Collecting Music in the Aran Islands

Deirdre Ni Chonghaile is an ethnomusicologist and curator from the Aran Islands. Her work spans a variety of fields including music, broadcasting, film, public folklore, and digital humanities.

"an exemplary study... a feat of research."--Proinsias O Drisceoil "Feasta" "[An] exemplary work of historical scholarship. . . . A profoundly important and welcome celebration."--Paul Cowdell "Folklore" "A compelling and highly original study of Irish traditional music collecting. No author has previously undertaken such a comprehensive local study of music collections in Ireland, locating them both in terms of Irish cultural and wider disciplinary history. This is a major contribution."--Diarmuid O Giollain, University of Notre Dame "A fascinating insight into nearly 120 years of musical culture on the Aran Islands."-- "The Journal of Music" "A most remarkable book. . . . One of the most important and fascinating books about Irish traditional music in recent memory. Research like this is hard to conceive of in the first place, but realizing it with such skill and sensitivity is a different thing all together. This book is very, very highly recommended to fans of traditional music, but it should be read by anyone who has any interest in understanding the music's history. Top shelf stuff."--Daniel Neely "The Irish Echo" "A pioneering, masterful work. . . . [Ni Chonghaile's] adroit treatment of the music, its makers and its collectors provide a vivid sense of people, place and time. She has brought them in from the cold."--Mairead Conneely "Ethnomusicology Ireland" "Elegant and eloquent. . . . A tremendous achievement as a scholarly investigation into the collecting of songs and music on Aran."--Adrian Scahill "The Journal of Music" "Elegantly written... rapping more than a few sacred knuckles... it jolts the reader into modernizing their strict view of Irish singing culture."--Fintan Vallely "Folk Music Journal" "Ni Chonghaile's expertise in both musical scholarship and the Irish language adds value to her innovative contribution. Singers, musicians, and collectors emerge in their full humanity, their emotional attachment to their culture clearly apparent."--Lillis O Laoire, National University of Ireland, Galway "As a measured, critical, and deep histori-ography of collecting in the region, this work has no equal. For musicians and scholars of the materials being examined, it is normal to look through the lens of the collector rather than squarely at the collector. Collecting Music in the Aran Islands offers a valuable and necessary corrective to us all; it reinforces the importance of understanding who is doing the collecting, transcribing, translating, and notating, so that the materials can be most usefully contextu-alized."--Sean Williams "Journal of American Folklore"