Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
ShareThis
Javascript must be enabled to continue!

“800 Years We Have Been Down”: Rebel Songs and the Retrospective Reach of the Irish Republican Narrative

View through CrossRef
From the glamorous, cross-dressing “Rebel, Rebel” of David Bowie, to the righteous Trenchtown “Soul Rebel” of Bob Marley and The Wailers, both varied and various musical articulations of cultural and socio-political rebellion have long enjoyed a ubiquitous presence across multiple soundscapes. As a musicological delineator in Ireland, however, ‘rebel’ conveys a specifically political dynamic due to its consistent deployment as an all-encompassing descriptor for songs detailing events and personalities from the Irish national struggle. This paper sets out to examine the specific musical delineator of ‘rebel song’ from both musicological and politico-ideological perspectives with a view to interrogating its appropriateness as a universal descriptor for such output and will further demonstrate how to the present day, the genre represents yet another contested ideological space within the politico-historical narrative of traditionalist Irish Republicanism.
Title: “800 Years We Have Been Down”: Rebel Songs and the Retrospective Reach of the Irish Republican Narrative
Description:
From the glamorous, cross-dressing “Rebel, Rebel” of David Bowie, to the righteous Trenchtown “Soul Rebel” of Bob Marley and The Wailers, both varied and various musical articulations of cultural and socio-political rebellion have long enjoyed a ubiquitous presence across multiple soundscapes.
As a musicological delineator in Ireland, however, ‘rebel’ conveys a specifically political dynamic due to its consistent deployment as an all-encompassing descriptor for songs detailing events and personalities from the Irish national struggle.
This paper sets out to examine the specific musical delineator of ‘rebel song’ from both musicological and politico-ideological perspectives with a view to interrogating its appropriateness as a universal descriptor for such output and will further demonstrate how to the present day, the genre represents yet another contested ideological space within the politico-historical narrative of traditionalist Irish Republicanism.

Related Results

A study on rebel group dynamics and third party intervention
A study on rebel group dynamics and third party intervention
<p>This study analyzes the relationship between inter rebel group dynamics and rebel biased third party interventions. Concerning the considerable amount of multiparty civil ...
Irish Literature and the Union with Britain, 1801–1921
Irish Literature and the Union with Britain, 1801–1921
Studies of Romantic and Victorian literary culture often sideline Irish writing—not always out of Anglocentric prejudice, but also because Irish literature in those periods was fre...
Modern Interpretations of Irish Mythology
Modern Interpretations of Irish Mythology
Modern versions of Irish mythological tales circulated widely from the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, a period sometimes termed the Irish Revival, the Irish Liter...
The 1916 Easter Rising
The 1916 Easter Rising
On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, over one thousand Irish rebels occupied prominent buildings across Dublin, triggering a battle for control of what was then a major UK city. Confro...
129 Songs
129 Songs
How many songs did Charles Ives (1874–1954) write? For years the songs of this iconoclastic American composer have only been known in imperfect editions of his 114 Songs (privately...
Ireland
Ireland
Irish Victorian literature is full of possibilities for research, and interest in it is growing continually. Long neglected, its time has apparently come at last. In the past it su...
Utilization and Significance of the Pansori Inserted Songs
Utilization and Significance of the Pansori Inserted Songs
This study assumed that the insertion of songs or inserted songs during the formative period of Pansori played a significant role in establishing Pansori as epic poetry. To verify ...
Twenty-First-Century Irish Prose
Twenty-First-Century Irish Prose
In 2018, while serving as the second Laureate for Irish Fiction, the author Sebastian Barry proclaimed, “We are in an unexpected golden age of Irish prose writing” (Barry 2018, cit...

Back to Top