have played a significant role in both maintaining the fanbase of the music’s older cohort of fans while providing regular employment and performance opportunities for today’s younger artists. With the focus on dance and regular communally-experienced events, these dances have helped shape both the community of which the country music scene is composed, as well as its particular musical and sonic characteristics. This article will look at how this ecosystem operates, both in terms of local community, social events, and as part of the wider country music scene in Ireland. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2017, the article shows how social dances bridge the gap between the ‘country and Irish’ scene of the latter half of the twentieth century and its twenty-first century incarnation. By looking at how economic and functional imperatives have affected the music’s development, I show how social dances of the Northwest have played a signal role in creating the contemporary country music scene.

Keywords: Ethnomusicology, Country Music, Scenes, Dance

Author: John Millar