About the Author

Rights: World
1-903582-03-2
€17.95

Bringing It All Back Home
The Influence of Irish Music
Nuala O’Connor

“I have a theory that soul music originally came from Scotland and Ireland.”
- Van Morrisson

“Traditional music has to come out of an actual meeting of bodies in space, you know, people communicating; and I think it always has that immediacy and root and warmth as a result.”
- Micheal O Suilleabhain

“Traditional music has a place in contemporary music because it can still be itself, still be alive and not affect the ongoing tradition of source music.”
- Donal Lunny

Irish music is flourishing in all corners of the world today, thanks to centuries of emigration. Bringing It All Back Home chronicles the remarkable journey of Irish music from its origins in rural Irish communities to reinvention in the melting pot of America and Britain, and return home to a new generation of exciting musicians.

In times past, Irish music belonged to remote rural communities. The hauntingly beautiful Sean Nos (unaccompanied) singing tradition in the Irish language originated with them, and there were ballads, jigs, reels, slides and polkas taught by itinerant dancing masters. Irish emigrants carried their music and dances with them to the New World, where over time it was changed by their new lifestyles and enriched by contact with other cultures.

Twentieth-century technology also sent Irish music in unexpected directions. It melded with rock, country, pop, electric folk, blues and the avant-garde, giving birth to artists from the Clancy Brothers and Bob Dylan, Planxty and Clannad, to the Pogues, Van Morrison, John Cage, U2 and Sinead O’Connor. Modern music and the Irish tradition were alchemised, through the use of instruments like the bodhran, the harp and the uilleann pipes, to form that unique sound that is unmistakably Irish.

Bringing It All Back Home tells the story of Irish music and its influence at home and overseas. This updated edition of Nuala O’Connor’s superb account of the history of Irish music, from its origins in rural Irish communities to reinvention in America and return home to a new generation of musicians, coincides with the re-release of the Emmy award-winning documentary Bringing It All Back Home in DVD format.