Even on ‘coffin ships’ during the Famine, dance was present. Every Irish child learns about the coffin ships at school, boats full of death, disease and misery that carried Irish people to America and Canada away from the Famine. But there is also documentation of young people organising dances up on deck while terribly sad situations were taking place below, for example, in Robert Whyte’s 1847 Famine Ship Diary. The deck was a perfect place for a dance because of the space and the sound it would make. Similarly, in the early 1800s in Ireland, Irish people would often take the cottage door off its hinges and put it on the ground to dance on, to obtain the battering sound.
As Friel writes, ‘Dancing was an activity that could happen at anytime, anywhere, in the life of the lower classes. No ballroom was required. A musician was a bonus but one could dance to whistling, singing or lilting if the need arose … music could move the Irish peasantry to dance spontaneously wherever they could find a space’.
It seems, therefore, that this spontaneity was part of our culture of dance when this music emerged. Is it somehow now encoded in our culture? However it arose, it is a clear characteristic today. I think that if there had been a broader appreciation of this facet when the Cavan plane session broke out – that there may in fact be deep cultural reasons for this spontaneity through displacement and our history – we would have had quite a different public conversation. Instead of the negative reaction, the public would have said, ‘Ah yes, that spontaneity is Irish music’, and know the reasons why.
This is an edited extract of a lecture given at Farmleigh House, Dublin, on 11 May 2024, as part of the OPW's cultural programme. To read the full text, see here. Toner Quinn's new book, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, is available here.
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