Conditions of possibility: changes in the popular music culture and the development of country & Irish music

Abstract

This dissertation considers the idea of 'conditions of possibility' as a model for the analysis of particular social phenomena. This is explored through an examination of the emergence of Country & Irish music, a largely ignored and widely denigrated genre of popular music that developed out of the Irish showband dancehall circuit of the 1960s.

The genre is considered particularly suitable for these purposes as it has not previously received sustained academic attention. There are no significant accounts of Country & Irish music, while literature on the general subject of showbands is limited to primarily biographical and anecdotal accounts by participating musicians (Gallagher 1997; McCourt 1992; O‘Keefe 2002). In order to construct an anthropologically and sociologically plausible account of the application of the idea of conditions of possibility to emergence of genre, I have adopted a historical-ethnographic approach while situating the musicological, anthropological, and sociological dimensions of my research within a broader theoretical analysis of significant social and economic change in Irish life in the 1960s.

To that end, I have considered aspects of the promotion and reception of the music by examining not only the musicians involved but the audience, and ancillary management and business structures, in the context of the cultural patterns and social environment within which the genre was created and consumed. I have considered these matters in the context of a contrastive-comparative analysis of the careers of two showbands active at this time: ‗The Mainliners‘ (1963 to date) who were among the originators of the Country & Irish style, and 'The Plattermen‘ (1958-74) whose repertoire was predominantly based on contemporary British and American pop music.

Date of Award	Sept 2012
Original language	English
Supervisor	Anthony McCann (Supervisor) & Liz Doherty (Supervisor)