Helen O'Shea is the author of The Making of Irish Traditional Music (Cork University Press, 2008) and No Better Boy: Listening to Paddy Canny (Lilliput Press, 2023).
The recent " sonic turn " in the human sciences has introduced new sets of questions and methodol... more The recent " sonic turn " in the human sciences has introduced new sets of questions and methodologies, foregrounding sound, hearing and listening and critiquing conventional ways of understanding them. In this article I examine theories of listening and trace the history of analytical listening practices, which aim to produce objective knowledge. I compare these with receptive listening practices, which aim for subjective understanding. I then examine seminal musical ethnographies in which encounters with dissonant sounds, social interactions and listening practices led to transformations in understanding musical experience. I conclude that a reflexive and open listening practice in fieldwork would precede, but not replace, analytical listening. The ability to listen well lies at the heart of the ethnomusicologist's work; yet, the ways in which we listen remain largely unexamined. The recent " sonic turn " , 1 which has informed scholarship across the human sciences, offers opportunities to do this. Displacing the late-twentieth-century " spatial turn " —which drew on metaphors of space and place to analyse power relations and questions of identity—the sonic turn introduced new sets of questions and methodologies, foregrounding sound, hearing and listening and critiquing conventional ways of understanding them. Central to this interdisciplinary field are phenomenological and epistemological questions relating to sound. Already, this suggests a dichotomy between approaches seeking objective knowledge and those aimed at subjective understanding. While it is no longer sufficient to observe, record, transcribe and analyse in order to explain musical culture, this work is still a necessary part of producing a musical ethnography. The emphasis in fieldwork, however, has shifted towards a collaborative approach to understanding others' lived musical experience and a reflexive methodology, involving an examination of the values, assumptions and habits of mind one brings to the field (Titon 2008). 2 Reflexivity also applies to one of the ethnomusicologist's essential research tools: listening practices and the values and attitudes they incorporate. In this article I focus on how we listen and the techniques by which we come to experience sounds and to know them. I examine a range of theories and practices as well as the implications of employing certain kinds of listening in ethnomusicological research. I then turn to seminal works of musical ethnography in which the authors reveal how interrogating ways of listening that to them were socially or musically dissonant, led to transformations in their understanding of musical experience. I conclude by advocating that a reflexive and open listening practice in fieldwork precedes a more focused and analytical listening. But first, I want to consider what we mean when we speak of listening. Listening is a particular way of being in the world and of acknowledging our relationships with that world and the people in it. Questions about what it means to listen—and to be a good listener—have exercised philosophers across the centuries and fall into two distinct categories. Our everyday understanding of the good listener draws on Aristotle's concept of
As the 2016 season for ‘musical pilgrimages’ to Ireland’s summer schools, pub sessions and festiv... more As the 2016 season for ‘musical pilgrimages’ to Ireland’s summer schools, pub sessions and festivals begins, I’m posting this early version of a chapter of The Making of Irish Traditional Music (Cork University Press, 2008), in which I examine the reported expectations and experiences of musical pilgrims in relation to ideas about musical identification, authenticity, and the commodification of Irish culture.
As the Australian higher education population further diversifies as a result of federal governme... more As the Australian higher education population further diversifies as a result of federal government policy changes, the collective understanding of effective university teaching in the Australian context will need to evolve to incorporate such shifts. The Australian Government has set clear targets for increased university participation of people from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds. While their performance is comparable to students from higher SES backgrounds, many LSES students face particular challenges in undertaking university study. Using a ‘success-focused’ (Devlin 2009) methodological approach, this research documents the factors that a sample of 53 later-year, LSES students at one Australian university report have assisted them to manage and overcome the challenges of remaining at, progressing through and succeeding in their studies. The most helpful factors included teacher availability to help, their enthusiasm and dedication; and their effective communication with students particularly but not exclusively around assessment requirements.
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2011
... 2011.605227 Marcia Devlin a * & Helen O'Shea... more ... 2011.605227 Marcia Devlin a * & Helen O'Shea a pages 529-535. ... Noonan, Nugent, & Scales, 20082. Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H. and Scales, B. 2008. Review of Australian higher education , Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. ...
We are examining actions that teachers take to convert tasks into learning opportunities. In this... more We are examining actions that teachers take to convert tasks into learning opportunities. In this paper, we contrast ways that three teachers convert the same task into lessons, and the way that their lessons reflect their intent. We found that the teachers did what they intended to do, that this was connected to their appreciation of the mathematics involved, and directly influenced the learning opportunities of the students. To the extent that the potential of the task was reduced, this seemed due to the lack of mathematical confidence in the case of two of the teachers.
This article examines some of the ways in which defining a set of musical practices as “national”... more This article examines some of the ways in which defining a set of musical practices as “national” reproduces both the stereotypes adopted by colonizers and inverted in anti-colonial movements, and also the exclusions that are integral to the processes of nation formation. As one of the cultural forms nationalists enlist in their project, music is regarded by them as reflecting the imagined political, territorial, and cultural unity of the putative nation’s people. I use the case of Irish traditional music, and the exemplar of the song “Danny Boy,” first to demonstrate that the meanings attributed to musical texts are contingent upon the social and political circumstances of their production and consumption, and then to argue that the ideal Irish musician is discursively constructed as masculine.
Musical tropes signifying Irishness are now deeply embedded in western musical traditions. They a... more Musical tropes signifying Irishness are now deeply embedded in western musical traditions. They are also used in film music and advertising to denote a cluster of meanings associated with Irishness. Since the early 1990s, two global commercial developments—the recording industry’s ‘world music’ marketing category and the Irish theme pub—have reinforced this musical stereotyping, which falls into two broad categories: the slow, melancholy music that evokes sadness and spirituality, and the fast dance music associated with high-spirited earthiness.
Expectations of musical community, and claims to have located it, are common to scholarly and pop... more Expectations of musical community, and claims to have located it, are common to scholarly and popular narratives about music of many genres and locations—cathartic narratives that begin with the beauty of the rainbow and end with an eloquent account of the golden booty it yields. It is not the structure of these quests that I want to interrogate here, but the 'imaginative cultural narratives' 1 within which they take place, and in which the experience of making music becomes idealized. I will begin this examination by looking at a number of ways in which the Irish traditional music session has been represented, and misrepresented. Romancing the session Clare, it is said, is the heart of Irish traditional music, and, since no discerning tourist (let alone musician) would now be seen dead in a Doolin pub, East Clare is the new destination for musicians and followers seeking authentic Irish traditional music. 2 At sessions I regularly attended in two music pubs in Feakle, East Clare, however, the well‐documented authenticity of the area's music began to recede, like a mirage, as I advanced upon it. 3 One of those pubs, Pepper's, is widely known as a venue for Irish
This chapter considers the ways in which the musical scores of two film versions of the Ned Kelly... more This chapter considers the ways in which the musical scores of two film versions of the Ned Kelly story — Tony Richardson’s 1970 Ned Kelly and Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly, released in 2003 — construct the mythic anti-hero as both Australian and Irish, and in doing so reinforce a notion of an Irish component in an Australian cultural identity. While both films use source music based on late twentieth-century constructions of an (historically inaccurate) Irish–Australian music culture, the contrasting ways in which the scores use musical tropes of Irishness demonstrate that critical changes have taken place in understandings of both the Irish and the masculine components in Australian cultural identity and their representations in Australian popular culture.
The study of gender is ‘inherently a study of relations of asymmetrical power and opportunity’ (O... more The study of gender is ‘inherently a study of relations of asymmetrical power and opportunity’ (Ortner & Whitehead, 1981:4). In the masculine space of the Irish pub, women musicians respond to this power differential by adopting an array of tactics aimed at increasing their musical participation and enjoyment. The impediments to women’s public performance of Irish traditional music must also include consideration that the Irish pub is a social space in which women historically had no legitimate presence; but this is only part of the story. Untangling the complex relationships between music and gender in symbolic representations of the Irish nation further reveals a strand of cultural meanings that persists in configuring ‘woman’ and ‘music’, ‘Ireland’ and ‘nation’ in ways that are disempowering to women musicians today. This essay draws on Foucault’s theory of discourse to examine the gendered historical and contemporary representations of Irish music and musicians and on postmodern feminist theory of the performativity of gender to demonstrate how deeply embedded are our gendered conceptions of subjectivity, music, and nationality.
This article reports on a study of participants in a Weekend Warriors Program for 'lapsed' rock m... more This article reports on a study of participants in a Weekend Warriors Program for 'lapsed' rock musicians in Melbourne, Australia. It observes musicians over a six-week period that included a jam session , coaching sessions and a gig (concert). It examines the learning pathways of participants and their goals and experiences alongside those of the programme organisers within the comparative context of music learning practices among young and older musicians and in the light of academic research into the midlife ageing process. A question that arises from the data is the extent to which the experience and actions of middle-aged women musicians coincides with the literature on gender in youth rock music scenes and the literature on music, ageing and gender. The article concludes that the Weekend Warriors Program draws on the learning practices that the musicians involved had adopted in their youth and which act as a catalyst for their further musical and social participation and self-directed group learning. Age appeared to create no barrier to their enjoyment or their achievements; indeed in many ways it seemed to make them less inhibited and self-conscious in realising individual objectives that were further encouraged by working within a supportive if loosely bonded group. The Weekend Warriors Program: have fun making music again Weekend Warriors is an adventure that begins with a jam and ends with a gig. The Weekend Warrior program provides all the latest gear, the rehearsal space, a coach and even the other members of your band! After the jam you'll rehearse one night a week for four weeks and then finish off with a gig in a local club for your friends, family and fellow Warriors. Again it's all arranged, the Weekend Warrior program provides the staging, the sound, the lighting and even the roadies. All you have to do is show up, have fun and be a star!! 2 The Weekend Warriors Program was founded in 1993 by Skip Maggiora, a music store owner in Sacramento, California, who wanted to cater for the 'dormant' musicians who hung round his store, keeping alive memories of the bands they once played in, or dreams of the band they had hoped to form once career and family responsibilities had diminished. Adopted by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), the Weekend Warriors Program is now successfully operated elsewhere, including in the UK, where the Music Industries Association operates the programme under licence, and in Australia, where it has been operating since 2000 under the auspices of the Australian Music Association (AMA). Popular Music (2012) Volume 31/2.
The analysis of colonial discourse has focused on literary and visual texts. Music’s role in enac... more The analysis of colonial discourse has focused on literary and visual texts. Music’s role in enacting and resisting imperial power has received little attention. In Musical Elaborations (1991) Said writes of music’s transgressive faculty: its ability to cross over into other domains, to ‘attach itself to, and become a part of, social formations, to vary its articulations and rhetoric’ (70). In tracing a well-known song as it is co-opted by nationalists, emigrants, the imperial army and the popular music industry, I will illustrate Said’s proposition that musical practice may be ‘contrapuntal’: may embody and enact both imperial power and resistance to it. As an air and its variants move from the Irish countryside to its urban centres and the imperial hub of London and back again and as it is performed by street musicians, Irish nationalists, homesick emigrants, and all who identify with a stereotyped notion of Ireland, it illustrates some of the many ways in which musical meanings transmutate across time and space.
The recent " sonic turn " in the human sciences has introduced new sets of questions and methodol... more The recent " sonic turn " in the human sciences has introduced new sets of questions and methodologies, foregrounding sound, hearing and listening and critiquing conventional ways of understanding them. In this article I examine theories of listening and trace the history of analytical listening practices, which aim to produce objective knowledge. I compare these with receptive listening practices, which aim for subjective understanding. I then examine seminal musical ethnographies in which encounters with dissonant sounds, social interactions and listening practices led to transformations in understanding musical experience. I conclude that a reflexive and open listening practice in fieldwork would precede, but not replace, analytical listening. The ability to listen well lies at the heart of the ethnomusicologist's work; yet, the ways in which we listen remain largely unexamined. The recent " sonic turn " , 1 which has informed scholarship across the human sciences, offers opportunities to do this. Displacing the late-twentieth-century " spatial turn " —which drew on metaphors of space and place to analyse power relations and questions of identity—the sonic turn introduced new sets of questions and methodologies, foregrounding sound, hearing and listening and critiquing conventional ways of understanding them. Central to this interdisciplinary field are phenomenological and epistemological questions relating to sound. Already, this suggests a dichotomy between approaches seeking objective knowledge and those aimed at subjective understanding. While it is no longer sufficient to observe, record, transcribe and analyse in order to explain musical culture, this work is still a necessary part of producing a musical ethnography. The emphasis in fieldwork, however, has shifted towards a collaborative approach to understanding others' lived musical experience and a reflexive methodology, involving an examination of the values, assumptions and habits of mind one brings to the field (Titon 2008). 2 Reflexivity also applies to one of the ethnomusicologist's essential research tools: listening practices and the values and attitudes they incorporate. In this article I focus on how we listen and the techniques by which we come to experience sounds and to know them. I examine a range of theories and practices as well as the implications of employing certain kinds of listening in ethnomusicological research. I then turn to seminal works of musical ethnography in which the authors reveal how interrogating ways of listening that to them were socially or musically dissonant, led to transformations in their understanding of musical experience. I conclude by advocating that a reflexive and open listening practice in fieldwork precedes a more focused and analytical listening. But first, I want to consider what we mean when we speak of listening. Listening is a particular way of being in the world and of acknowledging our relationships with that world and the people in it. Questions about what it means to listen—and to be a good listener—have exercised philosophers across the centuries and fall into two distinct categories. Our everyday understanding of the good listener draws on Aristotle's concept of
As the 2016 season for ‘musical pilgrimages’ to Ireland’s summer schools, pub sessions and festiv... more As the 2016 season for ‘musical pilgrimages’ to Ireland’s summer schools, pub sessions and festivals begins, I’m posting this early version of a chapter of The Making of Irish Traditional Music (Cork University Press, 2008), in which I examine the reported expectations and experiences of musical pilgrims in relation to ideas about musical identification, authenticity, and the commodification of Irish culture.
As the Australian higher education population further diversifies as a result of federal governme... more As the Australian higher education population further diversifies as a result of federal government policy changes, the collective understanding of effective university teaching in the Australian context will need to evolve to incorporate such shifts. The Australian Government has set clear targets for increased university participation of people from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds. While their performance is comparable to students from higher SES backgrounds, many LSES students face particular challenges in undertaking university study. Using a ‘success-focused’ (Devlin 2009) methodological approach, this research documents the factors that a sample of 53 later-year, LSES students at one Australian university report have assisted them to manage and overcome the challenges of remaining at, progressing through and succeeding in their studies. The most helpful factors included teacher availability to help, their enthusiasm and dedication; and their effective communication with students particularly but not exclusively around assessment requirements.
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2011
... 2011.605227 Marcia Devlin a * & Helen O'Shea... more ... 2011.605227 Marcia Devlin a * & Helen O'Shea a pages 529-535. ... Noonan, Nugent, & Scales, 20082. Bradley, D., Noonan, P., Nugent, H. and Scales, B. 2008. Review of Australian higher education , Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. ...
We are examining actions that teachers take to convert tasks into learning opportunities. In this... more We are examining actions that teachers take to convert tasks into learning opportunities. In this paper, we contrast ways that three teachers convert the same task into lessons, and the way that their lessons reflect their intent. We found that the teachers did what they intended to do, that this was connected to their appreciation of the mathematics involved, and directly influenced the learning opportunities of the students. To the extent that the potential of the task was reduced, this seemed due to the lack of mathematical confidence in the case of two of the teachers.
This article examines some of the ways in which defining a set of musical practices as “national”... more This article examines some of the ways in which defining a set of musical practices as “national” reproduces both the stereotypes adopted by colonizers and inverted in anti-colonial movements, and also the exclusions that are integral to the processes of nation formation. As one of the cultural forms nationalists enlist in their project, music is regarded by them as reflecting the imagined political, territorial, and cultural unity of the putative nation’s people. I use the case of Irish traditional music, and the exemplar of the song “Danny Boy,” first to demonstrate that the meanings attributed to musical texts are contingent upon the social and political circumstances of their production and consumption, and then to argue that the ideal Irish musician is discursively constructed as masculine.
Musical tropes signifying Irishness are now deeply embedded in western musical traditions. They a... more Musical tropes signifying Irishness are now deeply embedded in western musical traditions. They are also used in film music and advertising to denote a cluster of meanings associated with Irishness. Since the early 1990s, two global commercial developments—the recording industry’s ‘world music’ marketing category and the Irish theme pub—have reinforced this musical stereotyping, which falls into two broad categories: the slow, melancholy music that evokes sadness and spirituality, and the fast dance music associated with high-spirited earthiness.
Expectations of musical community, and claims to have located it, are common to scholarly and pop... more Expectations of musical community, and claims to have located it, are common to scholarly and popular narratives about music of many genres and locations—cathartic narratives that begin with the beauty of the rainbow and end with an eloquent account of the golden booty it yields. It is not the structure of these quests that I want to interrogate here, but the 'imaginative cultural narratives' 1 within which they take place, and in which the experience of making music becomes idealized. I will begin this examination by looking at a number of ways in which the Irish traditional music session has been represented, and misrepresented. Romancing the session Clare, it is said, is the heart of Irish traditional music, and, since no discerning tourist (let alone musician) would now be seen dead in a Doolin pub, East Clare is the new destination for musicians and followers seeking authentic Irish traditional music. 2 At sessions I regularly attended in two music pubs in Feakle, East Clare, however, the well‐documented authenticity of the area's music began to recede, like a mirage, as I advanced upon it. 3 One of those pubs, Pepper's, is widely known as a venue for Irish
This chapter considers the ways in which the musical scores of two film versions of the Ned Kelly... more This chapter considers the ways in which the musical scores of two film versions of the Ned Kelly story — Tony Richardson’s 1970 Ned Kelly and Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly, released in 2003 — construct the mythic anti-hero as both Australian and Irish, and in doing so reinforce a notion of an Irish component in an Australian cultural identity. While both films use source music based on late twentieth-century constructions of an (historically inaccurate) Irish–Australian music culture, the contrasting ways in which the scores use musical tropes of Irishness demonstrate that critical changes have taken place in understandings of both the Irish and the masculine components in Australian cultural identity and their representations in Australian popular culture.
The study of gender is ‘inherently a study of relations of asymmetrical power and opportunity’ (O... more The study of gender is ‘inherently a study of relations of asymmetrical power and opportunity’ (Ortner & Whitehead, 1981:4). In the masculine space of the Irish pub, women musicians respond to this power differential by adopting an array of tactics aimed at increasing their musical participation and enjoyment. The impediments to women’s public performance of Irish traditional music must also include consideration that the Irish pub is a social space in which women historically had no legitimate presence; but this is only part of the story. Untangling the complex relationships between music and gender in symbolic representations of the Irish nation further reveals a strand of cultural meanings that persists in configuring ‘woman’ and ‘music’, ‘Ireland’ and ‘nation’ in ways that are disempowering to women musicians today. This essay draws on Foucault’s theory of discourse to examine the gendered historical and contemporary representations of Irish music and musicians and on postmodern feminist theory of the performativity of gender to demonstrate how deeply embedded are our gendered conceptions of subjectivity, music, and nationality.
This article reports on a study of participants in a Weekend Warriors Program for 'lapsed' rock m... more This article reports on a study of participants in a Weekend Warriors Program for 'lapsed' rock musicians in Melbourne, Australia. It observes musicians over a six-week period that included a jam session , coaching sessions and a gig (concert). It examines the learning pathways of participants and their goals and experiences alongside those of the programme organisers within the comparative context of music learning practices among young and older musicians and in the light of academic research into the midlife ageing process. A question that arises from the data is the extent to which the experience and actions of middle-aged women musicians coincides with the literature on gender in youth rock music scenes and the literature on music, ageing and gender. The article concludes that the Weekend Warriors Program draws on the learning practices that the musicians involved had adopted in their youth and which act as a catalyst for their further musical and social participation and self-directed group learning. Age appeared to create no barrier to their enjoyment or their achievements; indeed in many ways it seemed to make them less inhibited and self-conscious in realising individual objectives that were further encouraged by working within a supportive if loosely bonded group. The Weekend Warriors Program: have fun making music again Weekend Warriors is an adventure that begins with a jam and ends with a gig. The Weekend Warrior program provides all the latest gear, the rehearsal space, a coach and even the other members of your band! After the jam you'll rehearse one night a week for four weeks and then finish off with a gig in a local club for your friends, family and fellow Warriors. Again it's all arranged, the Weekend Warrior program provides the staging, the sound, the lighting and even the roadies. All you have to do is show up, have fun and be a star!! 2 The Weekend Warriors Program was founded in 1993 by Skip Maggiora, a music store owner in Sacramento, California, who wanted to cater for the 'dormant' musicians who hung round his store, keeping alive memories of the bands they once played in, or dreams of the band they had hoped to form once career and family responsibilities had diminished. Adopted by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), the Weekend Warriors Program is now successfully operated elsewhere, including in the UK, where the Music Industries Association operates the programme under licence, and in Australia, where it has been operating since 2000 under the auspices of the Australian Music Association (AMA). Popular Music (2012) Volume 31/2.
The analysis of colonial discourse has focused on literary and visual texts. Music’s role in enac... more The analysis of colonial discourse has focused on literary and visual texts. Music’s role in enacting and resisting imperial power has received little attention. In Musical Elaborations (1991) Said writes of music’s transgressive faculty: its ability to cross over into other domains, to ‘attach itself to, and become a part of, social formations, to vary its articulations and rhetoric’ (70). In tracing a well-known song as it is co-opted by nationalists, emigrants, the imperial army and the popular music industry, I will illustrate Said’s proposition that musical practice may be ‘contrapuntal’: may embody and enact both imperial power and resistance to it. As an air and its variants move from the Irish countryside to its urban centres and the imperial hub of London and back again and as it is performed by street musicians, Irish nationalists, homesick emigrants, and all who identify with a stereotyped notion of Ireland, it illustrates some of the many ways in which musical meanings transmutate across time and space.
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Papers by Helen O'Shea
Irish music and musicians and on postmodern feminist theory of the performativity of gender to demonstrate how deeply embedded are our gendered conceptions of subjectivity, music, and nationality.
Irish music and musicians and on postmodern feminist theory of the performativity of gender to demonstrate how deeply embedded are our gendered conceptions of subjectivity, music, and nationality.