Agitate, educate, organise

Partisanship, popular music and the Northern Ireland conflict

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7976263
AutoresSean Campbell (0000-0001-5465-5107, Anglia Ruskin University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen39
Número2
Páginas233-256
Fecha de publicación2020-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPopular Music (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0261-1430 • E-ISSN: 1474-0095
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0261143019000242
OpenAlexW3082335196
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas16

This article explores popular-musical invocations of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968–1998), focussing specifically on the period between the IRA hunger strike of 1981 and the British Government's Broadcasting Act in 1988. Whilst most songs addressed to the ‘Troubles’ were marked by (lyrical) abstraction and (political) non-alignment, this period witnessed a series of efforts that issued upfront and partisan views. The article explores two such instances – by That Petrol Emotion and Easterhouse – addressing each band's respective views as well as the specific performance strategies that they deployed in staging their interventions. Drawing on original interviews that the author has conducted with the musicians – alongside extensive archival research of print and audio/visual media – the article explores the bands’ songs in conjunction with salient ancillary media (such as record sleeves, videos and interviews), yielding a more nuanced account of popular music's engagement with the ‘Troubles’ than has been offered in existing work (which often assumes the form of broad surveys

Aesthetics · Art · Conjunction (astronomy · Government (linguistics · Linguistics · Media studies · Musical · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Popular music · Salient · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Theater, Performance, and Music History · Theatre and Performance Studies