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Williams, Sean. Focus: Irish Traditional Music. Focus on Music Series. New York: Routledge, 2010. xxii, 284 pp., maps, photos, musical examples, glossary, listening guide, indexes, CD.
Irish traditional music has fans across the world, many based in Ireland and within the numerous communities of diasporic Irish in America, Australia, and New Zealand, but also among people with no Irish links whatsoever, such as its large fan base across Europe, Russia, and Japan, to name a few. Yet an extended introduction to this repertoire and its practices directed at contemporary interests has been lacking for some time. Focus: Irish Traditional Music has been conceived primarily as a textbook for use in an (American) academic teaching environment, but it is likely to be useful to anyone with a serious interest in Irish traditional music. Along with discussions of the sounds of Irish traditional music, Williams introduces a range of ethnomusicological topics, locating the sounds within their wider social settings.
The book is organized around three broad themes. Part 1 is titled "Irish Music in Place and Time." It provides a concise historical survey of the soundscapes of the island from the time of its earliest inhabitants to the present, highlighting critical historical junctures that have shaped the music and the ways in which it is conceptualized. Major forces include Christianity, its dissemination, challenges, and developments; invasions and political shifts and struggles; agricultural activities, rural modes of sociability, famine, and immigration; urbanization and the...