Singing the Rite to Belong: Ritual, Music, and the New Irish (Oxford Ritual Studies Series) [Illustrated] 9780190672225, 9780190672232, 0190672226

Table of contents :
Cover
Series
Singing the Rite to Belong
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Becoming a Ritual Singer
Singing and Belonging
Book Structure
Laus Perennis
Part One: Religious Rituals
1. Borrowed Belonging: Singing and “Resounding” in the Wrong Ritual Space
Introduction
Migration and the New Irish
The Limerick Experience
The Russian Orthodox Community in the Augustinian Church, Limerick
The New Revelation Pentecostal Church in St. Michael’s Church of Ireland, Limerick
Resonance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging
Spheres of Resonance
A Pilgrim People
Pilgrimage and Music
Sonic Authority
Conclusion
2. Repertoires of Belonging: Embodying “Bothness” through Musical Repertoires
Introduction
St. John’s Catholic Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Church, Limerick
Embodying “Bothness”
Somatics as a Key Element of Sung Belonging
Singing and Ideology
Gregorian Chant and the Modern Liturgical Movement
A Modern and Medieval “Enchantment”
The Pastoral Turn
The Irish Story
Conclusion
Part two: Educational Rituals
3. Finding Your Own Voice: Mythologizing and Ritualizing Belonging at the Irish World Academy
Introduction
The Irish World Academy
The Quest for Imbas
The Ritual Pit
Performance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging
Performing the Academy
Conclusion
4. Singing Belonging in the Ritual Lab
Introduction
Entering the Ritual Lab
Ritual Leaps of Faith
Ritual Lab and Singing
Ritual Criticism, Memory, and Ethical Soundings
Temporality as a Key Element of Sung Belonging
Ritual, Time, and Space
Conclusion
Part three: Civic and Community-​Based Rituals
5. Singing Hospitality in Community-​Based Ritual
Introduction
Anáil Dé/​The Breath of God
Tacitness as a Key Element of Sung Belonging
Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir
World Carnival
Conclusion
6. Singing the Rite to Belong: Baptismal Rituals and the Irish Citizenship Referendum
Introduction
Backdrop to the Citizenship Referendum
The Limerick Story
Baptizing, Singing, and Belonging
Somatic Community
Sonic Community
Conclusion
Conclusion
The Power of Singing
Singing the Rite to Belong
The Weakness of Singing the Rite to Belong
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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Singing the Rite to Belong

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OXFORD RITUAL STUDIES Series Editors Ronald Grimes, Ritual Studies International Ute Hüsken, University of Oslo Barry Stephenson, Memorial University THE PROBLEM OF RITUAL EFFICACY Edited by William S. Sax, Johannes Quack, and Jan Weinhold PERFORMING THE REFORMATION Public Ritual in the City of Luther Barry Stephenson RITUAL, MEDIA, AND CONFLICT Edited by Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, Udo Simon, and Eric Venbrux KNOWING BODY, MOVING MIND Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers Patricia Q. Campbell SUBVERSIVE SPIRITUALITIES How Rituals Enact the World Frédérique Apffel-​Marglin NEGOTIATING RITES Edited by Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert THE DANCING DEAD Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki/​Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria Walter E. A. van Beek LOOKING FOR MARY MAGDALENE Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France Anna Fedele THE DYSFUNCTION OF RITUAL IN EARLY CONFUCIANISM Michael David Kaulana Ing

A DIFFERENT MEDICINE Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church Joseph D. Calabrese NARRATIVES OF SORROW AND DIGNITY Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving Bardwell L. Smith MAKING THINGS BETTER A Workbook on Ritual, Cultural Values, and Environmental Behavior A. David Napier AYAHUASCA SHAMANISM IN THE AMAZON AND BEYOND Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar HOMA VARIATIONS The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée Edited by Richard K. Payne and Michael Witzel HOMO RITUALIS Hindu Ritual and Its Significance to Ritual Theory Axel Michaels RITUAL GONE WRONG What We Learn from Ritual Disruption Kathryn T. McClymond SINGING THE RITE TO BELONG Music, Ritual, and the New Irish Helen Phelan

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Singing the Rite to Belong Music, Ritual, and the New Irish

z HELEN PHELAN

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​067222–​5 (hbk) ISBN 978–​0–​19–​067223–​2 (pbk) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

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To Mick and Luke. My Charlie and the Kid forever.

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Contents

Acknowledgments 

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Introduction  Becoming a Ritual Singer  1 Singing and Belonging  6 Book Structure  9 Laus Perennis  14

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PART ONE: Religious Rituals  1. Borrowed Belonging: Singing and “Resounding” in the Wrong Ritual Space  Introduction  19 Migration and the New Irish  20 The Limerick Experience  23 The Russian Orthodox Community in the Augustinian Church, Limerick  27 The New Revelation Pentecostal Church in St. Michael’s Church of Ireland, Limerick  32 Resonance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging  35 Spheres of Resonance  39 A Pilgrim People  43 Pilgrimage and Music  51 Sonic Authority  52 Conclusion  54

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Contents

2. Repertoires of Belonging: Embodying “Bothness” through Musical Repertoires  Introduction  55 St. John’s Catholic Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Church, Limerick  56 Embodying “Bothness”  62 Somatics as a Key Element of Sung Belonging  65 Singing and Ideology  80 Gregorian Chant and the Modern Liturgical Movement  81 A Modern and Medieval “Enchantment”  83 The Pastoral Turn  85 The Irish Story  89 Conclusion  98

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PART TWO: Educational Rituals 3. Finding Your Own Voice: Mythologizing and Ritualizing Belonging at the Irish World Academy  Introduction  105 The Irish World Academy  107 The Quest for Imbas  110 The Ritual Pit  115 Performance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging  122 Performing the Academy  129 Conclusion  133 4. Singing Belonging in the Ritual Lab  Introduction  136 Entering the Ritual Lab  136 Ritual Leaps of Faith  147 Ritual Lab and Singing  158 Ritual Criticism, Memory, and Ethical Soundings  160 Temporality as a Key Element of Sung Belonging  165 Ritual, Time, and Space  170 Conclusion  176

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PART THREE: Civic and Community-​Based Rituals 5. Singing Hospitality in Community-​Based Ritual  Introduction  181 Anáil Dé/​The Breath of God  184 Tacitness as a Key Element of Sung Belonging  189 Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir  204 World Carnival  215 Conclusion  218 6. Singing the Rite to Belong: Baptismal Rituals and the Irish Citizenship Referendum  Introduction  221 Backdrop to the Citizenship Referendum  223 The Limerick Story  226 Baptizing, Singing, and Belonging  232 Somatic Community  236 Sonic Community  239 Conclusion  244

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Conclusion  The Power of Singing  245 Singing the Rite to Belong  249 The Weakness of Singing the Rite to Belong  253

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Notes 

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Select Bibliography 

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Index 

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Acknowledgments

Sincerest thanks to: My colleagues, friends, and students at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. It is hard to imagine a more creative or visionary place of work. The Higher Education Authority for its financial support of the Sanctuary initiative and promoting access to higher education for new migrants. The Irish Research Council for its funding of the Singing and Sustainable Social Integration project. Professor Christopher Fox and colleagues at the Keough-​Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, United States, for their generosity in appointing me the Herbert Allen and Donald R. Keough Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2012, when the first seeds of this book were planted. Doras Luimní, the support group for new migrants in Limerick, for their inspirational work and generosity to all newcomers, including myself. The Benedictine community at Glenstal Abbey, especially Vincent Ryan, OSB (RIP) for allowing me such generous access to the library and the archives of the liturgical congresses. All those Limerick communities (the Augustinians, the Redemporists, St. John’s Cathedral, St. Michael’s Church of Ireland, Christ Church United Presbyterian and Methodist Church, the New Revelation Pentecostal Church; the Russian Orthodox community; the Sisters of Mercy and Presentation Primary School) who have opened their doors to the new Irish and to researchers and singers like myself. Thomas Whelan, C.S.Sp., for introducing me to the world of ritual studies. Catherine Sergent and Marie Walsh for inspiring me to be a better singer.

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Acknowledgments

Maurice Gunning and Lucy Ridsdale for permission to use their photographs. Aloysius Zuribo and Simon Marincak for permission to use their musical examples and compositions. Ronald Grimes and the editorial team of the Oxford Ritual Studies series for their unstinting support of this work. My parents, Pat and Ida; my sisters, Trish, Geraldine, Chrissie, and Liz; my niece, Kate; and all the loved ones who have expanded our family and our hearts throughout the years. Luke and Mick. Partners in crime. Joy of my heart. Love of my life.

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Singing the Rite to Belong

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Introduction

Becoming a Ritual Singer Like all people born with vocal cords that stretch across the larynx and vibrate during phonation, I am a singer. Most humans are. The specificity of my cultural and religious upbringing, however, has molded me into a very particular kind of ritual singer. This book is about the singing voice in ritual contexts. The questions it asks about the potential roles of singing in ritual performance emerge phenomenologically from the weave of my experience. The primary question driving the book concerns the rights and rites of belonging. I  am especially interested in cultural and ritual activities that express belonging, and the potential agency of singing in its negotiation and performance. As with all experientially derived scholarship, I need to commence this journey by providing the key coordinates of my own cultural location—​the longitude and latitude of how I became the singer and ritual scholar that I am. The broader questions of belonging and singing are anchored in this ethnographic and auto-​ethnographic detail. Talal Asad reminds us that for most people, religious dispositions develop long before our conscious awareness of them.1 Catholics, for example, often make the Sign of the Cross before they understand its relationship to the mystery of the Trinity. Similarly, I became a ritual singer long before I knew what one was. My earliest and deepest memories of singing come from participating in the Catholic Mass, growing up in an Irish American community in the Bronx, New  York. One of five singing sisters born of Irish parents, we formed the bulwark of the church choir. Born in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, we grew up singing the folk-​inspired music of the St. Louis Jesuits,2 Protestant hymnody imported to serve the needs of

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2 Introduction

the recently vernacularized liturgy, as well as the occasional Latin medieval hymn such as Pange Lingua (“Sing, My Tongue”) at Eucharistic adoration. As is the case for many migrants, growing up in the United States made us more conscious of our Irishness. We sang songs we thought of as Irish in our parish-​based Irish cultural club. “Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?” and “How Can You Buy Killarney?” came to us via Bing Crosby recordings, while songs such as “Maggie Murphy’s Home” and “Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly?” were spawned in the fertile mixing ground of Irish-​Jewish Tin Pan Alley culture.3 Our Catholic parish supported our school, our cultural club, and our religious education. Our experience of Irishness developed cheek to jowl with our experience of Catholicism. In 1981, we joined the small number of Irish migrants who returned to Ireland with their diaspora-​born families. I  experienced the complex cultural position of being an Irish-​American in Ireland—​with many of my cultural assumptions (including those around Irish music) challenged. I  learned about “the pure drop” (a supposedly unadulterated version of Irish traditional music, uncontaminated by accompaniment or arrangement) and its position at the top of the hierarchical pyramid of Irish traditional cultural aesthetics. As a classically trained pianist, I  also came to realize that traditional music was at the bottom of the totem pole of formal, institutionalized education. Above and beyond all these cultural nuances, I also learned that, for many, to be Irish was synonymous with being Catholic. The Catholic Pope, John Paul II, made his first and only visit to Ireland4 in 1979. It is estimated that more than two and a half million people came out to welcome the Pope, representing more than half the population of the island of Ireland at that time. As he departed the country from Shannon Airport outside Limerick city, his final, rallying call to the country was “semper fidelis.”5 In his analysis of the contemporary Irish Catholic Church, James Donnelly noted that “… it must have looked to the outside world as if the words ‘Irish’ and ‘Catholic’ still belonged easily together, as they had for centuries.”6 From the founding of the Republic, Irish culture has been self-​ consciously Catholic, with cultural nationalism creating strong pedagogical, linguistic, and political ties with Roman Catholicism.7 The durability of this connection is demonstrated in a radio interview given by the popular Irish comedian and talk-​show host, Graham Norton, in June 2013, on his receipt of an honorary doctorate from University College, Cork. In response to the interviewer’s question concerning his feelings about

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Introduction

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growing up as a homosexual in Ireland and the resultant sense of dislocation and isolation, he replied: I think I associated a lot of those feelings with growing up Protestant … you are made to feel slightly like an outsider, not quite the in-​ crowd, so for me, seriously, a lot of those feelings of otherness, of separateness, I just put down to “well, I’m Protestant” and it was only really that when I left, I kind of thought, there’s more going on than being Protestant.8 My own negotiation of the knotted relationship between Catholicism and Irishness happened primarily through my voice. Singing and playing instruments in church choirs, school choirs and, later, the university choir defined my primary engagement with music and ritual. As such, this engagement was essentially performative. Ethnicity and religion entered my “muscle memory” through my voice first and only later through conceptual engagement. My experience of ritual and singing came into close contact with “the new Irish” in the 1990s, a phenomenon that would challenge and eventually sever the Siamese twins of Irishness and Catholicism. Scholars have used this term to refer to both the new waves of migrants coming to Ireland at this time, as well as to a more cosmopolitan and globally aware way of being Irish.9 Following the recession characterizing most of the 1980s, Ireland entered a period of unprecedented economic prosperity, often referred to as “the Celtic Tiger.”10 From its position as one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, Ireland was named the richest country in Europe in 2007, second only to Japan in the world. The growing international reputation of Ireland, as well as economic opportunity, resulted in Ireland becoming an important country of destination for economic migrants and asylum seekers, for the first time in its history, in the 1990s. In 1996, after over a century and a half of net emigration, Ireland reached its migration turning point, becoming the last member of the European Union to become a country of net immigration. This period of immigration is characterized by unprecedented acceleration in the numbers of immigrants, but also by the widening of the immigrant demographic from beyond the Irish diaspora and Western Europe to include significant immigration from other parts of the world, particularly Eastern Europe and Africa.11 Suddenly, one could speak of African-​ Irish and Polish-​Irish in the same way as one used to speak about Irish-​Americans

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4 Introduction

or Irish-​Australians. These new Irish brought with them ritual and musical traditions that were heretofore virtually unknown in Ireland. If these migrant communities represented one face of the new Irish, the other included a large number of returning Irish migrants (including my own family), as well as a generation of Irish people who projected an image of Ireland as a cosmopolitan, open-​minded, multicultural space of economic, social, and cultural possibility. The personification of this new Ireland was the Republic’s first female president, Mary Robinson. Elected in 1990, she is widely regarded as having liberalized and transformed the Irish presidency. A keen human rights activist (she was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1997), she was a constant advocate, not only for the Irish in Ireland but the Irish throughout the world. Adopting an old Irish folk custom of placing a light in the window to welcome travelers, she famously placed a light in the window of Áras an Uachtaráin, the official residence of the Irish president, a symbol of an Irish welcome to all newcomers and to the Irish diaspora around the world.12 This period of economic prosperity was matched by a global interest in all things Irish. In 1994, the Irish dance show “Riverdance” exploded onto the world stage at the interval of the Eurovision Song Contest (a contest Ireland would win a record-​breaking four times during the 1990s), to become one of the most commercially successful dance shows in the world. In 1993, Irish author Roddy Doyle won the Booker Prize and, in 1995, Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1993, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) proclaimed a ceasefire, and in 1998 the Good Friday agreement was signed, a significant landmark in the implementation of the Northern Ireland peace process.13 Another important cultural marker of this new Ireland was the creation of the Irish World Academy in 1994.14 Established by composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin,15 it was the first educational institution in Ireland to put Irish traditional music and dance at the heart of its curriculum. The title of the Academy, playing on the relationship between “Irish” and “World,” made it clear that there would be no hierarchy between “the pure drop” of Irish music and other global (or Irish) musical traditions.16 Indeed, Ó Súilleabháin’s own compositions integrate classical, traditional, contemporary, and global voices. No stranger to controversy, his 1995 seven-​part television series A River of Sound17 spurred a national debate on tradition and innovation within Irish music, causing one exercised critic to write: Can anyone seriously suggest that the music this describes signals the position of Irish Traditional music as it enters into its

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third millennium? Where can a place be found for the spirit of the authentic solo performer from West Cork or South Armagh in this Hiberno-​Jazz scrubbed clean of roots, ritual and balls!18 If the Irish World Academy was to become an important site for the national debate concerning the cultural character and value-​base of this new Ireland, it would also play a decisive role in my own musical and ritual development. Its commitment to oral tradition repertoires, as well as the notated traditions of Western art culture, resulted in the unusual decision to include a Master’s program in Latin chant in a secular university. The program was developed in cooperation with a Benedictine community based in Glenstal Abbey within the environs of the University of Limerick campus. The community had a strong track record of leadership in the modern liturgical movement leading up to the Second Vatican Council. It had also demonstrated a commitment to chant and Irish religious song traditions through a musical relationship with singer Nóirín Ní Riain, resulting in the publication of three collaborative albums produced by Ó Súilleabháin.19 In 2000, I was appointed course director of this Master’s program. The Academy has a strong scholarly grounding in cultural anthropology, with Master’s programs in ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, and it welcomed my suggestion to incorporate ritual studies into the Master’s program, renaming it the MA in Ritual Chant and Song, making it the first such program of its kind in Ireland. For the next decade, as course director of this program, I deepened my vocal journey into Latin chant, cofounding a female early music ensemble in 2009. I also facilitated a variety of ritual vocal traditions at the Academy, including Yoruba chant, Russian, Greek, and Georgian Orthodox chant, Islamic chant, Jewish vocal repertoires, Shinto and Buddhist chant, Pentecostal Praise and Worship music, Gospel, West Gallery music, and Kirtan chant. The year 2000 also saw the first wave of asylum seekers dispersed to Limerick, where I work and live. I became a member of Doras Luimní,20 a newly formed support group for refugees and asylum seekers and successfully applied to the Higher Education Authority of Ireland for funding to establish an initiative called Sanctuary. Among other things, Sanctuary carried out the first study of music from new migrant ritual communities in Ireland and established a Festival of World Sacred Music, running from 2000 to 2007. During my work with Sanctuary, I sang with and facilitated a number of new ritual song ensembles, including a Congolese Catholic choir, a Russian Orthodox ensemble, and a pan-​African female choir.

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6 Introduction

As Ireland grappled with its changing cultural and religious landscape, I continued to engage with these through singing. The ephemeral nature of song, existing in the transience of temporality and the constant movement of breath and body, is a good metaphor for my experience of this changing landscape. Irishness and Catholicism have functioned as ethnic and religious “routes” rather than “roots” for me,21 negotiated through the fluidity of sonic and migratory experience. Neither have been phenomenologically stable. Born in the United States to Irish parents and relocating to Ireland as a teenager, my experience as a migrant drew me to working and singing with the new waves of migrants, who were characterizing the changing face of Ireland in the 1990s. Born also into a devoutly Catholic household, my earliest and consistent experiences of religious rituals have always been sung. From singing in church choirs to conducting and singing as part of my professional life, I  have negotiated an ever-​expanding ritual framework through my vocal experiences.

Singing and Belonging Richard Power’s novel, The Time of Our Singing, is the story of a biracial family whose European-​Jewish father and African-​American mother share a love of music. The story focuses on their two sons, born in the 1940s, who grow up as musical prodigies within the Western classical music tradition. Striving to find a place to belong within this white-​dominated musical culture, they also struggle to understand their place within the music of the black resistance movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In his article, “Belonging in Music and the Music of Unbelonging in Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing,” Lars Eckstein explores the ways in which music can function as an experience of belonging, as well as articulating experiences of unbelonging. My primary interest in singing is situated within this framework of belonging and unbelonging. As a child, singing was a key part of my identity. It defined who I was to others and to myself. It was the primary expression of my spiritual and cultural identity. Over the last two decades of working with a wide spectrum of music students and singers from new migrant communities, I  am consistently struck by how often I  see this experience mirrored in others. I  have heard many students and artists claim that if they were not able to make music, they would not know who they were. I have heard many migrants declare that singing is what brings them closest to the home they have left behind and gives the most comfort

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and energy in negotiating their emerging home in Ireland. Of course, there are many kinds of singing and many kinds of songs. There are songs designed to exclude people, to hate people, and to kill people, just as there are rituals to support all these activities.22 The ritual framing of sung activities does not necessarily correlate with acts or emotions of belonging, but, throughout this book, I will suggest that there are characteristics of both which, when pointed in this direction, render them powerful facilitators. A key area of investigation revolves around the concept of hospitality. As a result of its appropriation by the tourism industry, the word “hospitality” often conjures up images of warm and welcoming hotels or cozy cups of tea. In Untamed Hospitality, however, Elizabeth Newman reminds us that hospitality goes much deeper than polite conversation, superficial welcome, or political correctness. Real hospitality demands the inclusion of the stranger, the other.23 Etymologically speaking, it is easy to forget that hospitality is as related to “hostility” as it is to “hospital.” Hospitality, in this sense, is a deeply political attitude, and acts of hospitality have a long history of political agency. Xenia (related to the Greek work xenos, or “stranger”) is the ancient Greek practice of hospitality, our knowledge of which dates back to the writings of Homer. This particular form of hospitality was extended to those who were far from home. It included a number of rituals (gift giving, meal sharing, entertainment), which formed a reciprocal relationship or “guest friendship” between the host and the guest. A  key aspect of these ritual practices was their ability to provide a shared, experiential forum for exchange between people who did not have a preexisting network within which to operate socially or culturally.24 These acts of hospitality opened up a potential space of shared belonging. The premise of this book is that singing is an activity especially suited to this kind of activism, particularly when it is located within rituals engaged in the negotiation or performance of belonging. My exploration of these proposals is anchored in almost two decades of fieldwork, but focuses on the period commencing in 2000, when the first wave of “new Irish” asylum seekers came to Limerick, and when I began full-​time work at the Irish World Academy, and reaches its denouement in 2005 when the Irish Citizenship referendum profoundly changed the rules as to who belonged and didn’t belong in Ireland. While this work is ethnographic, it is also deeply autoethnographic. I am an active, singing, or teaching member of every community I study. While the fluid frames of religion, ethnicity, and pedagogy form the backdrop of this work, sonic, somatic, and kinesthetic experiences are my primary points of departure.

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Embodied practices constitute a codified cultural perspective, a habitus through which we conceptualize, ideologize, and negotiate our ways of being in the world. For the singer, the voice and the ear are the primary conduits of experiential knowledge and the medium through which experiences such as inclusion, exclusion, belief, identity, and ideology are negotiated.25 In his poem, “Among School Children,” W. B. Yeats reminds us of the difficulty of separating “the dancer from the dance.”26 It is equally difficult to write about the sung voice without writing about the singer. While this embodied dimension of ritual and song scholarship may seem obvious, there is a long tradition of disembodied study of the voice. In the Irish context, for example, the rebirth of interest in Irish traditional music in the late nineteenth-​and early twentieth-​century Gaelic revival often lamented the fact that engaging with the music required a necessary engagement with the “unsavory” characters who played it, including illiterate peasants and itinerant musicians.27 Therefore, if this book is about ritual, singing, and Irishness, it is also inevitably about my experience of these. In the tradition of scholars such as Mary Catherine Bateson,28 I have always worked on the premise that we compose our work through ourselves as surely as we compose ourselves through our work. The introduction of the self into scholarship is, therefore, not viewed as an optional, stylistic choice, but as hermeneutically unavoidable. As a result, the life experience that informs my perspective on ritual song is that of growing up in an Irish-​American Catholic family in the Bronx for 13  years, and from subsequently living in Ireland for 30 years, and working in higher education for 20. It stems from singing in ritual choirs my whole life, including my earliest experiences of the post–​Vatican II introduction of vernacular song and later professional experiences of singing Gregorian chant, medieval polyphony, Western choral sacred music, Georgian, Slavic, and Greek Orthodox chant, Islamic chant, Jewish chant, Shinto chant, Congolese worship music, and African praise songs. This work is ethnographic, historical, and pedagogical. It is based on over a decade of working with new migrant ritual communities in Limerick city, Ireland, where I have lived since 1994. As well as being an artist-​scholar, a singer, and an academic, I am also a teacher. My pedagogical reflections are based on teaching a Master’s program in Ritual Chant and Song at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, since 2000 and a PhD program in Arts Practice since 2009. These two programs have caused me to swim widely in the waters of ritual

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studies and performance studies, and my voice is now primarily articulated through the value worlds of these discourses. Migration, music, and education are important “circuits” (routes and curricula) through which considerations of belonging move in this book. All this ethnographic and auto-​ethnographic journeying peels back layers of sung experience, diving down into an exploration of key, essential characteristics of singing. In doing so, it proposes that ritually framed singing is uniquely positioned to nurture and negotiate experiences of belonging.

Book Structure The book is structured across a number of different ritual case studies, including religious, educational, civic, and community-​based rituals. It employs two primary strategies in its exploration of rituals and singing as agents of belonging: one, ethnographic, and the other, theory-​building. Ethnography is a key methodological approach in disciplines from ethnomusicology to ritual studies, when a “close to the ground” investigation is utilized to open up qualitative insights into experience. The transferability of these insights result, in part, from theoretical frameworks built through phenomenological encounter. As well as providing ethnographic and auto-​ethnographic detail concerning particular ritual events, each chapter explores a single, key characteristic of singing, with a view to building a proposal as to how singing in ritual contexts can be so effective in creating experiences of belonging. The characteristics informing this theory of sung belonging include resonance, somatics, performance, temporality, and tacitness (Figure I.1). A key proposal of the book is that singing has a very specific relationship with time (through temporality), space (through resonance), the physiological body (through somatics), the social body (through performance), and human modes of communication (through tacitness). Sound is essentially temporal. It has a beginning and an ending; it is a necessarily ephemeral and transient experience. Its relationship with time can never be static. Similarly, its relationship with space is one that is constantly changing: whether it moves through air, water, or other matter, a sound wave will always interrupt the space through which it moves. At its most existential level of temporal and spatial manifestation, sound is therefore characterized as changeable, unstable, and malleable. Further exploration of this characteristic throughout the book suggests that it is

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Ritual Frames: * Religious * Educational * Civic and Communitybased

Negotiating/ Performing Belonging

Characteristics of Singing: * Resonance * Somatics * Performance * Temporality * Tacitness

Figure I.1  Diagram of book structure.

this very malleability and changeability that predisposes sound to the facilitation of inclusivity and belonging. The sounds that I  am particularly interested in are those produced by the human body. The entire spectrum of humanly produced sound, including noise, chant, song, or speech, depends on muscle movement, nervous communication, blood flow, and a host of other physiological, embodied activities. Some of these are available to our conscious mind; most of them are not. The relationship between humanly produced sound and the human body moves between involuntary motor-​sensory activity and conscious, cognitive manipulation. Again, the consequences of this relationship are proposed as key to the ability of singing to act as an agent of belonging. While all humanly produced sound has a relationship with the physiological body, singing has a special relationship with the social body through performance. All sonic communication is performative, but singing places performativity at the heart of its relationship between the singer

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Introduction

11

and the auditor, as well as between singers performing in ensemble. The physiological effects of singing together or listening to singers suggest the ability of shared experiences of singing to create a sense of togetherness or belonging. Finally, the complex communicative potential of singing is explored within the context of tacitness. It may seem unusual that a word etymologically related to “silence” is used to propose the communicative power of song. “Tacit” in music often denotes a lack of sound. A tacit agreement is unspoken and implied. Tacit learning happens through person-​ to-​ person unspoken, embodied transmission of knowledge: the “touch and feel” level of human relationship. The communicative power of singing is strongest at a physiological and emotive level. The ability to communicate beneath cognitive and rational structures is proposed as one of the key ways in which song facilitates belonging. When these core characteristics of singing (Table I.1) are framed within rituals designed to encourage experiences of belonging, they become very powerful, enabling agents. Each chapter in the book explores one of these characteristics in relationship to ritually based, ethnographic experiences, culminating in a theory of ritual song and its role in the negotiation and performance of belonging. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on three Limerick city religious ritual sites: the church of the Augustinian community, St. John’s Catholic Cathedral, and St. Michael’s Church of Ireland. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the educational rituals of the Irish World Academy and look particularly at the introduction of Ronald Grimes’s ritual laboratory29 as a pedagogical tool for ritual singers. Chapters 5 and 6 introduce a number of civic and community-​ based rituals, including two community festivals and a musical carnival, as well as exploring ritual responses to legal changes around citizenship in the context of the Irish citizenship referendum. Each chapter also explores core characteristics of singing and ritual, with a view to understanding how these dispositions make them effective media for the negotiation and performance of belonging. Chapter 1 prefaces its ethnographic case studies with a discussion on two aspects of Irish society that changed radically in the 1990s: its relationship with world cultures through unprecedented immigration, and the erosion of its relationship with the Catholic Church. The case studies are based on fieldwork with a Russian Orthodox and Nigerian Pentecostal ritual community in Limerick city. A key theoretical construct explored in

12

12 Introduction Table I.1  Key Elements of Ritually Framed Sung Belonging Characteristic of Singing

Key Theoretical Relationship

Resonance

Relationship between Singing and Space

Somatics

Relationship between Singing and the Physiological Body

Performance

Relationship between Singing and the Social Body Relationship between Singing and Time

Temporality

Tacitness

Relationship between Singing and Communication

Ethnographic Examples The Russian Orthodox Community, at the Augustinian Church, Limerick The New Revelation Pentecostal Church at St. Michael’s Church, Limerick St. John’s Catholic Cathedral, Limerick The Augustinian Catholic Church, Limerick The Ritual Pit at the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick The Ritual Lab at the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick Anáil Dé /​Breath of God Festival of World Sacred Music, Limerick Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir World Carnival

this chapter is “resonance.” The relationship between sound and space is key to the experience of resonance, and this is affected dramatically when the resounding body is forced to relocate. In the case of these two ritual communities, both had to carry out their ritual activities in “borrowed” spaces from different religious denominations as a result of migration. The effect of this on sound is a key question of this chapter. The sung dimensions of these rituals are shown to have provided a ritual leadership and authority in the absence of other familiar ritual dimensions (space, artifacts, vestments). Finally, through the metaphor of “pilgrimage,” it also examines how new migrant communities are contributing to a re-​ imagining of traditional Irish Catholicism in the wake of the clerical sexual abuse scandals. This metaphor moves the image of Irish Catholicism

 13

Introduction

13

from one of absolute authority and blind obedience to a shared image of a seeking, searching people, guided by a sonic, ritual authority, rather than an ideological one. While Chapter  1 explores the physical meeting of ritual traditions through shared ritual space, Chapter  2 looks at the meeting of musical repertoires. The Catholic cathedral in Limerick city has a long musical tradition rooted in Latin chant, medieval polyphony, and Western art music, as well as a more recent tradition of engaging with contemporary Western liturgical music. This chapter focuses on the Easter Triduum liturgies of 2004, which were broadcast from the cathedral for national television. With numbers of new migrants continuing to grow, the church was eager to embrace a more multicultural attitude toward its liturgies. Looking specifically at the Good Friday liturgy and its music, a “both/​and” approach to repertoire demonstrates a movement beyond the “liturgy wars” of so-​called high-​art and popular music traditions. The theoretical interlude here addresses the “somatic turn” in contemporary culture and argues that an emphasis on the singer (embodied experience) rather than the song (repertoire) enables experiences of inclusivity. Chapters  3 and 4 explore the pedagogically based rituals of the Irish World Academy. Chapter  3 commences with an introduction to the Academy and its emergence as a key site of cultural debate and performance in the 1990s. It explores ways in which mythology, symbol, and ritual are constantly evoked within the Academy to reinforce and perform its core values of inclusivity, creativity, and respect for diversity. The theoretical interlude looks particularly at the discourse around performance and performativity and how the Academy has ritualized and performed this discourse to facilitate belonging. Chapter 4 explores the introduction of Grimes’s ritual laboratory as a pedagogical tool in the teaching of a ritual song module within the context of a Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song. An examination of feedback and correspondence on the lab from students over the last decade and a half support a view of the lab as a space of welcome, hospitality, and belonging. A central aspect of singing, explored in the lab, is its relationship with temporality. It suggests that it is the ability of music to collapse the clear boundaries between time and space that makes singing (particularly in ritual contexts) so successful in facilitating a sense of belonging. Chapters 5 and 6 explore civic and community-​based rituals. Chapter 5 examines three community based rituals:  two festivals and a musical

14

14 Introduction

carnival. The first festival, Anáil Dé/​The Breath of God, is a festival of world sacred music introduced in Limerick in 2000 to celebrate the growing multiculturalism of the city. The exploration of the second festival, a European community music festival, will focus on a community choir called Comhcheol, the Irish-​language word for “harmony.” Comhcheol was formed by a group of women from the asylum-​seeking community, along with those from the traveller 30community. Framing the experience of the choir within Catherine Bell’s discussion of practice,31 it argues that belonging emerges most effectively through shared activities such as singing, rather than theoretical invitations. “World Carnival” is an annual event based in the most multicultural primary school in Limerick city. It is a song-​driven event that celebrates diversity through singing. With reference to a theoretical discussion on tacitness, it argues that the “person-​ to-​person” dimension of tacit learning is an effective strategy for achieving a sense of belonging, especially when this involves people from diverse cultural communities. Chapter 6 focuses on a watershed moment in Irish history in defining a legal sense of belonging: the Irish citizenship referendum of 2004. It is contrasted with another kind of belonging performed through the ritual of Christian baptism. It argues that the sung, ritualized performance of belonging gained a heightened significance in the face of the rejection by the Irish state of so many of “the new Irish.” This weave of somatically and ethnographically grounded experience with theoretical discourse proposes ritually framed singing as a key site for the negotiation and performance of belonging. Remembering, with Grimes, that “theorizing, like ritualizing, is a personal, bodily action,”32 I have attempted to ground theory in experience and to frame experience with theory. Deep, performative attention to ritual experience reveals core characteristics of singing, which, in turn, contribute to an experientially driven theory of the character and potential of sung sound in ritual performance.

Laus Perennis The central premise of this book is that ritualized singing can create somatic and emotional dispositions that facilitate the negotiation and performance of belonging. There are many types of belonging, and ritualized singing can encourage kinds of belonging built on hatred, elitism, and

 15

Introduction

15

exclusion. This book is not about these, although they are at least as prevalent (if not more so) in contemporary society.33 This book explores the use of singing to create a physical and emotional sense of “flow,” openness, inclusivity, and belonging. This use of singing has a very long ritual history. In medieval Ireland, for example, one ritualized use is attributed to Columbanus, the formidable missionary who established Irish monasteries throughout Europe. A  practice called laus perennis (perpetual praise) was introduced to many of these monasteries, in which successive relays of monks would sing psalms throughout the day and night as a means of establishing perpetual openness and readiness to the presence of God. The ideal of ceaseless openness to the other through contemplative practices of prayer, meditation, and chanting is common to many spiritual traditions. Within the Christian tradition, the early Christians were reminded to pray ceaselessly34 and to stay vigilant, as the second coming was imminent. As it became clear that this imminence was not linked to an earthly sense of temporality, the challenge of maintaining an endless and perpetual awareness of the transcendent had to be faced. What form of human activity could enact the impossible—​the constant, never-​wavering awareness of absolute otherness? The early Christian church decided that the answer was singing or chanting. The practice is attributed by many scholars to the arrival of Syrian monks to Constantinople in the early fifth century. These monks became known as Acemetes, or “Sleepless Ones,” for their practice of singing through the night. Laus perennis was introduced to the West at the Abbey of St. Maurice of Agaunum and spread in popularity across Western Europe. St. Bernard of Clairvaux attributes the establishment of this practice in Irish monastic tradition to Columbanus, and later scholars noted the connection between Agaunum and Columbanus’s monastic foundation at Luxeuil. Bernard is said to have noted the practice of laus perennis at the Irish monastery of Bangor, where the chanting of the psalms was kept up by companies who relieved each other in succession so that there was never any break in their devotions.35 The tradition of laus perennis is a useful example of the ways in which ritualized singing has been used to create a sense of openness through constant, shared vocalizing and breathing, as well as a sense of belonging through the tacitness of togetherness and resonance. It is this somewhat paradoxical combination of openness and togetherness that defines the particular kind of belonging this book sets out to explore. It is a belonging

16

16 Introduction

without fixed boundaries or rules, a belonging described by Derrida as a “saying yes”: … let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is a citizen of another country, a human, animal or divine creature.36 This book is about saying yes to the right to belong—​through rites of song.

 17

PART ONE

Religious Rituals

18

 19

1

Borrowed Belonging Singing and “Resounding” in the Wrong Ritual Space

Introduction The end of the twentieth century in Ireland was characterized by the arrival of an unprecedented number of migrants. These waves of “new Irish” included a small but significant number of asylum seekers. The mobile nature of migration often influences what we can bring with us when we migrate, especially if that migration happens under duress or in a hurry. Many of the people in the rituals discussed in this chapter came to Ireland as asylum seekers and, in the majority of cases, were able to bring little with them from the ritual communities they were leaving. In their desire to worship as a community without a ritual home, they were often forced to rely on the generosity of other ritual communities for the use of a ritual space. This chapter focuses on two such communities: a Nigerian Pentecostal community invited to make use of St. Michael’s Church belonging to the (Anglican) Church of Ireland, and the other, a Russian Orthodox community that worshipped for a time at the Augustinian Catholic Church in Limerick city center.1 What happens to singing when it is forced to “resound” in the wrong ritual space? How is the role of ritual singing affected when so many of the other aspects of a ritual (space, artifacts, vestments, actors) have been borrowed, replaced, or substituted? An exploration of these two ritual communities leads to the proposal that singing in this context may provide a kind of ritual compensation, evoking the missing elements of ritual. It may also exert a ritual authority, providing agency and leadership.

20

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Singing the Rite to Belong

In framing these new ritual communities, it is necessary to locate their stories within the dramatic change in Irish migration patterns, resulting in an unprecedented flow of asylum seekers from many parts of the world. The musical property of resonance will also be examined as a key element of sung belonging. Finally, the chapter explores the radical decrease in the influence of religion (particularly Catholicism) in Ireland during this same period, along with the role of new ritual communities in reimagining the church in Ireland as a “pilgrim people.”

Migration and the New Irish In his study of early medieval Ireland, historian Dáibhí Ó Cróinín noted that “of all the clichés about Irish history, none has been more enduring, nor enjoyed such universal popularity, as the ‘Golden Age’ of early Irish culture.”2 The colorful lexicon of this prideful remembering, including, “the isle of saints and scholars” and “the saviours of Western civilization” may well be the precursors of the barely contained pride articulated in the “Celtic Tiger” of the late twentieth century.3 Embodying the power and economic prowess of the “Asian Tiger,” but with a distinctive Celtic flourish, this image has come to symbolize the emergence of a new, powerful, and confident Ireland—​one that has battled, not only the Dark Ages of the medieval past, but the dark ages of religious persecution, colonialism, famine, poverty, immigration, and unemployment, only to emerge as a cultural and economic world power at the turn of the millennium. While the roar of the tiger lasted less than two decades before crashing spectacularly, it would be difficult to overstate the level and acceleration of change across every aspect of Irish society. One of the most significant concerned an unimaginable reversal in the centuries-​old story of Irish migration. Ireland has long had the unique distinction of being a third world, colonized country in first world Western Europe. This has significantly influenced patterns of migration.4 Since the Great Famine of the 1840s, Ireland’s story has been one of almost exclusive emigration. From the mid-​nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century, the level of emigration from Ireland was consistently higher than from any other European country during this same period.5 With entrance into the European Union in 1973, this trend halted briefly, only to return with the economic setbacks of the 1980s. The turning point came in the

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21

1990s. Major investments in education over the previous thirty years, as well as a policy of social partnership, foreign investment, and low inflation, led to unprecedented employment opportunities and economic prosperity. Until this time, immigration into Ireland was relatively small and usually included a trickle of people from one of four categories: a small number of returning emigrants from the Irish diaspora; highly skilled (usually non-​permanent) immigrants (typically working or studying in universities or multinationals); “countercultural” immigrants, mostly from Northern European Union countries such as Germany; and retirees, especially from the United Kingdom. Non-​EU immigration outside the Irish diaspora was extremely small. The economic changes of the 1990s resulted in the first significant flow of immigration not covered by any of these categories. This new wave of immigration consisted primarily of migrant workers for the burgeoning economy and asylum seekers, hoping to be granted refugee status. While the refugee and asylum-​ seeking community only represented approximately 10% of all immigration at the beginning of the twenty-​first century, it was distinctive for two reasons. First, it was the demographic that increased most rapidly over a short period of time. Before the 1990s, Ireland had no significant history of engagement with refugees or asylum seekers. After World War II, many countries opened their borders to Jewish refugees. In keeping with a policy that existed since the 1930s, Ireland initially declined to do so after the war, refusing to take a hundred children who had survived the concentration camps. After a great deal of debate, they were accepted on a temporary basis. Ireland’s first engagement with program refugees occurred in 1956, when 530 Hungarian refugees were accommodated in a former army base on the Limerick/​Clare border, a campus that was later redeveloped for asylum seekers in the late 1990s. The experience of these refugees culminated in a hunger strike, and within two years only 61 remained in Ireland. In 1973, 120 Chileans were allowed entry, with the majority also leaving soon afterward. In 1979, 212 Vietnamese people came to Ireland, and by the end of the twentieth century there were approximately 125 family groups, with about 600 people in the Vietnamese community. Additional groups of program refugees include 26 Iranian Baha’is in 1985, approximately 800 Bosnians from 1992, and 1,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo from 1999.6

2

22

Singing the Rite to Belong

Other than these agreements concerning program refugees, the numbers of which were very small, the total number of people applying for individual asylum before the 1990s never exceeded fifty. In 1992, 39 people applied for asylum in Ireland. By 2000, there were more than 10,000. The numbers rose at a rate unprecedented in Irish history, jumping to over 400 in 1995 and over 4,000 by 1998. By 1999, there was a backlog of 6,000 applications (see Figure 1.1). Second, it represented a change to the usual immigrant demographic coming from the European Union and the Irish diaspora, including, for the first time, significant numbers of immigrants from other parts of the world, most notably from Africa and Eastern Europe. Since 1991, approximately 100 different nationalities are represented in asylum applications, with the majority coming from Nigeria and Romania, followed by Algeria, the Congo, Angola, and Libya. Additional top application countries (from before the inclusion of several additional Eastern European countries in the European Union starting in 2004) included Poland, Kenya, Moldova, Slovakia, and Russia.7 Throughout the 1990s, most asylum seekers arrived into or were centralized in Dublin, the capital city of the Republic, with their applications for status being processed there through the Department of Justice. As the numbers continued to grow, this situation became increasingly untenable and, in 2000, the government enacted a policy of dispersal and direct provision, sending asylum seekers to live in other towns and

12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

Figure 1.1  Asylum applications, 1992–​2000.

1997

1998

1999

2000

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Borrowed Belonging

23

cities around the country.8 Approximately 8,000 asylum seekers were dispersed to 72 “accommodation centres” across 25 counties, including Limerick.9

The Limerick Experience Limerick, a port city located at the head of the long estuary of the Shannon River in the South-​West of Ireland (see Figure 1.2), was one of the cities identified as capable of housing asylum seekers when the policy of dispersal was introduced.10

Figure 1.2  Map of Ireland highlighting Limerick.

24

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Singing the Rite to Belong

No government-​or state-​led initiative was put in place to prepare local communities for this new reality. Eileen McGlynn, one of the first Limerick citizens to galvanize public support for the new arrivals (who had herself emigrated to Canada with her husband, Joe, and their family, and had returned to Limerick in the 1990s) recalls the confusion: Who was coming? When were they coming? I wanted to know if we were getting mothers and babies … we didn’t know what cultures were coming, who we were getting, male, female, family, single, we didn’t know. Across Ireland, a number of voluntary, grass-​roots groups began to form. The first meeting of concerned citizens in Limerick took place in February 2000, and was coordinated by Sr. Ann Scully, a Catholic nun of the Sisters of Mercy order. Ann arrived in Limerick in 1998 as head of the Mercy Justice office, a new justice project, which had emerged from initiatives associated with the Mercy International Association. The Mercy Justice offices in Ireland targeted the justice issues of prison, ecology, peace and reconciliation, and asylum. The Limerick office was given the asylum mandate: … because I was in the Mercy Justice office, I wasn’t employed by the state or by the church, so I was in that in-​between state which is absolutely brilliant—​it’s a very creative space—​so I  was in that space, that liminal space, so I could call everyone together … and I called a meeting of all the churches and all the voluntary organisations in the city. The support group, which formed as a result of this meeting, took the name of “Doras Luimní.” Doras is an acronym for “Development Organisation for Refugees and Asylum Seekers” and the Gaelic word for “door,” a metaphor for the proverbial Irish welcome. The first cohort of asylum seekers arrived in Limerick in May 2000, with numbers peaking in 2002. A major survey on refugees and people with leave-​to-​remain status in Limerick city was commissioned by the Reception and Integration Agency in partnership with the Limerick City Development Board in 2004. During the period covered by this report, more than 1,000 asylum seekers were to be accommodated in Limerick city, with the majority coming from Africa (predominantly, Nigeria) and Eastern Europe. During this time,

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Borrowed Belonging

25

260 people received refugee status in Limerick, and approximately 120 received leave-​to-​remain on humanitarian grounds. There were 40 family reunifications, and before the referendum on citizenship, approximately 150 seeking residency on the basis of an Irish-​born child.11 The 2002 census noted the population of Limerick city and its suburbs as 86,998, having grown by almost 10% in the previous six years. This rate of growth was higher than the average growth of any of the country’s five largest urban centres. Approximately 9% of the population of Limerick city and county was born outside of the state, but this increased to 25% in the city center.12 The 2011 census notes that 25,736 non-​Irish nationals live in Limerick city and county, representing 13.5% of the population.13 Data collected as part of the report on refugees and persons with leave-​ to-​remain in Limerick city in 2004 also illustrated a significant change in the landscape of religious ritual communities. The majority of respondents noted that ritual attendance played an important part in their lives. Many reported attending main-​line (Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican) religious rituals (38%); in addition, 33% of respondents attended Islamic rituals, 13% attended Orthodox rituals, and 8% attended the growing number of African-​led Pentecostal and Evangelical rituals.14 This resonates with census figures from 2006, which note that 74.3% of Muslims in Ireland, 37.2% of Christians, and 86.2% of Orthodox Christians were born outside the state.15 Despite their growing numbers, being heard and seen in the public sphere is one of the great challenges for an asylum seeker. The legal structure surrounding the asylum process provides little access to normal modes of social interaction. Most asylum seekers are catered for under a system called “direct provision,” whereby accommodation and food are directly supplied in hostels or processing centers. Asylum seekers often lack the normal opportunities to meet Irish people, whether shopping (because of direct provision), working (employment is prohibited during the asylum-​seeking process), or socializing (the grant of approximately 20 euro a week leaves little money for visiting pubs or taking part in other Irish recreational activities). Asylum seekers receive the lowest level of social welfare benefits available in Ireland. Irish journalist Paul Cullen writes that “the official attitude views the period spent waiting for a decision as being equivalent to being in purgatory.”16 The churches were among the first bodies to offer a public platform for asylum seekers in Limerick, as in many parts of Ireland. Abel Ugba

26

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Singing the Rite to Belong

notes that, in the early years of dispersal, many immigrant churches “received encouragement, material assistance and guidance from mainstream churches” and, that in the case of African immigrants, “religious affiliation is one of the first relationships the majority cultivate or reactivate once they have arrived in Ireland.”17 The Augustinian Church, in Limerick city, for example, offered the first invitation to members of the refugee and asylum-​seeking community to sing at a public event. While most support groups around the country are nondenominational, a significant number of these groups benefit from the support of religious organizations. In the case of Doras, the main office, classroom, and meeting rooms, as well as the provision of space for meetings with legal aid representatives, were initially supplied by a number of religious communities, including the Redemptorists and the Sisters of Mercy. Art and language classes and choir rehearsals took place in the Augustinian Church. The United Methodist and Presbyterian Church hosted the initial mothers and babies group and facilitated a Pentecostal community in its church hall. In two significant ways, neither directly related to any explicit evangelical or theological agenda, the Irish churches have played a formative role in the process of seeking asylum in Limerick: first, through the provision of physical structures to support a voluntary network and, second, through the opening of their ritual spaces to these new communities. Although my initial involvement with Doras Luimní was as a voluntary English-​language teacher, I  was quickly drawn to working with the many new ritual communities developing around Limerick city. Within a year of their arrival, asylum seekers had set up Pentecostal churches, independent African churches, a Congolese Catholic choir, and a Russian Orthodox community. In 2000, in association with Doras Luimní and the Irish World Academy, I  set up Sanctuary, a Higher Education Authority Project, which was the first of its kind to support and study cultural initiatives with new migrant communities in Ireland. Part of this work involved the creation and facilitation of choirs and musical groups for several ritual communities. There is a long history of the formation of choirs and choruses around the world to support not just musical and aesthetic goals, but also social, political, and religious purposes.18 In addition to establishing and performing with many of these groups, I also carried out ethnographic fieldwork as part of the Sanctuary research remit, including the Russian Orthodox and Nigerian Pentecostal communities described in the following sections.

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The Russian Orthodox Community in the Augustinian Church, Limerick The Augustinian Church in Limerick is located at the heart of O’Connell Street, the main shopping and business street in the city. It was one of the first churches to invite members of the asylum-​seeking community to sing at its liturgies, largely through the initiative of Joe McGlynn, pastoral coordinator to the church and a founding member of Doras: … a very big part, the churches have played—​and from the beginning … it would be one of the key places in which integration was taking place…. I think the Augustinian church in particular, again, maybe, perhaps … going back to their involvement in Africa, but still, among the refugees, they’re coming from all over the world. I still think that it is their welcoming spirit. The Russian Orthodox community worshipped in the Augustinian Church from November 2002 to December 2003. During this time, I was introduced to Fr. George Zavershinsky,19 who was the resident priest for the Orthodox community in Ireland at that time: I am resident priest in the Russian Orthodox church in Dublin appointed by His Holiness Patriarch Alexis for pastoral work here for quite a long time without any limitations perhaps for the rest of my life, I don’t know but I will continue this work with the growing community in Dublin and there is [sic] about 15,000 Russian speakers in Dublin and much more in whole Ireland so the need for pastoral work for priests maybe more—​we have a visiting priest as well, Dean of Our Church, Fr. Michael Gogoleff, he is a resident in England and when he is visiting and celebrating liturgy in Dublin I have possibility for visit other places, for example Limerick community of Russian speakers to celebrate liturgy there.20 Fr. George Zavershinsky was one of the first Russian Orthodox priests in Ireland. Born in Severodvinsk, he studied technical sciences and worked at the Russian Institute of Information Technologies before deciding to study for the priesthood. Before coming to Ireland, he was a warden in a parish in Moscow and taught at St. Tikhon’s University, where he completed his Master’s degree in Theology. In 2002, he was appointed to the parish

28

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Singing the Rite to Belong

of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul Patriarchal monastery in Dublin, where he also enrolled for doctoral study in “The Theology of Dialogue: The Orthodox Approach.” In 2009, he was appointed dean of the parishes of Scotland and Northern Ireland.21 When Fr. George arrived in Ireland in 2002, there were approximately 15,000 Russian speakers in Dublin, and the Orthodox Church included Russian speakers from Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and Serbia. While Fr. George was the only resident priest in Ireland at the time, a visiting priest would come regularly to assist in the celebration of liturgy in Dublin, allowing Fr. George the opportunity to visit Russian-​speaking Orthodox communities in other parts of Ireland, including Limerick. The Limerick community at that time was very small and primarily male. Following the government’s policy of dispersal in 2000, accommodation centers tendered for government funding to provide housing for asylum seekers. In Limerick’s case, the earliest successful establishments were hostels, previously used for students and therefore not suitable for housing families. As a result, the first wave of asylum seekers in Limerick tended to be single males. One of the reasons for the short-​lived Russian Orthodox community in Limerick, given to me anecdotally when the community collapsed in 2003, was the lack of a family structure in the early community. Lentin and McVeigh note that “dispersal means that asylum seekers have no say where they live, making the formation of networks of family and friends near impossible.”22 The Russian Orthodox community in Limerick worshipped at the Augustinian Church whenever a liturgy could be facilitated by Fr. George or a visiting priest. During this time, I also invited Fr. George, an enthusiastic musician, to teach Orthodox chant to our students in the Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song program and to contextualize this with an explanation of its liturgical origins. In 2000, responding to the growing number of new ritual communities in Ireland, I had started a festival of world sacred music called Anáil Dé/​The Breath of God Festival of World Sacred Music. As part of the festival in 2002, we decided to include a concert of Orthodox chant with a student choir I conducted called Lucernarium with members of the Russian community. One of our students, Chris deGraw, decided to record this as part of his ethnographic work on the program: I think one of the best parts was meeting people from different places. I spent a lot of time just sitting around and talking to Alexis and Nicholai and Fr. George and getting the perspective of what it

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29

is like to be Russian and to be Russian in Ireland … and to have worked musically with all these wonderful first-​hand sources.23 While our initial idea was to have a concert, Chris recalls Fr. George’s reaction to the proposal: … he said, “well, if you just sing it, it’s a concert … but it’s a liturgy—​it’s meant to be liturgical” so Fr. George came on and performed the Vespers with us. That was a very, very interesting experience.24 Our musical proposal was transformed into a ritual one by Fr. George’s intervention. Our choir was directed by another guest of the festival, Dr. Simon Marincak, a specialist in Byzantine and Slavic liturgical chant and a Slovakian Catholic. On December 17, 2002, the first Russian Orthodox sung Vigil was celebrated in Limerick (Figure 1.3). The “borrowed” aspects of this ritual were many. The ritual space was a Roman Catholic church. Instead of an iconostasis, holy doors, and icon, there were statues of the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph, and other saints. The church was ritually dressed

Figure 1.3  Russian Orthodox Choir, Limerick. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

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Singing the Rite to Belong

for the liturgical season of Advent in the Catholic tradition. A large Advent wreath dominated the side of the altar space. Fr. George’s ritual choreography had to be adapted to the space available. The congregation sat in pews rather than standing, lighting candles, and venerating icons. While members of the Russian Orthodox community were present, the majority of the congregation was Irish Catholic. Even the choir was “borrowed.” Fr. George brought two Russian singers, Alexis and Nicholai, with him for the liturgy: one from Dublin, who sang with the choir, and a second, living in Monaghan, who acted as deacon and sang the deacon’s responses. The rest of the choir consisted of students from the Irish World Academy from Ireland, the United States, France, and Finland, none of whom was Orthodox. The music was led by a Slovakian Catholic. While the space, the choir and, to a large extent, even the congregation was “borrowed,” the music was not. The sung chant is not something that can be taken out of the liturgy. For Fr. George, the chant is the liturgy: The Orthodox chant is a very important part of our liturgy. The singing is dedicated to prayer; it is full of prayer; it has to be prayer: of everybody:  of members of the community, the parishioners, and members of choir as well.25 Vespers is an evening liturgy, often serving as the principal evening ritual in the Orthodox tradition. The Vespers ritual celebrated at the Augustinian Church was a shortened version of full Vespers and included opening and closing prayers, sung psalmody, litanies, and hymns such as the phos hilaron (the hymn of light) and the nunc dimittis (the Song of Simeon). The service was sung in Old Slavonic. A short example of the music for the ritual at Limerick (Figure 1.4) includes the invitatory Psalm 102 (103) (“Bless thou the Lord O my soul”), with the following opening verses: Blagoslovi, dushe moya, Gospoda. Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi. Gospodi Bozhe moy, vozvelichilsya yesi zelo. Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi. Vo ispovedaniye i v velelepotu Blagosloven yesi, Gospodi. Vsya premudrostiyu sotvoril yesi. Slava ti, Gospodi, sotvorivshemu vsya. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Blessed art thou, O Lord my God. O Lord my God, thou art become exceedingly glorious.

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Figure 1.4  Orthodox Vespers, notated excerpt. Included with the permission of Simon Marincak.

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Blessed art thou, O Lord my God. Thou art clothed with majesty and honor. In wisdom hast thou made them all. Glory to thee O Lord, who has made them all. Exegesis of this psalm often highlights its inclusivity.26 The psalmist calls on all the angels, all God’s servants, and all his works to offer blessing. He extends his call from heaven to earth and from east to west. He calls on all that is within him (the inner organs were recognized by the Hebrews as the seat of thought and emotion) from the depth of his being. In the realization of this ritual in Limerick, this call to inclusive belonging was realized almost exclusively through a single medium—​the medium of singing, with all other aspects of the ritual being borrowed, misplaced, or replaced.

The New Revelation Pentecostal Church in St. Michael’s Church of Ireland, Limerick The New Revelation Pentecostal Church was the second Nigerian community to form a Pentecostal church in Limerick city.27 The community originally met in one of the two Church of Ireland churches in Limerick, St. Michael’s Church in Perry Square. The gathering took place not in the main church, but in a hall at the back of the church. Pentecostalism is not new to Ireland, but the African Pentecostal churches made a significant mark on the religious landscape of the Republic. Pentecostalism has a stronger and older tradition in the North of Ireland than in the Republic. One of the oldest Pentecostal foundations in Ireland was formed in 1915 by the Welsh evangelist George Jeffreys. The first church of the Elim Pentecostal Church was located in Belfast and spread quickly throughout the North. It was not until the 1960s that the church began to develop centers in the Republic of Ireland.28 This also corresponded with the growth of the Charismatic movement in the Republic, and most Charismatics remained within their own faith traditions (Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist), rather than forming new churches.29 Hollenweger suggests three main branches of Pentecostalism: classical Pentecostals, charismatic renewal Pentecostals (also known as Neo-​Pentecostals), and what he calls “Pentecostal-​like” non-​white indigenous churches found primarily in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean.30 The African churches in Ireland represent a significant growth of independent Pentecostal churches in the Republic. The first African-​led Pentecostal church was established in Dublin in 1996

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by Congolese-​born Remba Oshengo. The largest African-​led church in Ireland is the Redeemed Christian Church of God, with 40 registered branches by 1998. Other large churches include the Christ Apostolic Church, the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry, and the Gospel Faith mission. In 2003, the Irish Council of Churches estimated the number of immigrants in “black majority churches” to be approximately 10,000. These churches include independent groups, with no external affiliations, most of which were established by asylum seekers; breakaway groups from these churches; and churches with parent bodies in Africa, supported from that parent church or its European affiliation. The majority of members are sub-​Saharan Africans who have arrived in Ireland since the 1990s.31 Until 2000, most of these churches were in Dublin but, “the number of African-​led Pentecostal groups established outside of the greater Dublin area has increased substantially as ‘dispersed’ asylum-​ seekers and other Africans form new groups or set-​up outreach posts for the Dublin-​based groups.”32 Most Pentecostal churches in Ireland have about three public meetings a week, including a worship service on Sunday, Bible study mid-​ week, and a Friday prayer meeting. The worship service is dominated by music, preaching, and witnessing. In a special edition of the Journal of Ritual Studies, devoted to Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity, Joel Robbins describes some of the main characteristics of this particular form of Christian worship, most of which can be attributed to the Limerick community. Pentecostalism has illustrated an ability to maintain its fundamental shape in communities across the globe. It is characterized by its emphasis on healing, glossolalia (speaking in tongues), prophecy, and self-​ control through consumption taboos, all night vigils, and a ritual expression that relies heavily on the power of music to release emotion.33 In the Irish churches, the music combines songs sung in both English and indigenous African languages. As with the Russian Orthodox community, this Nigerian Pentecostal community in Limerick borrowed its ritual space from a different denomination. While this form of ritual has a less formal relationship with the spatial surround than, for example, the Russian Orthodox community, the Limerick space would be different in a number of significant ways. At home, the Nigerian community would have interacted more with open-​air spaces and would have linked the ritual experience with food, festivity, and family in a way that could not be replicated in Limerick. Again, the ritual aspect most similar in Limerick and in Nigeria involved the musical

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content. A member of the community explained the value and importance of music and its central role in Pentecostal worship: Even in Psalm[s]‌… it says you should praise me with songs and music. Our Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t eat anything like food, drink, chicken. God is not interested in that—​it is only music—​and that’s why he asks us to always praise him with our voices, with our songs with our musical instruments so music is very, very important in the life of a Christian because that is the only thing God eats … so if you are a Christian, you have to know how to sing.34 Abel Ugba notes that 57% of the members of African-​led Pentecostal churches in Ireland joined after coming to Ireland. Some had roots in Pentecostal churches in Africa, but many did not. Several attribute their membership to a desire to be part of a church where, “activities are uniquely relevant to the situation of Africa immigrants.”35 At one worship service I attended, the preacher identifies the lot of the asylum seeker with that of Joseph. Persecuted and treated as a slave in Egypt, he was raised to the level of a king through the strength of his faith: Who is Joseph in the land of Egypt? He was an enemy. He was an asylum seeker. He was a refugee (congregation laugh). He was a refugee! Yes! No! He was a refugee! But, what happened? What happened? … He was fortified, he was fortified—​fortified and made a King.36 Part of the way in which these rituals help immigrants to reimagine home is through their use of music. One of the first asylum seekers to come to Limerick, on the first bus from Dublin after the policy of dispersal had been introduced, told me of his earliest experiences of an Irish Catholic Mass: The first impression was funny because I’d never been used to that kind of Mass—​no choir—​it was very funny—​and very quiet—​but sometimes when we are singing in some Masses we feel sometimes that we are back home because we can sing.37 Ugba notes that many asylum seekers join Pentecostal communities in Ireland because the use of traditional prayers and songs allows them to reimagine and recapture some parts of their African identity in a new

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country where their status is often precarious and peripheral. As with the Russian Orthodox rituals, the Pentecostal service is primarily reimagined through sung sound. It is the sonority of singing and preaching that most resembles and evokes the service from home. Other than its soundscape, the reimagined ritual in Ireland lacks the strong social and familial ties that characterize its African manifestations, as well as the celebratory traditional dress, shared food, and intergenerational socializing. There are many characteristics of sound, and particularly of singing, that allow music to “carry” rituals, even when so many other aspects of the ritual are missing. The relationship between music and memory, for example, plays a very important role in this regard and will be explored in greater detail in Chapter 4. The ability of music to induce emotion and feeling will also be part of that discussion. Another important characteristic of sound concerns its relationship to space. The ability of music to “resound” or resonate is intimately connected with the space within which it occurs. The ways in which the human body produces resonance has a direct correlation with the ability of sound to carry ritual experiences, even in the absence of the “correct” ritual space. In order to understand the ways in which singing does this, it is necessary to explore further the relationship between resonance, space, and singing.

Resonance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging All sound is the result of vibrating waves moving through a medium such as air or water. The quality or timbre of sound is affected by the space within which audio waves move and the surfaces or substances it encounters. Resonance is the term used to describe what happens when a vibrating system is driven to oscillate by another vibrating system. The two systems vibrate at the same frequency or frequencies, with the secondary vibrator (or resonator) picking out the strongest resonant frequencies from a wide band of noise and amplifying them. Sound resonates in two primary spheres: the body of the instrument producing the sound, and the space surrounding the instrument.38 The shape and material of both will affect the timbre of the sound. In musical instruments, for example, a conical tube will produce a different timbre from a cylindrical one. The shape of a drum membrane or the thickness, length, and tension of a string will generate different percussive or string-​based sounds. Similarly, a rectangular-​shaped stone building will produce a different timbre from a wooden building in the round. The same music will sound radically

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different in a Gothic cathedral, a modern concert hall, an open desert, or a valley between two mountains.39 For humanly produced sound (speech, singing, nonverbal noises), the “body of the instrument” is the human body itself, which functions as the primary resonator. Basic phonation (caused by the vibration of the vocal folds modulating airflow from the lungs) is modified and enhanced in timbre by the body’s resonating chambers or air-​filled cavities through which sound passes. The body’s main resonating chambers include the chest, the tracheal tree, the larynx, the pharynx, the oral cavity, the nasal cavity, and the sinuses.40 The pharynx is arguably the most important resonator, while the larynx is particularly significant for singers, being responsible for a certain brilliance of tone often referred to as “ring,” “tinkling,” or the “singer’s formant.” Resonance is a primary characteristic of the way in which we create sound, but it is equally important in our ability to hear it. Hair cells on the basilar membrane in the inner ear detect sound when the membrane resonates with the cochlea. Humans produce, receive, and perceive sound though a complex set of mechanisms involving the breath, vocal chords, resonating chambers, ears, and brain.41 While resonance is important for all kinds of humanly produced sound, it is of particular significance for singing. Resonance has the greatest impact on timbre, and timbre is one of the primary ways in which singing engages our emotions. Versatile singers can manipulate resonance to produce a range of vocal color from the “dark” sounds of chest resonance, to the “light” sounds of head voice, and a range of color in between. The greater the command of this color spectrum, the greater expressive possibility the voice holds. While much of what happens in the body’s resonating chambers is outside our conscious control, the singer’s ability to exert choice over this expressive range is linked to a physical ability to change the shape and size of the resonating cavities. Singing, therefore, provides us with the physical ability to manipulate expressive experiences for both the singer and the listener. Human beings “carry” their bodily resonators with them wherever they travel. Therefore, even if they lack the secondary resonating space of their ritual sound (and other ritual experiences or artifacts), they have the physical means of creating expressive and emotional experiences linked to their singing bodies. There is a great deal of research to suggest that this activity is very good for us. Singing stimulates the musculature involved in respiration, phonation, articulation, and resonance. These activities increase

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our pulmonary and cardiovascular functions. Such activities have a positive impact on affect, arousal, and emotion. Linking this physical, expressive ability to memory allows singers to conjure up past experiences and to increase the “hedonic tone” or pleasure associated with the memory and experience. “Good vibrations” in this sense are both physiological and psychological.42 The expressive potential of humanly produced sound vibrations and resonance associated with singing is recognized in a number of traditional somatic practices43, as well as by music therapists and medical practitioners. Traditional Chinese medicine, for example, recognizes a practice called liu zi jue, or “healing sounds,” a form of Chinese qigong. This practice focuses on specific sound vibrations and associates them with the energizing or “healing” or specific organs.44 Singing has also been used to address decreased velopharygeal control (leading to difficulties in directing sound energy and air pressure) in Parkinson’s disease.45 Resonant or timbre-​inducing qualities in singing allow humans to engage in physically expressive behavior that not only has positive physiological and psychological effects, but also, when linked to memory, can associate these positive physical experiences with past experiences. Resonance, therefore, has an important role to play in the “reliving” of past experiences. While these examples relate to individual well-​being, resonance also plays an interesting role in our experience of singing together. Studies show that people who sing together tend to eschew their individual “best tone” or full upper resonance (the singer’s formant) for a more blended tone quality. Not only does this mean that singers listen better and “resonate” better with each other, they also create a more pleasurable experience for listeners. Research has shown this to be true, whether the audience has musical training (vocal or instrumental) or not. In other words, the greater the resonant “blend” (whether in amateur or professional ensemble singing), the more sonically satisfying to the listener.46 Vocal ensembles can also use resonance to create distinctive cultural sounds. Bulgarian female vocal ensembles, for example, have become famous throughout the world for the characteristic timbre and loudness of their singing related to the tuning of resonances in their vocal tracts.47 Manipulating resonance in singing, therefore, can enhance our experience of pleasure and togetherness, as well as producing culturally recognizable idioms. The range of vocal color and expression produced by the singing voice is influenced not only by the manipulation of the body’s resonant chambers,

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but also by the nature of the architectural space in which that resonance occurs. If singers can “feel” resonance in the body, they can also sense whether the space is absorbing the sound, or allowing a wide range of fundamentals to pass through, as well as adding its own to the mix, creating a “soft” wash of reverberation. This creates an intimacy in the relationship between singing and space. The singer can lean into an acoustic, ride it, or isolate his or her sound in a “hard” space. Singers learn to dialogue with both conductive resonance (where physical contact is involved, as when the vibrations created by the vocal folds travel through bone, cartilage, and muscle) and sympathetic resonance (where there is no physical contact and the sound is carried through a medium such as air). While all sound has an intimate relationship with resonance and space, singers use this relationship in a very particular way to manipulate affect and experience for both the singer and the listener. Singers can manipulate their own bodies to change the mood or color of their sound. They can use their relationship to external space as well as their relationship to other singers to create different emotional and physiological experiences. With so much of the singer’s instrument located inside the body and therefore unavailable to immediate, conscious control, resonance is one of the most important controllable aspects of singing. It therefore provides a powerful and malleable tool for ritually framed, sung experiences. The relationship between sound and space begins with resonance and extends to many other aspects of musical understanding.48 Ethnomusicologists are increasingly aware that “learning about general aspects of worldview, such as the conception of time, space, nature or society, can shed new light on musical structure as a cultural phenomenon.”49 Several cultures align the organization of musical time with the conceptualization of space. The Arabic īqā, for example, is paralleled with an Arabic orientation of space toward “the center.” The Central Javanese musical form of time organization, called the gendhing, echoes spatial orientations toward the four cosmic points, while Western metric organization (time measured within time) is seen as reflective of a Western propensity to create “partial spaces”—​the deceit of autonomous spaces, such as buildings, cathedrals, and theaters, operating independently of cosmic space.50 Musical time also dialogues with reverberation, or the persistence of sound after it has been produced. If the relationship between musical resonance and space is this intimate, what happens when sound is forced to resound in the “wrong” space?51 In the ritual context, what kind of cultural stress occurs when

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ritual sounds are manifested in borrowed or substituted spaces—​ones not connected to an intimate dialogue with the sound’s tradition and history? Understanding the nature of this intimacy assists in understanding the consequences of its rupture. Migrating ritual communities carry ritual sound traditions with them. They carry their prayers and chants and songs in their bodies. But migrating communities cannot carry exterior, physical space in any exactly replicable form. The disruption occurs at this secondary sphere of resonance, the external space within which the body’s instrument resounds. The outer resonating chamber or ritual space must be reconstituted in a new physical reality. Seeking asylum almost always involves migration and frequently involves dialogue with new cultural contexts.52 What happens to the nature of humanly produced sound when the body carrying it is transplanted into a new cultural and physical space? What happens to ritual sound when the bodies that produce it must borrow ritual space from other ritual traditions? This is a particularly pertinent question when the nature of the ritual space is intimately connected with the style and form of the musical repertoire. The movement and migration of peoples at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-​first centuries have influenced the ways in which we think about sound as a carrier of culture. As mentioned earlier, ethnomusicologists such as Timothy Rice speak of a new awareness of “routes rather than roots.”53 If we now understand our world as not so simple, but rather as a complex of unbounded, interacting cultures and of consisting crucially of the rapid movement of people, ideas, images and music over vast distances, then what sorts of questions arise? … [I]‌n what way does musical experience change through time? … [W]hat happens to musical experience as mediated musical sound shuttles through space?54 Migration results in a dislocation between the resonating chambers of the body and the resonating chambers of physical space. The resonating body must reconstitute its sound in a new sphere.

Spheres of Resonance The unprecedented growth of a significant refugee and asylum-​seeking population in Ireland at the end of the twentieth century has caused these

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questions to be addressed in a new Irish context.55 A useful analogy can be drawn with “Boyle’s Law,” a property attributed to the Anglo-​Irish scientist and religious thinker Robert Boyle, which noted that it is a property of air to move from high to low pressure. The body uses this property to produce sound by drawing air in and out of the lungs. Resonance is affected by the use of space to modify air pressure. Singers manipulate it to produce different timbres and qualities of sound. In drawing in air, the stomach, diaphragm, and entire upper body expands. The pressure of this expansion results in a necessary release of air, and vocal sound is produced on the current of air that flows from this release. The same principle is used cross-​culturally in many breath-​based meditative practices.56 It is interesting to think of how this physical principle might be modified to describe a property of migration: a tendency to move from high-​to low-​pressure areas. An area under high pressure (for land, employment, sustainable income, religious or political freedom) may propel its inhabitants toward areas perceived as being under less pressure, or offering more space/​opportunity for growth and development. At the end of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-​first, this principle has been increasingly characterized as involving mass movements from the third world to the first world.57 How can one imagine the journey of an asylum seeker to the island of Ireland? I am drawn to a line from Derrida’s Faith and Knowledge, perhaps his most explicit treatment of the subject of religion: … the island, the Promised Land and the desert. Three aporetical places:  with no way out or any assured path, without itinerary or point of arrival, without an exterior with a predictable map.58 The island, the desert, and the Promised Land are powerful metaphors for the significance of the island that is Ireland, for those who come to its shores seeking asylum. It is, in a way, a Promised Land—​a hoped for, potential space. But it is also a desert of dislocation and displacement. Writing about Pentecostal Christianity and Marshallese migrants in the Midwestern United States, Linda Allen notes that “distress is often both a motivation for migration as well as a feature of life in the post-​migration context.”59 It is both the island imagined by Thomas Moore and Napoleon’s St. Helena—​both utopia and exile. In the stress, distress, and hope of reconstituting lives in a new space, many migrant communities in Ireland have also had to reconstitute

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their rituals in spaces borrowed from other communities. The Russian Orthodox and Nigerian Pentecostal communities in Limerick city are two such examples. In both cases, singing already played a central role in their ritual expression. But in the ritual practices of the communities described at this liminal point of their development in Ireland, song was required to play an even more important role, given the absence of so many other aspects of the ritual performance, including the ritual space itself. In these cases, sound is required to carry the burden of creating and re-​creating the “missing” space. The ability of sound to do this—​to represent cross-​sensory reality—​is well documented. In his article “Dueling Landscapes: Singing Places and Identities in Highland Bolivia,” Thomas Solomon reminds us that recent research in ethnomusicology and popular music has drawn attention to the close relationships between music, place and identity… . [A]‌mong the insights generated by this new scholarship is the idea that musical performance serves as a practice for place-​making.60 We have already discussed the ways in which resonance in singing can contribute to an ability to experience or “relive” past associations or spaces. Another interesting way in which music can do this lies in its ability to suggest sounds and images that are not explicit in its performance. In his 1998 Seeger lecture, Gerhard Kubik drew on his experience in Uganda to illustrate how the musicians he worked with had learned to create acoustic illusions by playing auditory tricks on the listeners. Through compositions of extreme complexity, they were able to create an illusion for the listeners, who seemed to hear certain sounds that were not actually being played, an effect referred to as “auditory streaming” by cognitive psychologists.61 The power of suggestion and remembered sound can create a sonic experience even in the absence of the sound itself. In a similar way, singing can evoke visual and physical “presences” that are not actually there. In the case of the Russian Orthodox vigil in Limerick, the service was celebrated without an iconostasis, without the sanctuary behind the Royal Doors, and without the choreographed movement in and out of these sanctified spaces. Visually, these were absent. But sonically, it could be suggested that the chant was capable of carrying the burden of creating this imagined space, that the sound acted as a kind of sonic icon. Fr. George noted the transformative power

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of chant in this context: “it seems simple but it is not simple when we want to get a spiritual feeling from it.”62 In his sermon on Joseph in the land of Egypt, the preacher at the Pentecostal service reminded his congregation that, eventually, Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down before him and asked his forgiveness. In the same way, he suggests, the Irish people will eventually do the same, “… your enemies will come back at last and kneel down and say bless me sister, I’m sorry, bless me … brother, I say, you should forgive me, bless me.”63 At the conclusion of the sermon, the congregation breaks into a song, “Abraham’s Blessings Are Mine.” While the imagery and sonority of the song and the sermon cannot transport its participants back to their homes and ritual communities in Africa, it can evoke and generate a sense of identity, “not as a racialised minority immigrant group perching precariously on the periphery of Irish society,”64 but as a community of African-​led prayer. Its members could not carry the smell of their ritual space with them to Limerick, nor could they carry the hall, its walls and roof, the open air space outside to eat afterward, nor the taste of that food. They could not bring those other people and family members who would have been with them in celebration. In many cases, they could not even bring the clothes they would have adorned themselves in when going to church. One might suggest that the only thing they could bring with them was what they could carry in their bodies, that which can be ritually embodied:  sound and movement.65 And these carry the burden of creating the entire experience—​the look, the feel, the smell, and the taste are either lost, or carried in what the body alone can reproduce. In this sense, one could argue the paradox of sound being, at once, one of the most incarnate (embodied) and transcendent of the human senses. The human body finds it less easy to generate, from within itself, that which it sees, touches, tastes, and smells. But the extraordinary connection between vocal production (controlled by the ability to breathe and therefore intimately linked with our very survival) and auditory perception allows us to be the creative agent in both the production and reception of sound in a way that is unique among our sensory possibilities. The transitional use of borrowed ritual spaces by new migrant communities in Ireland highlights the unique ability of singing to generate multisensory experience and memory and, through this, to evoke the past and generate a sense of present belonging. In these cases, singing acts as a

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form of laus perennis—​an inter-​sensory experience, evoking place and time in the realm of the imagined, as well as in the actual. This chapter has demonstrated ways in which singing may carry a ritual authority beyond its normal function and may facilitate experiences of belonging in circumstances when other ritual features are missing. In particular, it looked at the role of resonance in this process. In the next section, it will also explore how ritual singing has provided a practice through which the existing Irish Catholic Church is attempting to rehabilitate and reimagine its identity, drawing on the metaphor of “a pilgrim people.”

A Pilgrim People As mentioned in the Introduction, the period called “the Celtic Tiger” not only corresponded with a dramatic growth in the migrant population, but in an equally dramatic erosion in the authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland for a variety of reasons. One of these involves processes of secularism, similar to those in many Western European countries. But far more damaging has been the erosion of confidence in, and allegiance to, the church in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals. In order to understand the significance of this decline, it is necessary to first understand just how powerful that influence was. In The Sign of the Cross:  Travels in Catholic Europe, the Irish novelist, essayist, and journalist Colm Tóibín recounts his meeting in 1992 with the theologian Norbert Brox in Regensburg. Brox and Tóibín become engaged in conversation concerning the conservative theology of the Catholic pope at that time, John Paul II. Tóibín presumes that Brox is alluding to Humanae Vitae and the church’s teaching on sexuality and contraception and recounts Brox’s response, “He smiled when he realised this and said, yes, that as I  was Irish, obviously the church’s teachings on sexual matters would come to my mind, since the emphasis in Ireland was on these things.”66 If indeed “these things” provide any reading on Irish Catholicism, then the changes in Irish sexual morality and law during this period represent a noticeable turning point. In 1983, a new amendment was voted into the constitution, specifically outlawing abortion. In the same year, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by David Norris, a member of the National Gay Federation, in which he sought to have two Acts, which made homosexual

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conduct illegal, declared unconstitutional. In the delivery of the judgment, it was explained that the preamble to the constitution, which called the people of Ireland to acknowledge their obligation to the Lord Jesus Christ, precluded these Acts from being declared “unconstitutional.” In 1986, the government proposed a referendum to remove the constitutional ban on divorce. The proposal was rejected by 63% of those who voted.67 The reversal of almost every one of these rulings in the 1990s is one marker of the rapid change in Irish society, as well as the decline of moral authority of the Catholic Church. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was legal in limited cases, such as the threat of suicide. In 1993, legislation was passed to legalize homosexuality. A second referendum on divorce in 1995 was passed by a narrow majority of 50.28% of the electorate in favor and 49.72% against.68 The 1990s marked a decade of unprecedented social and moral scandal for the Irish Catholic Church. In 1992 and 1993, Bishop Eamonn Casey and Fr. Michael Cleary made national headlines through the uncovering of personal relationships, which had resulted in the birth of children. Both had enjoyed high media popularity and were often outspoken advocates of family values. It was the perceived hypocrisy, “a deadly sin in the court of public opinion,”69 of their position that caused the greatest outcry. The wave of revelations concerning child sexual abuse, particularly in industrial schools run by religious orders, caused national and international shock waves and a growing anger at the inadequate response of those in authority. This reached a public climax with the resignation of Bishop Brendan Comiskey on April 1, 2002, following an apology for his failure to deal with clerical sexual abuse in his diocese of Ferns.70 In the same year, the current affairs program Prime Time aired a special program called “Cardinal Sins,” outlining the level of cover-​up of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. This resulted in one of the most comprehensive investigations into the matter and the eventual publication of two reports in 2009, revealing systemic, unreported abuse in a number of church-​led organizations. The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (known as the Ryan report)71 investigated residential schools operated by the Catholic Church and funded and supervised by the Department of Education across Ireland. Over 60 such schools were investigated as part of the commission’s work throughout a 10-​year period. The Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (known as the Murphy report)72 investigated reports of sexual abuse in the diocese

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of Dublin, which were reported but ignored by both church leaders and the police force of Ireland, the Garda Síochána. Jesuit and theologian Séamus Murphy sums up the reality presented in these reports: It starts with facing three simple facts: (1) a large number of priests sexually assaulted children during the last forty years, (2) their superiors made no serious effort to punish or prevent them, and (3) if it were not for media exposé, it would still be going on. We can quibble with, add nuance, or contextualize each fact, but we cannot let nuance and context make us lose sight of them.73 Such damning evidence has led many to feel that “to belong to the Catholic church these days is more a cause for embarrassment and shame than for hope and encouragement.”74 In his analysis of the findings of the Murphy report, the religious correspondent for the Irish Times, Patsy McGarry, suggests that the report describes “a world which has lost its moral compass but not least where the welfare of children was concerned.”75 Some view the closure of the Irish embassy to the Holy See in Rome in November 2011, allegedly as a financial efficiency, as evidence of a low point in Irish relationships with the Holy See and the institution of the Catholic Church. The overwhelming support for the referendum on marriage equality in 2015 has been described by some as evidence of a “post-​Catholic” Ireland.76 A majority of Irish theologians agree that a crisis of leadership has characterized all of this period, with “little evidence of vision from the top.”77 This lack of religious leadership was mirrored by a lack of political leadership in the face of the economic collapse, which was to follow fast on the heels of the Celtic Tiger. The real prosperity of the 1990s was succeeded by a period of reckless lending by banks, low interest rates, and lax regulations, resulting in an explosion of property development, with construction outstripping demand by over 400% in some parts of the country. In the infamous words of the country’s then Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Bertie Ahern, “the boom is getting boomier.”78 By 2006, property prices began to decline, leaving investors exposed. The international financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, left the Irish banks exposed, and led to the government’s decision to guarantee six financial institutions, changing the banking crisis in Ireland into a sovereign-​debt crisis.

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The inability or unwillingness of church and state to deal with the moral and economic crisis emerging across Ireland at the turn of the century led some scholars to probe the very nature of Irish Catholic morality. In his book The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–​2000,79 Irish historian, Diarmaid Ferriter questions the extent to which the imposition of the church’s moral authority came at the expense of a durable intellectual culture in Ireland. In Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland,80 he follows this question with a damning exposition on the collusion of the church and state in the imposition of a culture of sexual repression and hypocrisy. The Ireland of the early twenty-​first century is, therefore, in the midst of radical social, economic, cultural, political, ethnic, and religious change. While the sociopolitical climate would seem to be pulling away from “traditional” Catholic values, it is interesting to note the perhaps surprising durability of religious ritual practice within this context. Ritual attendance remains consistently higher (though decreasing) than in most other European Union countries.81 While many religions deplore the commercialization of the sacraments, there is, nonetheless, a high level of participation in the sacraments of baptism, communion, and marriage.82 The influx of new migrants has also raised the level of ritual participation. In his work on African Pentecostal churches in Ireland, Abel Ugba notes that “religious activism is one area where immigrant participation has been most voluntary and intense,” noting the important role played by religious ritual participation in the lives of most migrants.83 Ritual participation by migrants has caused a surge in religious adherence. While many mainstream churches were in decline prior to the shift in migration patterns, the census results of 2002, for example, showed the Church of Ireland gaining over 20,000 new members, with the Presbyterian Church gaining almost 8,000 and the Methodists gaining 5,000. The Muslim population rose from approximately 4,000 to almost 20,000, and the Orthodox churches have increased from 400 to over 10,000 members. In addition, several new ritual communities have been formed, including African-​led churches, mostly of a Pentecostal nature, as well as Chinese and Filipino churches.84 While traditional Irish Catholicism is therefore in a state of crisis, it is interesting to see how the church has reached back to its historical roots in Celtic spirituality, as well as out toward the new ritual communities in Ireland in a renewed branding of its mission as that of a pilgrim people. In The End of Irish Catholicism, theologian Vincent Twomey argues that

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what has traditionally been called “Irish” Catholicism is in fact a result of a schism in Irish religiosity and culture, which happened after the Great Famine.85 The country emerging from this social devastation was decimated culturally, socially, and linguistically. The church that stepped into this vacuum was, at once, Roman and Victorian, Latin and English, unified by its contempt of local, Irish, indigenous spirituality and committed to a rigorous adherence to the letter of Rome, filtered through a Victorian obsession with sexual morality (and some would say, hypocrisy). Twomey took up the argument in the press with an article in the Irish Times; Because of cultural and political developments in Ireland after the great Famine, many argue persuasively that culture was perhaps not authentically Irish at all. It is my conviction that neither was “traditional Irish Catholicism” truly Catholic.86 The rehabilitation of Irish Catholicism invokes a reclamation of an older, “indigenous,” or “Celtic” spirituality. Superficially, this would seem to mirror the recent international and commercial interest in Celtic spirituality, but it differs from it in a number of significant ways. The commercial movement is primarily an English-​language phenomenon, while the “local” movement seeks to reclaim its Irish-​language roots in prayers, songs, and rituals. The latter also demonstrates a strong connection to local places of primarily local significance, such as holy wells dedicated to a local saint or Mass rocks associated with Penal rituals. While the eclecticism of international Celticism incorporates aspects of Buddhism, New Age practices, and ecological politics, the local manifestation is as likely to incorporate pilgrimage to Medjugorje as well as a reinvestment of local pride in Irish sporting practices such as hurling (associated with the hero of Irish folklore, Cuchulainn).87 Central to this rehabilitation is a reclamation of the practice and metaphor of pilgrimage. This is, of course, not unique to Irish Catholicism. The year 2000 was declared a Jubilee year by the Roman Catholic Church. A jubilee, or an extraordinary year, is Judaic in origin (Lev 25:8–​10), with Christians seeing Jesus of Nazareth as identifying himself as the fulfillment of this prophetic marking of time (Luke 4:16–​21). The first ritual institution of the jubilee into Christian practice began in 1300 with Pope Boniface VIII and was specifically linked to the practice of pilgrimage, intended as a period of special blessing for pilgrims to the holy places

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of Rome. In his Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, Incarnationis Mysterium, John Paul II noted that [i]‌n the course of history, the institution of the jubilee has been enriched by signs which attest to the faith…. [A]mong these, the first is the notion of pilgrimage, which is linked to the situation of man who readily describes his life as a journey.88 In addition to this official sanction, popular practice would also seem to indicate that pilgrimage enjoyed something of a European comeback in the turning decades of the millennium. In their submission to Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces, Nolan and Nolan noted that pilgrimage … has evolved within the context of Europe’s shifting political, socio-​ economic, folkloric and intellectual orientations … [and] remains and important dynamic element of European culture. Today, at least 6,380 Roman Catholic shrines in Europe draw approximately 70 to 100 million visitations per year.89 Speaking of the growing popularity of pilgrimage at the turn of the century, ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman suggests that while “it may seem surprising in the 1990s to discover that pilgrimage is undergoing a widespread revival in Europe,”90 it is directly related to a new consciousness of the movement of peoples across the continent. More recently, scholars like Anna Fedele have documented a surge in alternative pilgrimage and ritual creativity in the creation of new pilgrimage practices and the reclamation of existing ones: During the past twenty-​five years an increasing number of pilgrims who do not identify themselves as practicing Christians have visited Catholic pilgrim shrines in France, particularly shrines to Mary Magdalene or featuring dark Madonnas, in order to benefit from these places’ “energy” and the power of the “Sacred Feminine.”91 If the Irish reclamation of pilgrimage is related to a larger European and Roman Catholic reclamation—​and the thousands of Irish people who travel to Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorie, and Rome each year would seem to attest to this fact—​it is also different in a very fundamental way. Anthropological theory, as well as popular practice, typically views

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pilgrimage as a temporary separation from home, involving a journey to a sacred destination, after which the pilgrim will return home. The presumption is that the separation is temporary, creating a “liminal” space and a transitory “communitas.”92 While contemporary Irish pilgrims would seem to have assimilated aspects of this understanding, the Irish sense of pilgrimage differs fundamentally.93 This difference in practice and understanding dates back to a sixth/​seventh-​century understanding of pilgrimage, which is still evidenced in the prevalence of pilgrim sites, artifacts, and practices dating from this period. Nolan and Nolan note that “Irish shrine patterns are different in most respects to those found in continental Europe.”94 Of the 6,380 shrines surveyed across Europe, only 6% of these have existed since the Early Christian period (first to eighth centuries), the majority of which are located in Ireland. Furthermore, shrines from this period account for 86% of all shrines in Ireland. The spirituality of pilgrimage from this period would seem to sustain significant contemporary, physical witness. The radical difference for the Irish pilgrim of this time is that pilgrimage was a journey from which one did not return. One set out on a journey of great peril, with only the love of God as one’s guide, and ended up wherever the hand of God ordained. The suffering of this journey and, most important, the suffering of separation from family (under Old Irish or Brehon Law, the worst punishment for a crime was to be cast out from the protection of one’s clan) could only be endured by those following in the footsteps of Christ and the apostles. So irrevocable was this journey that it was described as a kind of martyrdom or a death. The Cambrai Homily, the earliest extant homily in Old Irish (dating from the seventh century), describes three types of martyrdom: the red martyrdom, in which blood is shed for Christ; the blue or green martyrdom, which is the sacrifice of the ascetic life of fasting and penance; and the white martyrdom, which entails separation for God’s sake from everything one loves.95 Twomey relates this to a more contemporary attitude, which survived in Ireland into the twentieth century, identifying Irish Catholics with the wanderings of the Jewish people. Irish Catholics saw themselves as “Christian Jews,” perpetually wandering, spread throughout the world in a growing diaspora, identified as Irish as much by their faith as by any sense of race or ethnicity.96 It is this sense of migrating dislocation, separated from family and home, with only faith to sustain one’s journey, which most closely links Irish Catholicism’s search for a rehabilitated spirituality with the new

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communities that have migrated to her shores. Most of these peoples left home not knowing where they would end up, and the majority have arrived without spouse, children, or extended family. For many, religion has been both a cause of their exile and the force that sustains them through their dislocation. It is this sense of pilgrimage which Liam Ryan, an Augustinian, sees as connecting new communities with ancient Irish spiritual practices: … they are very much a moving people, with no place to lay their head as the Gospel says, they are literally traveling people that have been dislocated and I think the pilgrim sense of the people of God traveling across the desert, the wilderness … and in Irish history, there is a lot of that too; that the pilgrim places were places of healing and recovery from oppressive regimes in the past and what we would call a lot of human suffering and pain and drudgery—​that was in the pilgrimage together and walking together and drawing the people in, in companionship, to walk—​like the road to Emmaus—​ the whole scriptural theme is dynamic, it’s not static … [the Irish people] know about movement—​the Irish emigrant history—​they know about movement and transition as well so I think there is a common bond which can be celebrated there in music and song and the pilgrim theme.97 It is interesting to observe the discourse of ancient wanderings and Celtic roots becoming part of the foundation narratives of several new ritual communities in Ireland. The young Coptic Church in Ireland, for example, sees a connection with the early Irish Celtic Church. Sherif Gayed, a translator by profession and a sub-​deacon at the church of St. Mary and St. Demiana in Bray, County Dublin, explains his sense of this bond: There were seven Coptic monks who came to Ireland in the early centuries even before St. Patrick and they were preaching Christianity here and they are buried somewhere in Ireland… . I read a litany for them in the Book of Leinster … it says, “through the prayers of the seven Egyptian monks, O Lord grant us forgiveness.”98 Similarly, Fr. George Zavershinsky speaks of the connectivity between Celtic and Orthodox Christianity: This is just the beginning of the history of Orthodoxy in Ireland but I believe it is not the actual beginning because the actual beginning

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in Ireland was in the first centuries of the Christian age. I believe that the deep tradition of Irish Christianity is rooted in Orthodoxy and very similar. We can re-​open some common things.99 If the Irish Catholic Church seeks to rehabilitate itself, with reference to its Celtic past, African-​led churches often articulate their mission as involving the reinvigoration of Irish Christianity. Just as Irish missionaries traveled to Europe to spread the word of God in the early medieval period, so too do many African-​led churches see their travels to Ireland as providing an opportunity to spread God’s word: “The God-​given mission to reintroduce the gospel to Europeans and to regenerate Irish society frames their self-​perception.”100

Pilgrimage and Music If pilgrimage provides a metaphor through which both traditional Irish Catholicism and new migrant communities can find common ground, music is the medium through which this is being achieved. Bohlman notes that “pilgrimage is unimaginable without music. Music—​song, chant, prayer, procession, dance, ritual—​provide[s]‌the essential material to narrate each pilgrimage.”101 The music used in pilgrimage is characterized as multilingual and multicultural. It provides a sonic space through which disparate people can find a shared voice. The movement of peoples also moves repertoires, providing opportunities for these to be sounded in spaces where they are not usually heard and to be sung by people who do not usually sing them: Pilgrimage and musical practice provide numerous cases in which the global and the local interact, numerous culture-​scapes overlap and compete, and subcultures challenge hegemonies.102 The music of ritual communities in transition—​whether these are transitions created by dislocation and relocation or transitions created by a crisis in a community’s identity—​often demonstrate a creative fluidity and sonic malleability. Guattari has noted that music is naturally de-​territorial and that “seepage” is a more constant condition for music than “containment.”103 For example, at a Russian Orthodox liturgy in Ireland, you are likely to hear the Our Father chanted in Russian, English, and Irish, or any other language represented within the community. For the St. Patrick’s Day Mass in the Augustinian Church in 2004, the leader of the African

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choir played “Hail Glorious Saint Patrick” on the harmonica as a post-​ communion reflection. Over the past decade, it is increasingly likely that one will hear an African Pentecostal hymn in the rituals of several of the main-​line churches. There has been a dramatic growth in “Gospel” choirs in Ireland during this same period, both within and outside religious rituals. These often incorporate African singers and African songs, as well as the more traditional African-​American repertoire. There has also been increased interest in music of the Orthodox traditions, with several Georgian singing groups developing a repertoire of both folk and religious songs. As many of these repertoire traditions spill beyond the walls of ritual worship, very often the first encounter an Irish person will have with a new religious tradition will be sonic, either through radio, television, or live concert performance.

Sonic Authority It is often suggested that, deprived of the use of one sense, we develop greater facility with other senses. The blind often develop a more acute sense of hearing than the sighted. Similarly, the authority and presence of ritual sound is much greater in situations where it is called on to compensate for or to sonically reimagine absent elements of ritual practice. For those Roman Catholics in the Augustinian Church experiencing a Russian Orthodox Vigil (most of whom had never been in a Russian Orthodox church or experienced a Russian Orthodox liturgy before), their experience of this ritual was created primarily through chant. Similarly, a kind of sonic “seepage” is happening between the music of the Pentecostal churches and the more traditional Christian churches in Limerick, with African choirs (singing a repertoire that emerges from the same pool as that of their Pentecostal brothers and sisters) forming in the Roman Catholic Church as well as the United Methodist and Presbyterian churches. Ritual necessity has caused a flow of sound between denominations where that flow has not existed before. The emergence of this sonic authority is most visible (or audible) in those points of intersection between new ritual communities existing in forced dislocation and older, ritual communities attempting to rehabilitate themselves through reaching back to their ancient self-​imaging as a pilgrim people. Both of these movements are more informed by pastoral realities (building new churches or trying to keep old churches alive) than theoretical theologies. Both exist primarily in the ritual space of practice

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(doxa). Their primary form of expression is ritual expression; for many, this is indistinguishable from musical expression. In an interview with a founder member of the Congolese choir, Elikya, I noted that he seemed confused by my question as to the importance of music in religion; he could not imagine one without the other; “we cannot separate the religions from singing. Singing is part of the religion.”104 A striking aspect of almost all the new ritual communities I  have worked with has been the centrality of singing to the ritual experience. This is of particular interest in the context of Irish Catholic ritual, which has often been characterized by its lack of singing. In his book, Why Catholics Can’t Sing, Thomas Day associates the lack of music in Irish liturgies with its history of persecution. The necessarily covert nature of its rituals denied it the possibility of developing a ritual musical culture within the context of the official liturgy. This lack, he suggests, was turned into a virtue: After the Reformation, the Catholics of Dublin did not hear a bell ring from one of their churches until 1815. From the sixteenth century until the nineteenth, whenever they heard a bell, it was a sound coming from a Protestant church. Church bells were something they associated with Protestants. And also, when they heard hymns, pipe organs, and choral anthems, they heard them coming from behind the doors of Protestant churches. What must have sustained the Catholic Irish through these years of persecution was the knowledge that they did not need these things (bells, hymns etc.) There faith was precisely that—​faith, unadulterated by amusements.105 If the lack of music was turned into a kind of necessary virtue in the historical Irish Catholic Church, as Day suggests, then the centrality of music may well be a necessary feature of the reclamation of contemporary religious ritual in Ireland. It is of course possible that the current, creative ritual “seepage,” happening primarily through song, is a transitory phenomenon. As new ritual communities become more established, with separate, autonomous, ritual spaces, their ritual sound may be used to re-​enforce a separate identity, rather than a common, complex, reimagined one. New communities may wish to shed their memory of migrant roots. It would also be an exaggeration to say that there are indications of a recognition of this potential sonic ritual authority within the hierarchy of the Irish Catholic Church.

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History, however, has a long memory. The Irish literary scholar, Declan Kiberd writes that the historical capacity of the Irish to assimilate waves of incomers should never be underestimated. Eight centuries ago, after all, the Normans became “more Irish than the Irish themselves.” Who is to say that the latest group of arriving Nigerians might not know the same destiny? If there is no zeal like the zeal of the convert, there may be no Irishness quite like that of the recent recruit.106 If “Irishness” has been traditionally associated with religion, it has also had its most powerful voice in music. It is not impossible to imagine that the singing which has emerged through the ritual interfacing of old and new ritual communities in Ireland may provide a guiding star to a pilgrim people searching for spaces of shared belonging.

Conclusion This chapter has explored a number of ways in which a ritual community can find itself singing in the “wrong” ritual space. A migrant community may have to borrow ritual space from a different religious community. A  well-​ established religious tradition such as Irish Catholicism may find itself in the “wrong” ritual space because large parts of its community no longer feel like they belong there. In both cases, the argument has been made that singing is one powerful way in which ritual communities can foster a sense of belonging, even in the face of dislocation or disempowerment. The expressive possibilities of the human singing voice are among our most powerful and connect us most viscerally to memory and emotion. This power can be harnessed to reimagine space in the case of ritual communities that no longer have access to their ritual homes. It can also be a significant tool in reimagining a ritual world that has lost aspects of its relevance or self-​identity. Ensemble singing creates a disposition toward shared belonging that is both psychological and physiological. In adapting to the resonance of the space in which it finds itself, the singing voice necessarily dialogues with the world around it. It has no choice but to find a way of belonging by reaching out, being absorbed, reflected and assimilating some of its new surroundings into its own sound.

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Repertoires of Belonging Embodying “Bothness” through Musical Repertoires

Introduction Chapter  1 explored the physical meeting of ritual and song traditions through the sharing of “borrowed” ritual spaces. Chapter  2 looks at another kind of sonic dialogue:  the meeting that occurs when different musical repertoires encounter each other in a shared ritual context. As ethnomusicologist John Blacking reminds us in his landmark text How Musical Is Man, sound communities do not exist in hermetically sealed sonic spaces, but within the constantly changing soundscape of the world around them.1 While we can physically shut our eyes and block out visual stimuli, it is much more difficult for the human ear to shut out sound. This constant openness to the audio world has two somewhat paradoxical results. On the one hand, we develop strong aural affinities with those around us, resulting in the nuanced proliferation of local accents and local musical styles. On the other hand, these styles are constantly subject to the influence of new sound worlds as these become part of our audio surround. Access to an ever-​expanding range of aural stimuli through increased interaction with audio media, as well as through accelerated globalization, both challenges and stimulates our cultural, sonic identities.2 Studies show that as our soundscapes enlarge, musicians respond with both depth and breath, renewing their commitment to local traditions while also communicating creatively through transnational sonic platforms.3 Musical migrants are key players in this phenomenon, carrying their own sound worlds into new geographical homes.4

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The space provided by religious rituals for musical encounters between new migrant communities and host communities is well documented.5 Music (especially singing) is one of the most widespread and easily produced forms of cultural production and often acts as a communication platform between migrant and host ritual communities.6 The nature of this communication often happens at the level of repertoire exchange or sharing. However, the focus on repertoire often leads to aesthetically based tensions, whereby communities begin to advocate for a preferred aesthetic style (for example, the “African Mass” or the “Latin Mass”) or a preferred ideological aesthetic, for example a “pastoral” or “high art” musical style. In this chapter, one particular example of musical sharing is explored, drawing on a ritual experience of the Easter Triduum in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick. It is suggested that focusing on the singer rather than the song (the embodied, somatic experience rather than repertoire) is one way to overcome the potential tensions between musical repertoires and aesthetics. The “somatic turn” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is introduced, demonstrating the link between aesthetics and the body for early somatic practitioners. The work of philosopher Richard Shusterman is explored in depth, particularly with reference to his construct “somaesthetics.” This discussion on somatics as a key element in sung belonging proposes that one way in which aesthetic differences in music or ritual can be addressed is through recognizing the body as a common instrument of production. Finally, the ways in which musical repertoires can be “hijacked” by different ideological agendas is explored, with reference to Latin chant and the modern liturgical movement. The appropriation of chant by the pastoral left in the early part of the twentieth century, followed by its appropriation by the conservative right after the Second Vatican Council, will be examined. The chapter concludes with a discussion of an interesting reversal of this trend in the Irish context, highlighting the idiosyncratic ways in which ritual singers and ritual songs can change their identity in response to varying political, cultural, and religious contexts.

St. John’s Catholic Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Church, Limerick My initial involvement with St. John’s Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Church in Limerick city was related to my work with two very different musical traditions.7 With the arrival of the first significant influx of asylum

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seekers into Limerick city in 2000, St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church (locally known as “the Augustinian Church”) quickly became one of the first churches in the city to actively promote a multicultural approach to its liturgies. Within a year, I  was asked to assist in the coordination of a Congolese-​led choir and subsequently also worked with an African women’s choir in the church. My involvement with the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (known as St. John’s Cathedral), the nineteenth-​century Catholic cathedral for the Limerick diocese, was a result of my interest and work in chant and medieval/​Renaissance polyphony. I was also connected to these ritual communities through our students and graduates; one was a priest of the Limerick diocese and conducted the boy’s chant choir at the cathedral, and another, originally from Nigeria, was in residence at the Augustinian and was actively involved in directing music at the church. St. John’s Cathedral represents a ritual community with strong roots in its historical identity, and it has played a significant role in the historical promotion of Latin chant and polyphony in post-​Emancipation Catholic Ireland. St. John’s was one of five parishes in medieval Limerick. St. Mary’s became the first cathedral of the Limerick diocese after the synod of Rathbrassil in 1111 but subsequently became the property of the Church of Ireland following the Reformation. It is currently a cathedral of the Church of Ireland in Limerick city. The site for St. John’s was purchased by William Hill, a Quaker, in 1796, and was kept in a secret trust, as Roman Catholics were not permitted to purchase land at that time. The lifting of such restrictions in the early nineteenth century, following Catholic Emancipation, resulted in the widespread construction of Catholic churches across Ireland; the foundation stones for St. John’s Cathedral were laid in 1856.8 Approximately six months after the cathedral was opened and held its first liturgies, the German-​born musician Caspar Anton Wötzel was appointed organist and choirmaster of the cathedral, and a new three-​ manual Hill organ was inaugurated in 1864. Nineteenth-​century liturgical music in Limerick was characterized by a strong adherence to the Cecilian movement and its promotion of Gregorian chant as the music “par excellence” of the Roman Catholic liturgy. The large number of mainland Europeans (particularly German and Belgium) serving as organists and choirmasters in Irish churches at the time resulted in strong links with European Cecilianism, and was particularly promoted by the Belgium-​born De Prins brothers, Léopold and Francis Prosper (organists at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Cork, and the Redemptorist Church of Mount

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St. Alphonsus, Limerick, respectively). The bulletin of the Irish society of St. Cecilia, Lyra Ecclesiastica, for example, reported on the Holy Week ceremonies led by Francis De Prins, “[T]‌he music sung on Palm Sunday at the blessing of the palms and the procession which followed, was that prescribed in the Processionale Romanum … the Proper of the Mass was sung in Gregorian.”9 Subsequent musical directors, such as Joseph Smith, questioned the dominance of Cecilianism, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly following the 1903 Motu Proprio of Pius X, the Solesmes style of chant was firmly established. The 1903 Papal directive marked two key changes in liturgical music: chant in the Solesmes style became the dominant form of liturgical music, and mixed choirs were replaced by all male choirs. In 1905, the Munster News commented on the Holy Week liturgies at St. John’s Cathedral:  “[A]‌n interesting feature of the ceremonies during Holy Week will be the rendering of Sacred Music by the male choir who will adhere strictly to the Gregorian Chant according to the approved Solesmes method.”10 This approach would characterize music at the cathedral throughout much of the twentieth century. Despite the opening up of the Catholic liturgy to other musical styles in the wake of Vatican Council II (1962–​1965), music at the cathedral was marked by continuity and stability of style. Brendan O’Boyle was organist and director of the Senior Choir from 1960 until his retirement in 2003. Under his direction, the cathedral performed a musical diet consisting primarily of Gregorian chant and polyphony. O’Boyle donated much of his personal music collection to the University of Limerick at the end of the 1990s, and even a preliminary glance will reveal a preference for Tallis, Palestrina, Victoria, de Lasso, Arcadelt, and later favorites ranging from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio to Mozart’s Adoramus Te Christe. Changes at the cathedral in 2004 led to a wider spectrum of repertoire and musical forces and, in that same year, I was invited to participate in the Holy Week ceremonies being televised for Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE), the national public service broadcaster for Ireland. We were invited to sing the Good Friday liturgy on April 9, 2004. At this time, I was conducting a university-​based choir called Lucernarium, connected with the program I was directing, the Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song. The ensemble, consisting mostly of students from this program, as well as other university students, sang a wide range of ritual repertoires from early medieval chant to contemporary liturgical compositions, as well as chants and songs from other world religious traditions. I was also very involved with music at the

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Augustinian Church, particularly with two choirs: Elikya, a choir specializing on Congolese worship songs,11 and Trinity choir, an African Christian choir with members from both the African and Irish community at the Augustinians. In contrast to the stability of repertoire that characterized St. John’s throughout the twentieth century, the Augustinian Church has been more characterized by the influence of its global outreach, both through a history of missionary activity and a more recent commitment to working with the refugee and asylum-​seeking community in Ireland. The Augustinians have had a presence in Ireland since the twelfth century, with the introduction of the Canons Regular, and foundations in Ireland since the thirteenth century.12 The first Augustinian church in Limerick was located in Fish Lane, established in 1633. The current church on O’Connell Street was built in 1942.13 The Irish Augustinians have a history of missionary activity, with a particular emphasis on missions to Africa in the twentieth century. The Irish province went to Nigeria in 1938,14 Kenya in the 1980s,15 and South Africa in the 1990s.16 The governmental policy of dispersal in April 2000 marked the first influx of asylum seekers into Limerick. At this time, the Prior of the Augustinians in Limerick had himself returned from a number of years of mission work in Africa and, along with the Redemptorist community, the Augustinians were among the first of the Limerick churches to become actively involved in working with the new asylum-​seeking community. The first Congolese choir in Limerick sang its first Mass in the Augustinians on Mission Sunday in October 2001. The Russian Orthodox Community worshipped at the Augustinians for much of 2002. The church hosted the rituals of numerous other religious groups and established an African-​inspired choir. When we received an invitation to be part of the Holy Week services at St. John’s and to coordinate the music for the Good Friday liturgy, my first reaction was to lean into our expertise in chant and medieval polyphony and resonate with the venerable tradition of these repertoires at the cathedral. However, by April 2004, Ireland’s growing multiculturalism was an issue of national interest, particularly in light of the imminent citizenship referendum (which will be explored in greater detail in Chapter  6) and there was a great desire within the liturgy coordinators to celebrate the growing cultural diversity in the ritual community of the cathedral. I was also fortunate to have musical expertise from a range of ritual vocal traditions in my choir. I decided to prepare music for the liturgy that embodied

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both the Latin tradition of the cathedral and the growing multiculturalism of Limerick and Ireland. It is worth noting at this point the significant influence of the musician on the shape and style of many ritual experiences. I am often struck by how infrequently musicians are mentioned in documents pertaining to questions of music in Catholic ritual, other than in pragmatic descriptions of when they are needed (at which parts of the ritual) and the musical forces they should employ (solo cantoring, choral settings, congregational responses, etc.). The fact that their decisions will have a defining influence on the aesthetic and expressive dimension of the ritual is rarely mentioned, and yet practicing musicians in ritual contexts know that, despite regulations noting that the authority for such choices lies de juro in the centralized hands coordinating the centralized regulations, de facto they are often made by musicians. The decision I made, in this case, was to rely on my university-​based choir, Lucernarium (Figure 2.1), as I knew that they were capable and experienced across a variety of repertoires. Our students and graduates working in St. John’s and the Augustinians were also involved in the preparation,

Figure 2.1 Lucernarium Choir. Photograph, Maurice Gunning

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selection, and composition of the music, bringing styles from both communities into the ritual. A single example may serve to illustrate our approach to the selection of repertoire. The liturgy of Good Friday consists of four sections: the ministry of the Word during which the Passion is read; solemn intercessions; the veneration of the cross; and the ministry of the Sacrament. During the third section of the liturgy, the congregation is invited to venerate the cross and meditate on the passion of Christ. The music for this section includes, among other pieces, the Improperia, often known as “the Reproaches.” This consists of antiphons and responses based on a series of reproaches from Jesus to his people. In the text for the Roman Rite, the antiphons are in Latin and the responses (“Holy is God! Holy and Strong! Holy Immortal One, Have Mercy on Us!”) are sung in Latin and Greek. The text has been set by many composers (most often as “Popule Meus”), from the well-​ known sixteenth-​century settings by Victoria and Palestrina to twenty-​first-​ century settings by composers such as John Tavener. When I  was going through the music donated by Brendan O’Boyle, before handing it over to the university library, I noticed that there was a copy of Palestrina’s setting of “Popule Meus,” so I decided that we would sing this version to honor the tradition of the cathedral. At the same time, I  decided to include a setting of the same text in Igbo, written by my Nigerian student (Figure 2.2). These two settings, one written by a sixteenth-​century Italian composer in Latin and the second by a twenty-​ first-​century Nigerian composer in Igbo, were both sung at the same liturgy in Ireland. Language did not prove to be a stumbling block for either setting, but rather Latin, Greek, and Igbo all added to the sonority of what was communicated. The opening line of the Latin text is Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo constristavi te? Responde mihi. (My People, what have I  done to you? How have I  offended you? Answer me.) The sense of relationship and betrayal portrayed in the text is explained by the composer of the Igbo piece in the context of Igbo society: This arrangement of Popule Meus in the Igbo language was inspired by Igbo people’s sense of justice within the familial setting. Rendering it in the mother tongue drives home the message: Umu Nnam loosely translates as “My people” or literally as “My father’s

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Figure 2.2  Excerpt of Popule Meus by Aloysius Zuribo.

children.” One’s Umu Nnam are always in proximity with one. They are, as such, immediate beneficiaries of one’s fortunes (bread—​ achicha). In Igboland, they also represent one’s strength among whom one should feel secure. Hence such personal names like Umanna wu íké—​one’s Umu Nna, are one’s strength. The Umu Nna are therefore reproached when they betray one’s trust.17 The musical texture of both emphasizes a tonal harmonic language, differing in style but both always at the service of the text. In their sonic gesture “back” toward the historic church and “outward” toward the culturally global church, they represent the sonic possibility of both/​and rather than either/​or—​what one might call the embodying of “bothness.”

Embodying “Bothness” “Bothness,” as it is proposed here, is related to, but moves beyond, Mantle Hood’s challenge to musicians and ethnomusicologists to embrace

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“bi-​musicality.” Bi-​musicality recognizes the importance of being able to perform the music of a tradition one wishes to study, just as we might learn the language of a culture we wish to understand.18 But “bothness” in the sense suggested here rejects the fundamental binary set up by this emphasis on cultural tradition, seeing it as more of a spectrum of human expression rooted in the body. In this sense, it resonates with the work of gender scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling, who challenges the either/​or binary of sex to suggest a new binary of spectrum, emerging from the many possible variations of the human body.19 One of the important points in the example given in the preceding section is that the ritual may have featured a variety of repertoires, aesthetics, languages, and style, but the same bodies sing it all. The performance of any vocal repertoire resides first and foremost in what the body is capable of doing. The physical body, in any culture, relies on broadly the same mechanics to produce sung sound.20 The point of departure, therefore, for all repertoire, is a shared kinesthetic experience, rooted in the body. The body responds culturally to training within aesthetic and pedagogical traditions to produce different kinds of sound. Some of these pull the body in contradictory directions. Most of them do not. Many world repertoires can be produced simultaneously within the same singing body. The possibilities are finite but broad. When the focus is on repertoire rather than ritual, the result is often an aesthetic divide between different styles and traditions. In the context of post–​Vatican II liturgical music, for example, musical repertoire became a battleground of the most acrimonious struggles. Annibale Bugnini, who served as secretary of the commission for liturgical reform before the Second Vatican Council, and as secretary of the Consilium for the implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy after the council, wrote that, of all the areas of liturgical reform “sacred music was unfortunately the most unsettled,”21 and that no area of the reform led to as much division and bitterness as the reforms concerning music. Similarly, questions of musical style are often dominant factors in the shaping of a ritual. This can be aesthetically pleasing but very often ritually divisive. If the focus is shifted toward the singer rather than the song, a number of things happen. First, the question becomes more about who is singing, rather than what is being sung. Instead of asking whether we should sing Latin chant, folk song, or Gospel music, we might ask what kind of singing suits a child’s voice? An elderly person’s voice? What kind of singing is good for our bodies? How many different kinds of singing can one group of people do? What kind of training or exposure do we need to be able to sing what

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we would like to sing? By shifting the questions away from repertoire, we move them toward the potential of the human body. This opens up many more possibilities for “bothness,” or musical encounter, than an approach based on repertoire-​driven ideologies. This suggests that singing in ritual contexts is better governed by somatic considerations than aesthetic ones. The core importance of a somatic, experiential understanding of ritual music was brought home to me in 1999 while I was on sabbatical at the Catholic University of America. Completing my doctoral dissertation on Irish Catholic ritual music since the Second Vatican Council, I  took advantage of my time there to attend a number of modules, including one on music and the sacraments. Each week, we examined a different sacrament and discussed the selection of appropriate music for the rituals of Christian Initiation, the Rite of Ordination, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, the Eucharistic Ritual, the Rite of Marriage, Rites of Anointing and Viaticum, and Christian Funerals. We discussed the pastoral role of musicians in guiding participants in the selection of liturgically appropriate repertoire and steering them away from the creeping presence of secular music or liturgically inappropriate music, selected by ritual participants, with little knowledge of the theological foundations informing the role of music in the liturgy. During this sabbatical, I received the news that my sister had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 29. In the midst of the tidal wave of grief engulfing my family, we had to prepare her funeral ritual. My family turned to me to coordinate the music. Everything I had learned in the theologically grounded and pastorally oriented module seemed to pale into insignificance in the presence of my family’s emotional and ritual needs, and there was no question in my mind of trying to guide them toward liturgically “appropriate” repertoire. My intuitive response was not doctrinally guided, but visceral and somatic. Geraldine’s funeral Mass was a sonic outpouring of repertoire of immense significance and symbolism within the context of her life and the lives of her family and friends. This ritual experience marked a turning point for me in my exploration of the role and function of musical repertoire in ritual experience. Until this point, I  took it for granted that a theological or ideological point of departure was primary in any understanding of Christian ritual music. After this experience, I  began to search for a more phenomenological, somatic way to understand the role of musical in ritual expression. My focus shifted from an ideologically driven explanation of the place of music in ritual to an experiential one. It marked the beginning of my move

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toward a more anthropologically grounded understanding of the human voice and its potential power. As a singer, I had an intuitive understanding of the link between the somatic experience of singing and the emotional response it evoked in both singers and listeners. However, reflecting on this experience through, for example, Foucault’s theory of power22 and its relation to the body, or through Ortner’s23 explorations of the body and agency, led me to a new appreciation of why singing in ritual was such a contested area. The potential of the body to perform “bothness” has come to me gradually as I have experienced how my own body, and the bodies of those with whom I sing, come to resonate with each other across a variety of musical repertoires and expression, allowing us to “belong” to the sounds we produce, regardless of where they come from. In order to fully understand this more body-​based approach to musical repertoire, it is worth exploring in some more detail the so-​called somatic turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a movement that rehabilitated the body as an important and often neglected site of knowledge generation and expression. This has important implications for ritual generally, with scholars such as Catherine Bell writing in the early 1990s that “in the last ten years, the ‘body’ has emerged as a major analytic focus in a number of disciplines.”24 It also points us toward the body as an important point of departure in deciding what we might sing and how these choices can divide or bring together ritual communities.

Somatics as a Key Element of Sung Belonging The origins of the Western somatic movement are connected to the so-​ called Gymnastik movement of the late nineteenth century. Reacting against an emphasis on discipline, skill, rigor, and endurance in physical training, a number of key practitioners began to experiment with a more “natural” dialogue with the body, listening and developing an awareness of breath, gesture, and touch.25 A brief review of three of the founding figures of this movement reveals the influence both of and on the arts, health, and education in the mainstreaming of this movement in the twentieth century. Francois Delsarte was an accomplished singer and teacher from a musically influential family (his sister, Aimée, was the mother of composer Georges Bizet) in Paris. He became convinced that the rigors of his early vocal training damaged his voice and set about developing new ways of producing vocal song. He commenced a study of human expression,

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gesture, and movement, observing people in the street, in cafés, and in all aspects of everyday life, in order to try to “map” minute gestures and connect them to human emotion. He developed a style of acting and declamation, which connected language to emotion and movement.26 While his approach was later discredited (his disciples claim, as a result of it being misinterpreted and badly taught), he had an enormous influence on an entire generation of dancers in particular, including Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Rudolf Laban, and on the emergence of modern dance. He also influenced somatic practitioners such as F. Matthias Alexander in his development of Alexander technique. A key insight in Delsarte’s approach concerned the relationship between the physical, affective, and cognitive body. He found that an awareness of the emotional body, for example, could have a healing effect on the physical body (in his case, on the damage done to his throat through incorrect use). In turn, he developed a series of exercises, connecting gesture with emotion and articulation. These insights had a profound influence on pedagogical approaches to dance, vocal, and dramatic training. A second important founding figure was Emile Dalcroze, a musician and music educator who invented a system of teaching music called “Eurhythmics.” Born in Vienna, Dalcroze studied with composers, including Fauré and Bruckner, in Paris and Vienna before taking up a position in Algiers working with a small theater orchestra. Here, he became fascinated with rhythm and the embodied transmission of percussive knowledge in oral traditions. On his subsequent appointment as professor of harmony at the Geneva conservatory, he reacted against the long tradition in Western cultures of separating theoretical music education (composition, history, theory) from the teaching of musical skills—​a separation existing since the medieval period, when music theory was aligned with the teaching of philosophy and science in the university, and when music performance skills were taught outside the universities within the apprenticeship system (this will be discussed in greater detail later in the chapter). He became convinced that it was impossible to understand the principles of rhythm without feeling them in the body. Likewise, he reacted against the abstraction of pitches and melodies in the form of visual notation, with no reference to sound. This approach to teaching music removed it from sonority, movement, and emotion, none of which had a place in the theoretical model of music education, which was primarily visual and conceptual. One was taught to “write” music and “read” music and “see” music (literary models), but not to hear, feel, or make music.27

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Eurhythmics, as a pedagogical approach, sought to develop movement analogues for musical concepts. Pitch, contour, and rhythm were all taught with reference to the body, turning the body into a musical instrument that didn’t “think” music but “felt” music. Dalcroze worked primarily through singing, moving, and improvisation, developing a threefold approach. Musical skills were developed through the use of a series of kinetic exercises. Students were encouraged to express their sense of rhythm and structure through bodily movement, clapping note values and stepping rhythmic patterns. Solfège was used to teach sight-​singing skills, along with improvisation, combining the use of instruments, movement, and singing. Dalcroze’s work continues to influence approaches to music education. A recent study of first-​year Dalcroze music students, using in-​depth interviews and reflective essays, revealed a number of consistent themes in the participants’ responses to this approach, including, experiences of joy, social integration, easier understanding, kinesthetic experience, and musical expressiveness.28 Although his method was developed for musicians, Dalcroze also had an important influence on the emergence of modern dance. Both Rudolf Laban and Mary Wigman, pioneers of modernist and expressionist dance traditions, came under the influence of Dalcroze and participated in this training approaches. A final important early figure, emerging, not from the worlds of music or dance, but from theater, was the Australian theorist F. Matthias Alexander. Drawn toward the world of acting at a young age, he trained in elocution and recitation. Quite early in this career, he developed acute hoarseness and lack of breath, leading to gasping in performances and a habitual raspiness in sonic production, as well as the complete loss of his voice. Unable to achieve healing through conventional medical routes, he developed a process of self-​examination in mirrors to observe his processes of articulation and sound production. Over time, he introduced a technique he called “conscious control,” focusing on limiting damaging, habitual actions and freeing the body to find the “correct” ones.29 Alexander’s approach, involving a process of muscular re-​education, continues to influence the training of actors, singers, and dancers, but has also become a popular somatic practice for general health and well-​being. Alexander’s somatic processes also had a profound influence on educational systems at the turn of the century, coming into contact with the Montessori and Waldorf movements. John Dewey visited Alexander as a

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client and became one of his most important advocates during his time in the United States. In addition to their influence on the performing arts and education, somatic practices began to dialogue more widely with philosophical movements, including existentialism and phenomenology, all leading to greater recognition of the importance of experiential and sensory learning. Somatic influences can be located, for example, in Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy of art and education, Merleau-​Ponty’s phenomenological insistence on the role of perception, and in Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist existentialism.30 While most of these somatic practices developed independently, they share a set of common approaches and motivations. Sensory awareness of bodily actions is key to all somatic processes. Breath work is a common technique in “listening” to the body, as is conscious relaxation, meditation, or contemplation. Lying or sitting on the floor (or a table) can introduce a state of gravity reduction that assists relaxation and awareness. Perceptions of interior bodily sensations may be accompanied by gentle movement, with an emphasis on flow, ease, support, and bodily pleasure in these movements. While the goals of somatic practices may vary (in some cases, it is a strategy toward the production of artistic performance, while for others, the emphasis is on health and well-​being), all somatic practices share a belief in the ability of the body to play an intelligent, dialogical role in human expressiveness.31 While the earliest somatic practices developed out of a strong relationship with the performing arts, they also often emerged as a way of dealing with physical illness. The vocal ill-​health of, for example, Delsarte and Alexander prompted them in their search for well-​being. Several early somatic pioneers, such as Elsa Gindler and Leo Kofler, suffered from tuberculosis. Mabel Todd was paralyzed following an accident, while Milton Trager suffered from a congenital spinal deformity.32 These motivations led to an increased awareness of the relationship between the expressive and healing potential of the body. The reduction of pain and limitations in movement through increased awareness and an expansion in one’s repertoire of bodily movements is at the heart of the somatic practices developed by Moshe Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais had himself suffered from a knee injury, first sustained while playing soccer and reoccurring during his anti-​submarine work as a physicist in England during World War II. Feldenkrais believed that an awareness of movement could refine and modify body schema, or the image of self in the brain. Very small-​range movements, similar to those used by a

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baby in play and exploration, are utilized to “nudge” or disturb habitual movement patterns in the body schema, dissolving old habits in a safe and playful environment and making way for new approaches to coordination.33 He developed his approach by working with a range of people, from infants with cerebral palsy to internationally renowned musicians and theatrical performers. If somatic practices emerged through this web of relationships among the performing arts, new pedagogical approaches, turn-​of-​the-​century philosophical movements, and therapeutic insights, they also benefited from the growing awareness in the West of the traditional somatic practices of the East. In 1893, for example, the first Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in Chicago as part of the Chicago Columbian Exposition. One of the parliament’s speakers, Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk from India, captivated his audience with a famous speech, greeting the 5,000 delegates as “Sisters and brothers of America!”34 Vivekananda is credited with the introduction of Vedanta philosophy and the practice of yoga to the United States, which spread across the country during a two-​year lecture tour given by Vivekananda following the parliament. Ida Rolf, the founder of the somatic practice of Rolfing, was strongly influenced by Hindu philosophy and yogic practices, as was Joseph Pilates in the development of the Pilates method. Similarly, Irmgard Bartenieff, a dancer and student of Laban who fled Nazi Germany to work as chief physical therapist for the Polio Service of New York, introduced qigong to her movement practice and was influential in its incorporation into somatic practices. Rooted in Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian Chinese philosophy, qigong has strong links with practices such as t’ai chi ch’uan, introduced in the United States in the 1930s. Moshe Feldenkrais was a black belt in judo, having met Jigaro Kano, the founder of judo, in Paris in 1933 while he was studying at the Sorbonne for his doctorate in engineering, where his teachers included Marie Curie.35 More recently, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of the system of “Body-​Mind Centering,” paid tribute to over 40 people in an homage to her teachers, including teachers of yoga, aikido, and katsengen-​ undo.36 The connectivity between body, mind, meditation, awareness, and intent, present in the philosophical traditions associated with these practices, resonated with the somatic commitment to body-​mind awareness. While all these practices share common characteristics, their relationship was not identified by the unifying term “somatics” until 1976, when practitioner Thomas Hanna coined the term, etymologically linking it to the Greek notion of somatikos, referring to a living, aware, body.37

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This turn toward the body has had a profound effect on many disciplines, from philosophy to neuroscience to linguistics. Reclaiming the body, not only as a passive instrument or vehicle of, for example, song, but as an active participant in its agency, has significant repercussions for a theory of sung belonging. This is especially the case when issues of aesthetics, repertoire, and ideological difference threaten to dominate narratives concerning the use of the voice: for example, arguments proposing that the voice can only be used to sing certain styles of repertoire in ideologically derived rituals, or that certain sung aesthetics threaten to exclude others. Refocusing the question of aesthetic choice around a renewed understanding of the body has been key to the work of philosopher Richard Shusterman and provides a robust point of departure for theorizing the relationship between singing and the physiological body, as well as the repercussions of this relationship for ritually framed song. While Shusterman’s early training was in analytic philosophy, he was also influenced by continental phenomenology and Asian philosophical traditions (including the practice of Zen), all of which contributed to his turn toward pragmatic philosophy, particularly pragmatic aesthetics. Profoundly marked by Dewey’s pragmatic approach to aesthetics, the arts, and experience, he become increasingly convinced of the need for a philosophy of aesthetics rooted in human performance and experience. A core aspect of his exploration of aesthetics relates to its ethical dimension. He eschews the idea of disinterested art, arguing that all art plays a part in the formation of taste, value, ethics, and style in socioeconomic communities of practice. A key insight of Shusterman’s work is that our aesthetic engagement with the world happens through our bodies. Our bodies are the site of our performances, experiences, thoughts, and actions. Our formulations of culture, society, law, and politics are no more disembodied than they are disinterested. The art of living—​the key pursuit of philosophy—​is necessarily an embodied one: A long dominant Platonist tradition, intensified by recent centuries of Cartesianism and idealism, has blinded us to a crucial fact that was evident to much ancient and non-​Western thought; since we live, think and act through our bodies, their study, care and improvement should be at the core of philosophy.38

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Shusterman has coined the term “somaesthetics” to refer to the development of a branch of philosophy that brings the body, or “soma,” back into the heart of aesthetic philosophy and speculation on ethical and aesthetic ways of being in the world. In doing so, he rejects the peripheral position of art and the body—​in both cases, through their objectification in the Western tradition—​and repositions them as active agents of human expressiveness and experience. He suggests that somaesthetics combines three strands of investigation:  analytical somaesthetics, involving the theoretical explanation of body perception and practice; pragmatic somaesthetics, including practical applications of methods toward somatic improvement, and practical somaesthetics, involving actual engagement with somatic practices. Shusterman is himself a certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais method and cites the influence of yoga, t’ai chi ch’uan, zazen, and the Alexander technique on his philosophical perspective. Somaesthetics proposes that the acquisition of knowledge is largely dependent on sensory perception, itself contingent on the body. If somaesthetics argues for an intentional return to the body, it proposes that this return is achieved through a rehabilitation of aesthetics. In the tradition of John Dewey, Shusterman advocates for the broadening of the place of aesthetics in contemporary philosophy. He argues for this broadening on two fronts:  first, with reference to practices traditionally referred to as “art,” and, second, by championing the inclusion of all experience within the umbrella of the aesthetic. In terms of the former, the increasingly limited role accorded aesthetics in contemporary Western philosophy, he suggests, is in direct correlation with the insistence on aligning aesthetics with the appreciation of high art forms. With Baumgarten and, later, Haberman and Wollheim, modernity relegated art to the realm of an autonomous and disinterested appreciation of form. Somaesthetics calls for “wider notions of aesthetic experience and value so as to renew art’s energies and find new directions for progress beyond the traditional modern confines of compartmentalized fine art.”39 Shusterman counters modernity’s claims for art’s disinterestedness with a series of case studies on cultural practices such as rap and country music. Writing on rap, for example, he argues that part of its “shocking aesthetic power derives from its embodying a challenge to modernity’s aesthetics of disinterested distance and form, of pure unity and originality, of the clear separation of art from politics and everyday life” and that for all their obvious differences, “both rap and country appeal through deeply embodied and unashamed

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expression of strong feeling.” 40 The “trap” of a high art view of aesthetics lies in its inability or unwillingness to recognize the aesthetic value of a wide spectrum of human experiences: Perhaps the most basic aesthetic complaint against popular art is that it simply fails to provide any real aesthetic satisfaction. Of course, even the most hostile critics know that movies have entertained millions of viewers and that rock music has thrilled audiences who literally dance and throb with pleasure. But such obvious and discomforting facts are neatly sidestepped by denying that these satisfactions are genuine. The apparent gratifications, sensations and experiences that popular art provides are dismissed as spurious and fraudulent, while high art in contrast is held to supply something genuine41 The inclusion of popular art within an understanding of aesthetics represents a radically reinterpreted understanding of aesthetic practices, not as an intellectual appreciation of form and structure, but of a visceral, embodied experience of sensations, events, images, metaphors, feelings, and emotions. Somaesthetics allies itself, not just with experiences recognizable as “cultural” or “artistic,” but with all human performance. It resonates with other aesthetic philosophers, including Mark Johnson, who suggests that … aesthetics must become the basis of any profound understanding of meaning and thought. [A]‌esthetics is properly an investigation of everything that goes into human meaning-​making, and its traditional focus on the arts stems primarily from the fact that arts are exemplary cases of consummated meaning. However, any adequate aesthetics of cognition must range far beyond the arts proper to explore how meaning is possible for creatures with our types of bodies, environments, and cultural institutions and practices.42 As well as a sometimes narrow view concerning what counts as aesthetic experience, one of the primary threats to a somatic philosophical discourse is the schizophrenic attitude toward the body found in contemporary culture. On the one hand, cyber-​culture is creating more and more opportunities for disembodied communication to the extent that young adolescents are often more likely to communicate with each other through social

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media than person to person.43 On the other hand, contemporary culture also demonstrates a level of body addiction, including obsessive attitudes toward “the body beautiful,” where gyms are as much about achieving the perfect representation of the body as about physical fitness, contributing to body insecurities and conditions such as anorexia and bulimia. Both somatic neglect and somatic addiction fail to encourage the kind of body awareness that allows the body to be a subjective agent, rather than an objectified medium. Key to a rehabilitation of the body’s agency is an understanding of its epistemic properties. The body’s intelligence does not always reside in conscious awareness, but in pre-​conscious, motor-​sensory reactions, adaptations, and responses to everyday life. Shusterman argues strongly for a recognition of the importance of experience, preceding interpretation. Reacting against the almost ubiquitous presence of hermeneutics or interpretation in contemporary thought, he notes the need for a “greater recognition of sensuous immediacy in aesthetic experience.”44 Several somatic practices encourage and develop the ability to listen to the body. One of the significant results of this kind of listening, far from being a narcissistic turning inward, is the development of our abilities to “attune” our bodies and minds to the environment around us. Shusterman suggests, for example, that somaesthetics may contribute to remodeling notions of “multiculturalism,” a term often fraught with ambiguity and contradiction. On the one hand, multiculturalism is often acclaimed for its inclusiveness, but simultaneously is criticized for “diluting” indigenous traditions. It is seen as asserting the rights of the cultural “other” while also undermining a sense of shared identity by allowing too many opposing ideologies into the same space. The affirmation of ethnic minority status is also sometimes accused of masking or distracting from wider public issues such as poverty. The inclusion of many cultures in the same public space can lead to the exclusion of individual cultural practices (e.g., wearing a head scarf in public schools). Multiculturalism can also simply be an affirmation of stereotyped differences based on skin color or race. Shusterman proposes that, rather than trying to dialogue with the other without, we should dialogue with the other within: “we learn to understand ourselves better by discovering the cultural others in us.”45 Our sense of the other is always perceived through the sum of our own experiences and agencies, and the “discovery” of otherness is often a recognition of a part of ourselves we have not fully discovered or developed: “our cultural selves are in fact actually composed of elements of the culturally other that we

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have so far failed to recognize and thus have not fully understood.”46 This view of multiculturalism is one that develops from within, in dialogue with the self and with others: the dialogue Kristeva proposes in Strangers to Ourselves when she asks if universality might simply be the discovery of our own foreignness.47 In addition to his development of a philosophy of somaesthetics, one of Shusterman’s significant contributions to contemporary Western philosophy has been his insistence that the body did not disappear from Western thought, but became submerged or relocated to the margins of contemporary discourse. In his lifelong work on the relationship between power and knowledge, Michel Foucault, for example, viewed the body as an “especially vital site for self-​knowledge and transformation.”48 Self-​styling, according to Foucault, involved not just the external development of appearance, but also the transfiguration of one’s inner sense through transformative experiences. For this reason, he advocated the pursuit of extreme bodily pleasure through various practices, including the use of drugs or what was considered transgressive sexual exploration. Conversely, in his work on the history of madness or incarceration (in prisons or mental asylums), he explored ways in which extreme bodily pain, or even the threat of it, could be used to coerce and control. Shusterman suggests that Foucault understood the power of the body, but that his pursuit of heightened somatic awareness through the more extreme aspects of bodily pleasure and pain did not take into account the often paradoxical deadening of the senses when the relationship with the body is driven or coerced. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, other continental philosophical traditions also entered into dialogue with experiential practices. Merleau-​ Ponty’s insistence on the body’s primacy in human experience and sense of meaning, for example, lay at the heart of his phenomenological view of consciousness and perception. Beauvoir’s existential feminism is more ambivalent about the role of the body, given the history of the objectification of the female body. On the one hand, she argues for the value of somatic practices that allow a woman to develop her muscles, fitness, and health, and to overcome the stereotypes of weakness and fragility. On the other hand, she cautions that any act of female somatic liberation can quickly revert, “because it deploys the female body that is so deeply and stubbornly marked as a mere object, flesh and passing immanence in contrast to the true transcendence of consciousness and action.”49 The split between analytic and phenomenological philosophy in the twentieth century was essentially a divide created by differing understandings

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of the role of the body. Wittgenstein, one of the foundational influences on the emergence of analytic philosophy, strongly objected to the use of bodily feeling as a means of explaining mental concepts including will, emotion, or volition; “analytic philosophers of the mind thought of phenomenology as being introspectionist, and from their point of view, introspection, as a method for understanding the mind, was dead.”50 Conversely, the tradition of American pragmatism located the body at the heart of experiential and aesthetic philosophy. For William James (whose work on the body also provoked strong criticism from Wittgenstein), bodily feelings and sensations are fundamental to our ability to explain or understand our mental states. Like Merleau-​Ponty, however, he emphasized spontaneity and the immediacy of experience over reflection. While Dewey built on James’s work, he was a lifelong advocate of the value of self-​conscious somatic reflection. None of these philosophical turns toward the body and its epistemic potential rejected the mind as a category of philosophical inquiry. Rather, they emphasized the connectivity of mind and body, rehabilitating an understanding of the mind as embodied and of the body as mindful. Shusterman’s work, in developing his philosophy of somaesthetics, as well as throwing into relief the small or notable traces of embodied interrogation found in contemporary Western philosophy, has resulted in a growing corpus of thought and theory on the agency of embodied experience. This theory can be usefully applied to the agency of the singer in a number of ways. First, the singer enters the musical space primarily through pre-​conscious, kinaesthetic activity. Singing is intensely somatic, with subtle and sophisticated nuances of awareness and movement dramatically altering sound expression. It is fundamentally linked to breathing and shares many of the techniques (for example, diaphragmatic breathing) used by a spectrum of somatic practices. With dance, it is one of the most fundamentally embodied human performance activities, drawing on a complex combination of pre-​conscious motor-​sensory activities, as well as conscious awareness of expressive possibilities. Shusterman’s proposal suggests that singing always has a social/​cultural dimension, rooted in our performance of cultural values. It is a site for the negotiation of cultural issues such as belonging and identity, and has a powerful arsenal of tools at its disposal. As well as its ability to influence emotional responses through resonance, as discussed in Chapter 1, an important tool at the singer’s disposal

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is the interaction with language. Of course, not all singing draws on language, but the singer’s ability to play with the full semantic and sonic possibilities of a language’s palette (including utterances beyond the net of any single language) provides a wide spectrum of choice, open to manipulation and use for a variety of ideological and experiential purposes. The singer provides an excellent example of one of the most important, contemporary somatic insights: that language itself, heretofore considered by many to be the most disembodied of human communication tools, is an intensely embodied aesthetic form. Barthes notes that “it is a fact that over the last few years a certain change has taken place (or is taking place) in our conception of language.”51 Similarly, Derrida suggests that “the problem of language has never been simply one problem among others. But never as much as at present has it invaded, as such, the global horizons of the most diverse researches and the most heterogeneous discourses, diverse and heterogeneous in their intention, method, and ideology.”52 The groundbreaking work of linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson demonstrates the immense connectivity between the world, the body’s performativity, and language, arguing that language has emerged—​and could only have emerged—​out of the intimate, experiential connection between the temporal and spatial world in which we live. Our difficulty in comprehending this connection comes from a long tradition of objectivism. Put simply, objectivism sees the world as a series of objects, with specific properties, existing in relationship with each other but independent of human understanding or agency:  “[T]‌he world is what it is, no matter what any person happens to believe about it.”53 To understand the world in this way, we need a language that can map onto these objects in a unilateral and non-​contextual manner. Words are merely symbolic, acquiring their meaning through their relationship to objects, and reason emerges from our ability to connect language into propositions on this reality. Johnson notes that this view of the world and of language takes no account of human understanding and the role it plays in generating meaning and reason. The objectivist understanding of concepts (“ice,” “marriage,” “gender”), for example, exists only and singularly in terms of their relationship with the real world. Empirical studies, however, indicate that “most human concepts are defined and understood only within conceptual frameworks that depend on the nature of human experience in given cultures. Such concepts are neither universal nor objective.”54 Johnson’s work on early development illustrates that infants learn the meaning of objects and events through experience. What they learn is not absolute

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but adaptive, and changes with changing life experience. How they learn is through the incremental development of sensorimotor and conceptual practices. From the moment of birth, children are born with the ability to communicate through their senses and their bodies. They look, listen, cry, and kick. By around the fourth month, they become aware of external objects with which they can interact and that they can manipulate through movement. By the sixth month, they have acquired the ability to move in space, opening up new perceptions, experiences, and further developing their sense of the world in which they live. While these ways of knowing the world are not linguistic, Johnson argues that they are the foundations on which language and meaning are developed: “when we grow up, we do not magically cast off these modes of meaning making; rather these body-​ based meaning structures underlie our conceptualization and reasoning, including even our most abstract modes of thought.”55 These same processes through which we generate meaning, reason and imagination—​structures of embodied learning through sensory perception and psychomotor activity—​are utilized in the creation of art: “Art matters because it provides heightened, intensified, and highly integrated experiences of meaning, using all of our ordinary resources for meaning-​ making.”56 Quoting composer Roger Sessions, Johnson notes the essential relationship between music, the body, and the world in which it is created: “it seems to me that the essential medium of music, the basis of its expressive powers and the element which gives it its unique quality among the arts, is time, made living for us through its expressive essence, movement.”57 A very important factor in the re-​engagement between philosophy and the body in the twentieth century is the astonishing progress made by neuroscience in that time. Technologies for brain imaging, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans, allow for the generation of data as to what is occurring in the brain during certain experiences. However, the ability to describe our experience of these occurrences must resort to more phenomenological methods. Introspection, pushed aside by behaviorist approaches and the desire to work with tangible, external evidence, is now being reconsidered as a means of describing “internal” evidence of human experience. In other words, even though doctors can now see changes in the human brain and the human body more clearly than ever, they still rely on patients to describe the experience of, for example, pain (its intensity, position, sensation, etc.). Through philosophy’s growing dialogue with

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developmental psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive linguistics, and the neurosciences, the relationship between the workings of our bodies and our perception are revealed to be both complex and interdependent. Philosopher Shaun Gallagher has used the concepts of body image (our perception of our body) and body schema (the sensory-​motor functioning of the body) to describe this relationship. Conditions that lead to lack of function in either of these can demonstrate the intricacies of their connectivity. In the case of unilateral neglect, for instance, a condition that can follow brain damage from a stroke, a person may not perceive one half of his or her body. As a result, he or she may fail to dress that half of the body, but can use the limbs of that half of the body to dress the other half. Conversely, many amputees experience the symptoms of “phantom limbs”—​being able to still “feel” the existence of a limb that is no longer there. In the intricacies of these relationships, what emerges is the powerful role of the body in shaping the ever developing and transforming sense of existence and what it means to be human: “[I]‌n order to find a viable interpretation of experience, a viable science of cognition that is consistent with these facts, requires that we begin to redraw the map that guides our understanding of how precisely embodiment contributes to human experience.”58 Both ritual studies and musicology also increasingly argue for the recognition of performativity and embodied knowledge. Bell reminds us that dualities rarely exist without concomitant hierarchies,59 and in the long history of mind/​body, thinking/​doing dichotomies, the former have been consistently prioritized over the latter. In their insistence on the centrality of performance, ritual studies and musicology are not arguing for performed knowledge over conceptual knowledge, but rather proposing that a rehabilitation of the latter in relationship with the former enriches our potential understanding of both. Shusterman argues for somaesthetics, not as an abstract or even neutral understanding of philosophy, but as one dedicated to the practical understanding of how to live well, as “ultimately an enquiry into experience and the right way to live.” If we accept this, “then we can view somatics … as an essential part of the philosophical life.”60 Similarly, John Caputo argues that philosophy is grounded in experience: “I take philosophy to be a phenomenological, not a metaphysical or speculative enterprise, that is, I steer its nose close to the ground of concrete description.”61 Understood this way, Caputo suggests, there must be “a shift in what we mean by

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‘truth,’ a shift into doing the truth.”62 Is it possible to “do truth” through the performance of ritualized singing? The dancing, singing, ritualizing, performing body has also received increased recognition in our time. The rich anthropological tradition of body symbolism, for example, has demonstrated how social and cultural values shape body decoration, adornment, and perception. In contrast to the Darwinian proposal that bodily expressions are determined genetically and are therefore “natural” and essentially universal, anthropologists and sociologists have demonstrated that they are socially learned and performed. Anthropologists have argued for the body as the ultimate metaphor for all of human society, with Victor Turner declaring it “the fons et origo of all classification.”63 Scholars such as Julia Kristeva64 have argued for the body as a primary site of women’s experience, and Hélene Cixous65 has called on women to “write” through the body. Practice theory advances the premise that social subjects are produced through practice in the world, and that the world is itself a product of human practice. Humans are not viewed as static components of systems and structures, but as social actors produced by contextualized practice and, equally, as agents in the construction of those practices. It proposes that the “skilled body” is the site of meeting between mind and activity, and that “the persistence and transformation of social life … rests centrally on the successful inculcation of shared embodied know-​how.”66 This turn (or return) to the body, now identified as “somatic,” has played an important role in rehabilitating the expressive power of the body. For this reason, it is closely associated with the performing arts, especially those produced by the body (including singing). It also emphasizes the potential of the body to act as an agent of its own (and others’) healing or well-​being. These insights into the body suggest that it is not merely a vehicle or medium of performance, but a generative site of expressive intelligence. The rehabilitation of the body as an active agent, creating and not just representing cultural values, has important ramifications for the rituals singer, especially in terms of the singer’s relationship with repertoire. In this understanding, the body is not a passive recipient and provider of culturally created (sometimes ideologically driven) repertoire, but can use its full spectrum of sonic and kinaesthetic tools to generate cultural values (such as the value of belonging), rather than simply being “inscribed” with them.

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Singing and Ideology Starting with the body does not eliminate all the challenges of repertoire selection, but it provides a model of selection that prioritizes somatic well-​being over ideological conviction which subverts many of the current arguments in favor of one repertoire rather than another. This can be particularly useful when new repertoires are encountering each other for the first time, as in the example included in this chapter of a ritual community engaging in a musical dialogue between its historic allegiance to Latin chant and polyphony and its more recent desire to integrate the music of new migrant communities. Paradoxically, it is the very somatic character of music (particularly vocal music, which is both produced and received by the body) that makes it such a good medium for the inscription of ideologies or belief systems. “Clothing” a belief in song renders it more mnemonic, evokes an emotive and kinesthetic response, and, with repetition, can re-​create that response, even after long periods of time, if the song is heard or sung again.67 For this reason, singing is often used to promote ideological perspectives. An early ritual example of this can be found in the work of the fourth-​ century Syrian hymnographer, Ephrem. A  prolific composer of hymns, poems, and sermons, he exploited the potency of hymns to counteract the so-​called heresies that threatened the unity of the early Christian Church, particularly the heresy of docetism (a view that denied the full humanity of Jesus). His hymn texts are highly metaphoric and embedded with doctrinal detail. The full humanity of Jesus, for example, was developed thematically in many of his nativity hymns through the use of paradox, a favorite one being the paradox of Eve’s birthing of Adam (the first man made from clay) and Mary’s birthing of Jesus (the first man made from the Spirit). He employed symbolic theology to explain the incarnation, with reference to scriptural illusion. One example from a teaching hymn expounds this doctrine: The virgin earth gave birth to that Adam, head of the earth; The virgin today gave birth to [second] Adam, head of heaven. The staff of Aaron sprouted, and the drywood brought forth; His symbol has been explained today—​it is the virgin womb That gave birth.68 Ephrem’s hymns consist of stanzas of syllabic verse, which were set to traditional tunes, easily identified by the opening line. The stanzas were also

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punctuated by a refrain. In the hymn from which the preceding excerpt appears, the repeated refrain is “Glory to You, Son of Our Creator.” The use of well-​known melodies and a repeated refrain are musical devices often employed to reinforce meaning and memory. The potential of singing in a ritual context to promote a particular belief and to reinforce it, not only as an intellectual position, but as a somatic experience, is immense. Indeed, the same repertoire can be put to the service of different ideological or theological positions. This chapter will conclude by examining one such example. The repertoire of Latin plainchant (often referred to as “Gregorian chant”) has been used by both the liberal left and the conservative right to promote their own agendas. It was initially appropriated by liturgical progressives in the context of the modern liturgical movement, but gradually became identified with liturgical conservatism, as vernacular musics became increasingly associated with a more liberal liturgical agenda. The section will conclude with an exploration of the Irish context and the paradoxical reversal of this use of repertoire, where vernacular musics came increasingly to represent “traditional” values.

Gregorian Chant and the Modern Liturgical Movement It is somewhat ironic that the movement of Gregorian chant to the far right of Catholic ritual practice coincided with its secularization through the early music movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its increased performance outside a religious ritual context. The liturgical rebirthing of chant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries viewed chant as inextricably linked with the Roman Catholic liturgy, framing it as the music of the people, the “body of Christ”—​a popular music movement often at loggerheads with the classical music establishment.69 In 1984, Sean Lavery, an Irish Columban priest and chant scholar, established a church musical quarterly called Jubilus, with a mission to “provide a [F]‌orum for an examination of matters musical and liturgical … in the church in Ireland.” The publication concluded four years later when Lavery accepted a new missionary assignment in Jamaica. In his final address as editor, he noted that post-​conciliar musicians and liturgists must recognize that “… there need be no conflict between Latin and the vernacular, between the singing of the choir and the role of the congregation, between art music and congregational song.”70

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In his work on the study of early Christian worship, Paul Bradshaw reminds us that ideological statements may tell us more about what is not happening than what is, that “authoritative-​sounding statements … need to be taken with a pinch of salt.”71 This tenet could be usefully applied to Lavery’s statement, which might indeed reveal a great deal of conflict between Latin and vernacular, choral and congregational song, high art and popular aesthetics, in the years following the Second Vatican Council. The post–​Vatican II tensions between the “altar and the choir-​loft”72 and the later “worship wars” of the 1990s point to a history of division and polarity, wherein music became a powerful metaphor for sectional ideologies. Gregorian chant emerged as a dominant metaphor for Tridentine nostalgia, conservative morality, and revisionist interpretations of the remit and consequences of Vatican II. Lavery’s statement is all the more interesting in this context because not only does it suggest a future ideal, which transcends these divisions, but, consciously or not, it also speaks to a past, historical ideal: a pre–​Vatican II reality, rooted in the very values of the so-​called modern liturgical movement. The unfolding of this “modern” renewal of Christian liturgy was to involve both a restoration of Gregorian chant and an introduction of the vernacular—​a great embrace, including the glories of the liturgical past, as well as the pastoral voice of the corporate body at worship. Lavery’s words reach back to a part of the creation narrative of this movement, where chant and liturgical rehabilitation went hand in glove. In the aftermath of the council, it is a sad irony that, if pastoral, liturgical reform and Gregorian chant started the journey as partners, they ended it as representatives of opposing forces and camps. Peter Jeffery notes that one of the victims of this split was Gregorian chant itself: “[O]‌ne unfortunate result of this polarization has been to postpone what should have been an immediate response to the Council’s directives, namely the objective reassessment of the chant in the new light of liturgical renewal.”73 Gregorian chant serves as a useful case study on the changing and contested role of musical repertoire in religious rituals. This exploration commences with the renaissance of chant in the context of the modern liturgical movement at the end of the nineteenth century, and the vision for this rebirthing created at the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes, France. Gregorian chant was to be the bridge between the ancient glories of the medieval Catholic past and the future glories of the revitalized church. The following section explores the growing role played by chant in the emergence of a pastoral agenda within the modern liturgical movement

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and the use of chant to create a “music of the people.” The reversal of this role in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council demonstrates how this same repertoire aligned itself increasingly with the more conservative liturgical voices, rejecting the vernacular and its association with the pastoral movement and embracing Latin chant as a voice of tradition. The chapter will conclude with an examination of this same liturgical period in Ireland’s history and the ironic reversal of this “repertoire war,” where the vernacular came to represent the traditional church and chant was championed by the liturgical reformers, particularly through the Glenstal Liturgical Congresses.

A Modern and Medieval “Enchantment” In his review of Katherine Bergeron’s 1998 publication74 on the revival of Gregorian chant at Solesmes,75 Jeffery notes that “the story that Solesmes tells about itself and the story that is told about it by the apostles of ‘folksy guitar masses’ both cry out for deconstruction.”76 Depending on who is telling the story, Solesmes may be evaluated as the site of, for example, the restoration of the Benedictines in France, the emergence of the new science of musicology, or the fabrication of a wholly invented form of rhythmic interpretation for chant performance. The origin-​narrative of Solesmes has been much rehearsed.77 The renewal of the monastery, and indeed of monasticism in France, emerged from a history of monastic suppression and destruction across Europe and particularly in France so that “by the end of 1790 revolutionary legislation had effectively emptied the monasteries, convents and cathedrals of France,” to the extent that the word vandalisme was coined by the former bishop of Blois to describe such wanton destruction.78 By the 1830s, intellectuals and artists such as Victor Hugo began to alert the wider public to the loss of France’s cultural heritage through the destruction of these national treasures. This aesthetic argument resulted in a renewed appreciation of the architectural inheritance of France’s monasteries and cathedrals, but it would take a young priest called Prosper Guéranger to make the connection between the restoration of the physical space and the activity for which that space was designed: “… is it not time to remember not only that your churches have suffered damage to their walls, their vaults, their age-​old furnishings, but that, more importantly, they are also bereft of the ancient and venerable canticles they once held so dear?”79 In 1833, he organized the purchase of the abandoned priory at Solesmes and commenced a grand

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reimagining of Benedictine life in France, rooted in the revival of its ritual life of chanted prayer. Guéranger’s imagined community was both Romantic and modern in its scope and vision. It was Romantic in its backward gaze toward an idealized, medieval Golden Age of ecclesial stability, liturgical and musical splendor, and unquestioned papal authority. Robert Winthrop makes the point that neither Guéranger nor any of his original volunteers had any prior monastic experience, and were leading a project that required the re-​creation of a way of life and a form of prayer which, in all likelihood, they had no opportunity to ever experience first-​hand.80 But their sense of mission was not as provincial as the restoration of the immediate history of Solesmes’s priory (which seems to have been a modest affair), or of the revival of the most recent liturgical chant books (the “corruption” of which is much lamented in Guéranger’s Institutions liturgiques), but rather, in the creation of a bridge, built of liturgical chant, linking this modern abbey with its great liturgical past, for which no “live” model was required. If this sense of a connection to the past was, essentially, an imagined one, it contained an equally important imagined connection to the future. For the Solesmes project could never be described as essentially historical, for the primary aim of restoration was always ritual renewal. There was no idea of the restoration of Gregorian chant as an exercise in authentic, “historical” performance. The sole purpose of restoration rested in the belief that the modern rekindling of liturgical life depended on its drawing energy and rigor from a reconnection with its earlier, more vigorous form, or, as Joseph Pothier, musicologist and member of the Solesmes community put it, “[T]‌he music of the past better understood will be greeted as the true music of the future.”81 The application of scientific, comparative, and philological methods to a study of the earliest medieval manuscripts of Western plainchant by the community at Solesmes was only one dimension of this grand project; the embodied performance of the repertoire was the other. The use of the camera provided a new technology for paleographic work, and the monks employed “the art of photography for their scholarly purposes on a scale so vast as probably to have been unprecedented,”82 while the invention of the phonograph facilitated recordings of the performance practices of the community.83 The manuscripts were to provide the key to the past; the community was to embody its incarnation in the present by literally giving flesh and voice to the sonic evolution of the church at prayer.

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One could argue that this radical approach, rooted in the past and projected into the future, set the agenda for the entire modern liturgical project, culminating in the liturgical documents of Vatican II. The reforming spirit of the late nineteenth and early to mid-​twentieth centuries was comprehensively informed by this “back to the future” logic—​ nova ex veteribus. The renewal of the church’s prayer was to be brought about by a re-​understanding of her own past, informed by new scholarship and new sources, connecting the global, contemporary church with her most ancient streams. The church was to reach back, as well as forward, to embrace the past, by way of embracing the future. The chasm created between the either/​or camps of tradition and innovation in the contemporary Catholic Church, particularly with reference to liturgical music, is, at times, so deep that it requires an intrepid refocusing of the historical lens on the early liturgical movement to realize that this was not always the case—​that the sound of Gregorian chant was not initially reimagined as reactionary, but rather as the contemporary and futuristic voice of the church.

The Pastoral Turn Guéranger’s words concerning a “liturgical movement,” inextricably linked with the renewal of chant, were prophetic of the aspirations for liturgy and chant that would dominate the early twentieth century: Let us hope that the liturgical movement which is expanding and spreading will awaken also among the faithful the meaning of the Divine Office, that their attendance in church will become more intelligent, and that the time will come when, once more imbued with the spirit of the liturgy, they will feel the need to participate in the sacred chants.84 Solesmes set the agenda for the renewal of liturgy and chant; a number of developments in the early twentieth century would result in the marrying of this influence with a turn toward wider, pastoral issues. Concerns about the fragmentation of community through urbanization in modern society, the isolation of the individual and the growth of secularization, as well as widespread unemployment, poverty, and disempowerment in turn-​of-​the-​century Europe, led to a renewed interest in recovering the communio-​character of the Eucharist, through which all Christians renew,

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in ritual, their essential unity with Christ and with each other.85 This was an ecumenical impulse, with theologians from a variety of denominations contributing to an articulation of the growing sense that … everywhere there is awakening the realization that the church is something more than an external institution … the Church of Christ is, above all, a Unity … literally, one body through union with Christ. This conception of the church … presses of its own accord toward the unifying and fraternizing of Christians who are separated by external barriers.86 One of the most influential contributions to this renewed understanding of Eucharist was promulgated by Benedictine theologian Odo Casel, who explained the liturgy as the “fulfilment in ritual of what the Lord did for our salvation … we act out the mysteries as the body of Christ.”87 In the church’s performance of liturgy, the redemption achieved through the actions of Christ is re-​actualized. The official, papal endorsement of the connection between pastoral concerns for the “Body of Christ” and the renewal of the liturgy came in the form of the motu proprio of Pius X in November 1903:  Tra le Sollecitudini. Pius X’s understanding and appreciation of the integral nature of music and liturgy was formed as a young priest, when his passion for music led him to form church choirs and to encourage congregational singing through experimentation with simple musical settings. He became increasingly convinced that Gregorian chant was musically, liturgically, and pastorally the most appropriate music for both choir and congregation. Tra le Sollecitudini became the point of departure for the pastoral, liturgical movement, stating that the most important and irreplaceable source of Christian identity as the Body of Christ resided in full and active participation in the sacred mysteries of the Church. It was also the source of inspiration for a Belgium Benedictine, Lambert Beauduin, who recognized the implications of this document for the pastoral development of Christian communities through the liturgy. Eight years of work as a secular priest in Liège before entering the monastery of Mont-​César convinced him of the necessity of including the entire Body of Christ in any liturgical movement that was to be authentic and truly involved in reform. Through a seminal paper, delivered at the Congress of Malines in 1909, he proposed four measures toward the realization of this goal. These included the translation of the Roman Missal, the promotion of

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Compline and Vespers, the restoration of Gregorian chant, and annual liturgical retreats for parish choirs. It is of interest that two of these four proposals for pastoral, liturgical renewal concern music, and one specifically concerns the role of Gregorian chant. Once again, the centrality of chant to the pastoral inclusion of all people in ritual celebration is reiterated. Reflecting on Tra le Sollecitudini, ecumenical theologian Massey Shepherd, one of the few Protestant American theologians invited to participate in Vatican II, wrote, It was one of the surer instincts of Pope Pius X to begin the modern phase of liturgical renewal in the Roman Church by a call to reform the Church’s music, on the basis of the Solesmes’ achievements in the sphere of Gregorian chant. No proper liturgical spirit can develop among the faithful without an adequate vehicle of liturgical song.88 This “vehicle” developed in a number of ways. Liturgical education and experimentation, including liturgical study weeks, pamphlets and popular publications by writers such as Beauduin, as well as the introduction of ritual innovations at liturgy centers, such as the Benedictine abbey of Maria-​Laach, led to the emergence of the “Dialogue Mass,” in which the congregation joined the altar servers in reciting the short responses and the ordinary of the Mass in Latin. It was a short step to the promotion of the “Sung Mass,” at which the congregation was encouraged to sing these parts in Gregorian chant. Writing in 1951, Ernest Koenker, a highly acclaimed Lutheran theologian who wrote prolifically on the impact of the Catholic liturgical movement on other Christian traditions, declared that “… only a Mass in which the schola sings the proper and the congregation joins in singing the ordinary approximates the practice of the ancient church.”89 Whether or not this is the case, it points to the appropriation of Gregorian chant as an important “vehicle” through which active participation in the liturgy, by the congregation, was to be achieved. Anchored in the call of Pius X for “special efforts … to be made to restore the use of the Gregorian chant by the people,” the liturgical movement translated this into a call for pastoral inclusivity, through the medium of chant.90 In an ironic reversal of the contemporary tendency to identify Gregorian chant with “high art” musical practices, the so-​called Gregorianists of the modern liturgical movement were viewed with suspicion by classically

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trained composers and musicians for replacing the great art music of the church with “plain” chant and were often accused of stealing repertoire opportunities from choirs by insisting that the congregation should chant the Ordinary of the Mass instead of allowing the choir to sing a setting of the Ordinary by an established composer. An exchange in The Musical Times in 1931 gives a flavor of the tenor of the dispute. A letter to the editor, signed “J. McD,” included the following response to a submission by Edward Maginty on the liturgical movement: … if the Common of the Mass [Kyrie, Gloria, &c., called the “Mass”] is henceforth to be given over wholly and entirely to the congregation, as Mr Maginty seems to hint in his latest letter (and which really means an exclusive Gregorian rendering), perhaps he will kindly inform us in what way or under what conditions, the other two styles of music, polyphony and the modern, can be propagated?91 Clearly, the “high art” camp of musical styles did not include Gregorian chant in its canon of taste. On the contrary, Gregorian chant was championed by those most invested in the pastoral camp of renewal which, while not deprecating the role and importance of choral polyphony, clearly viewed the restoration of chant as an opportunity to also restore the singing role of the congregation. Under the influence of pastoral liturgists such as Beauduin, the Gregorianists no longer viewed the liturgy as primarily a site of aesthetic representation but as a vehicle of inclusive celebration and social equality. This connection between ritual renewal, pastoral inclusivity, and social justice had one of its most explicit renderings in the development of the liturgical movement in the United States. A seminal figure in this story is the Benedictine monk Virgil Michel. Inspired by Beauduin and the idea that liturgy creates and nourishes Christian community, he was to develop this idea into a sense of the inseparability of liturgical reform and social justice. In his review of a 1957 publication on Michel, Carl Fischer suggests that, for Michel, “the liturgical movement is the social movement par excellence.”92 Similarly, in a more recent publication, Keith Pecklers links this sense of connectedness between liturgy and justice, with the recovered theology of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, manifest both in expressions of social justice and liturgical worship.93 The connection between social justice, liturgy, and Gregorian chant in the United States is perhaps most dramatically exemplified through the

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figure of Dorothy Day, social activist and founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Based in New York as part of the Catholic Worker Community, Day knew of the work of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music, founded by Justine Ward and Mother Georgia Stevens in Manhattanville, New York. The Pius X School taught chant according to a variation of the Solesmes method, and André Mocquereau, a choirmaster and leading proponent of chant investigation at Solesmes, was an occasional faculty member at the school. Dorothy Day sought the assistance of the school in the provision of a teacher to train a chant choir, which would help poor parishes in New York learn to sing Gregorian chant: That may seem a rather far cry from the work of the Catholic worker, at first glance, but I am sure I don’t need to point out to you the fact that the entire Catholic social teaching is based, fundamentally, on liturgical doctrine. The group wishes to be able to open their evening meetings … with sung Compline. And they are especially anxious to learn a few of the simpler Gregorian Masses, in order to be able to offer their services free to poor parishes.94 The emergence of a strong pastoral dimension to the liturgical movement, with its first postulation in Belgium and perhaps its most widespread articulation in the United States, was intimately connected with the appropriation of Gregorian chant as a primary medium of “active participation.” This can be seen in official documents such as Tra le Sollecitudini, as well as through grassroots practice, including the semaines liturgiques, the Pius X School, chant festivals, and massed chant choirs. “Active participation,” a phrase that appeared for the first time in the 1903 motu propio, was destined to become the rallying call of the growing vernacular movement.

The Irish Story It is revealing, both of a historical reality and, no doubt, an Irish sense of humor, that two of the first publications on the liturgical movement in Ireland begin with a joke about the seeming incongruity of such a happening. In his 1961 article, Columba Breen writes: “Irish Liturgical Congress” … the phrase has a strange ring about it … [O]‌ur mind is drawn to other, more familiar, perhaps

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inevitable associations—​Irish whiskey, Irish Republican Army, Irish Catholic even. But Irish and the liturgy!95 Similarly, in her 1998 article, Julie Kavanagh recalls an anecdote recorded by Bernard Botte, in which an Irishman declared that the story of the liturgical movement in Ireland was similar to the story of the snake in Ireland: there has never been any.96 There is no doubt that Ireland came late to an awareness or acceptance of the liturgical currents sweeping across Europe and the United States. Part of the resistance resided in Ireland’s own complex liturgical history, where outward forms of Catholic liturgical practice were, by and large, forbidden or curtailed for a period of almost three hundred years, stretching from the post-​Reformation Penal period to Catholic Emancipation in the nineteenth century. In his afterword to the second volume of Irish Musical Studies, Harry White writes of the implications for liturgical music of this historical curtailment: “[P]‌ut plainly, the impoverished condition of Roman Catholics in Ireland between 1500 and 1800 excluded the possibility of a high culture of sacred music.”97 The survival of “the Faith” during much of this time could not rely on the existence of a sustained, publicly proclaimed, communal site of prayer. Consequently, a domestic form of non-​liturgical, vernacular piety developed, with songs, prayers, and blessings often married to traditional tunes, associated with secular songs. This accounts, to some degree, for the highly devotional, individualistic nature of Irish Catholic liturgical practice, which emerged post-​Emancipation.98 The first chant publications in Ireland stemming from the plainchant revival date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with publications such as an Officium defunctum by Patrick Wogan published in Dublin in 1793 and A Plain and Concise Method of Learning the Gregorian Note, by Revd R.  Hoey, also published by Wogan in 1800.99 By the mid-​ nineteenth century, following Catholic Emancipation, Dublin was recognized as an important center for Catholic publications: Not only had Dublin become an obvious centre for the Irish Catholic book trade, but astute Catholic publishers from London ensured that they either had independent offices in Dublin or were partnered with already established Dublin firms.100 The most significant revival of plainchant in nineteenth-​century Ireland, however, was a result of Ireland’s enthusiastic embrace of the Cecilian

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movement and its tenets. The Irish Cecilian society was founded in 1878 by Rev. Nicholas Donnelly, only 10  years after the organization was created in Germany by Franz Witt, and its journal, Lyre Ecclesiastica, was the first Cecilian publication to be published exclusively in the English language. From its first issue, the journal was unambiguous in its support of Gregorian chant, sixteenth-​century polyphony, and some contemporary publications written according to Cecilian principles, to the virtual exclusion of everything else.101 Cecilianism did not enjoy universal support in Ireland, as is suggested by the figure of Joseph Smith, organist, conductor, and composer, who held a number of organ and teaching posts in Limerick and Dublin. Paul Collins notes that Smith took issue with those who held that Gregorian chant is “par excellence the music of the Church” and “the one musical language alone capable of expressing the emotions of the mind acted upon by feelings of love and reverence for God.”102 This notwithstanding, the movement enjoyed great ecclesiastical support from the powerful Irish Catholic Church, which emerged in the wake of Catholic Emancipation and the Great Famine, personified in many ways by the towering figure of Paul Cullen. As rector of the Irish College in Rome, Cullen had been strongly influenced by the ultramontane ideology and, as the first Irish person to be elevated to the College of Cardinals, he played an influential role in drafting the document on papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. White suggests that Cecilianism introduced “a code of musical aesthetics which could not but flourish in the actively conservative climate of Irish church politics in the late nineteenth century.”103 The shift in supremacy from German (Cecilian) to French (Solesmes) influences in chant reform at the turn of the century, particularly after the publication of the new Vatican Kyriale (1905), was not lost on Irish liturgical musicians, and Collins cites the report in the Munster News, noting that the ceremonies of Holy Week were celebrated at St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick, “according to the approved Solesmes method.”104 One of the great Irish champions of the Solesmes reforms was Rev. Dr.  John Burke of the National University, Ireland. In 1926, he inaugurated a chant summer school in Dublin, which, by 1929, included a full two-​week program of chant, liturgy, architecture, and religious art. Burke was a passionate follower of Dom Mocquereau,105 and only Mocquereau’s

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age and declining health prevented him from accepting an invitation to teach at the Dublin program. The 1929 school included representatives of every diocese in Ireland, 12 overseas dioceses, 10 male religious orders, 17 female religious orders, as well as secular students, visiting bishops, and abbots, bringing the number of participants to almost 200. It is interesting to note that, in the same year, Burke was invited to teach at the chant summer school at Oxford, where he presented on Irish music, postulating that the modal nature of Irish music and its lack of rhythmic constraint “admirably prepares the Irish soul to understand and love Gregorian chant.”106 The summer school concluded with an optional examination, offered at four levels: primary, intermediate, advanced, and diploma. In 1930, Dublin was recognized as the official Solesmes center in Ireland, and the diploma was examined and recognized by Solesmes as a qualification for teaching chant in the Solesmes style. As the Society of St. Gregory was only in its infancy in 1903 (founded in England in 1929), the Solesmes diploma for all of Great Britain was facilitated through the Dublin center. Burke was also responsible for reviving the practice of popular competitions for massed choirs singing plainchant, which had been part of the Cecilian legacy in Ireland. He introduced the “Joseph Sarto Memorial” prize to the Feis Ceoil (a musical festival founded in 1895) in Dublin, and plainchant festivals and competitions soon began to appear throughout Ireland, often under the patronage of the bishops.107 The liturgical festival in Limerick drew on the chant expertise of Doms Winoc Mertens, Maur Ellis, and Paul McDonnell, from the Benedictine community at Glenstal Abbey, which would later play a seminal role in the modern liturgical movement in Ireland. These festivals often featured massed choirs, consisting of thousands of children: For example, at the 31st International Eucharist Congress help in Dublin in June, 1932, a children’s High Mass choir consisting of 2,700 boys and girls who sang not only the mass, Ecce Sacerdos, but also hymns in Irish.108 The inclusion of Irish language hymns, alongside chant, echoes Burke’s passion for chant and Irish song, and the Romantic urge to postulate ancient connections between all things Celtic and Catholic. But it also played its part in creating a voice for the newly emergent Irish State at the beginning of the 20th century, where Irish language song and Catholic church music formed the core canon of musical education so that, “the

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musical traditions that were excluded from the official canon of the previous century found an honored place in the schools of the young nation state.”109 The struggle for independence from England, which marked the early part of the twentieth century in Ireland, was both a political and religious affair. Nationalism and Catholicism became inextricably linked, to the extent that, in her account of the Ireland which emerged as an independent republic in 1949, Louise Fuller claims that “all the evidence … points to the fact that Catholic culture was the popular culture in most of the Republic of Ireland in the 1950s.”110 Most Irish schools and hospitals were owned or managed by religious orders. The Irish Independent, the newspaper with the largest public circulation, advertised itself as a Catholic paper until the mid-​1950s. Radio Éireann, the national radio broadcasting service, instigated a practice in 1950 of broadcasting the ringing of the Angelus Bell each day, a practice that continues into the twenty-​first century. Mass attendance in 1950s Ireland formed part of the fabric of social and cultural life, and non-​attendance on Sundays or Holy Days was extremely rare, leading one writer to suggest that “average Mass attendance in Ireland … is a record in the Catholic world today.”111 In addition, most Catholics attended confraternities, sodalities, Benediction, novenas, and devotions to Mary or the Sacred Heart on a weekly basis, as well as parish missions, pilgrimages, and processions (particularly as part of Marian and Corpus Christi celebrations). At the heart of many of these devotions was the recitation of the rosary, the praying of which was also common during the celebration of the Mass. It was not unusual to spend two or three evenings a week involved in church activities, in addition to attendance at Sunday Mass; indeed, confraternities and similar gatherings provided a social outlet, as well as a religious community. Processions engulfed the social fabric of towns and villages, as captured in this description of a Corpus Christi procession by Irish writer, John McGahern: Colourful streamers and banners were strung across the roads … altars with flowers and a cross on white linen were erected at Gilligans, the post office… . The Host was … carried beneath a gold canopy all the way around the village, pausing for ceremonies at each wayside altar. Benediction was always at the post office. The congregation followed from behind, some bearing the banners of

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their sodalities, and girls in white veils and dresses scattered rose petals from white boxers on the path before the Host.112 The immersion of Irish social life in the culture of Catholicism, captured by McGahern, bears a strong resemblance to a description of another Corpus Christi procession, this time by Joseph Ratzinger, reflecting on his childhood in Bavaria: I can still smell those carpets of flowers and the freshness of the birch trees; I can see all the houses decorated, the banners, the singing; I can still hear the village band…. I remember the joie de vivre of the local lads, firing their gun salutes!113 In his article on Benedict XVI and the Eucharist, Eamon Duffy suggests that, for Ratzinger, this represented “authentic Catholic Christianity at its best,” an experience which left him somewhat “suspicious of those professional liturgists” of the liturgical movement, who implied that “the Eucharist had been instituted to be eaten, not carried about on carpets of flowers or shot into the air over by lads with guns.”114 Similarly, for many Irish Catholics, in the later years of the liturgical movement, the liturgical reforms proposed did not seem to be filling the churches of the continent, and professional liturgists of Belgium and France and Germany were objects of “suspicion and distain, because of their empty churches.”115 Nevertheless, a nascent Catholic, largely clerical, intelligentsia was beginning to wonder if all was indeed well with the particular brand of piety filling Irish churches. Two new journals, the Furrow and Doctrine & Life, commencing in 1950 and 1951, respectively, became important vehicles for some of the questions and innovations that were increasingly difficult to ignore as the liturgical movement gathered momentum and support, and would experience an Irish realization in the form of the Glenstal Liturgical Congresses in 1954. The Glenstal Liturgical Congresses took their place in the tradition of liturgical study weeks and congresses that were to mark the liturgical movement from the early twentieth century. The first liturgy week was organized in 1910 in Belgium, which quickly took the lead in organized and structured liturgical education and practice for the non-​monastic community. The Centre de Pastorale Liturgique was founded in Paris in 1943, and provided the impetus for a number of liturgical congresses at Versailles and Maria Laach, culminating in the international congresses of

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Lugano (1951) and Assisi (1956). Virgil Michel was central to the introduction of liturgical renewal to the United States through a series of “Liturgical Weeks” that ran from 1940 to 1961. If the story of liturgical renewal in Europe and the United States is also a Benedictine story, Cyprian Love reminds us that the Benedictine community in Ireland, and, specifically, the Benedictine community at Glenstal Abbey, stands “in a relationship of proven inheritance, and also facilitated the introduction of the Movement in Ireland.”116 The Benedictine monastery of Saints Joseph and Columba at Glenstal Abbey, County Limerick, can indeed boast of an interesting liturgical pedigree. The monastery was founded in 1927 from Maredsous Abbey in Belgium, which was itself founded by monks of Beuron, the founder house of so many Benedictine liturgical centers, directly influenced by the tradition of Solesmes from the time of its founders, Maurus and Placidus Wolter. The story of the Liturgical Congresses at Glenstal began over a cup of coffee between the prior of Glenstal, Placid Murray, and the Dominican monk Thomas Garde, who had been leading a retreat for the community. Garde suggested to Murray that the Benedictines might be well positioned to initiate a liturgical congress, in the tradition of the Benedictine love of liturgy.117 The congresses commenced in 1954 and continued until 1975, when the torch for liturgical renewal in the post–​Vatican II context was passed to the newly established National Institute for Liturgy. A very interesting story emerges when one examines the position of Gregorian chant in this dual world of Irish liturgical realities: the world of “traditional” and “conservative” devotional practice, on the one hand, and the smaller but dynamic world of “progressive” liturgical renewal, represented by the congresses, on the other. Once again, in contradiction to contemporary notions that ally traditional/​conservative faith positions with Gregorian chant, the story that emerged from the modern liturgical movement in Ireland was of the preservation and promotion of chant by the progressive/​pastoral movement and the wholesale embrace of the vernacular by the traditional church. This happened for a number of reasons. First, the devotional nature of traditional Irish Catholicism was highly vernacular, even before Vatican II. Because so many people participated in para-​ liturgical events, there already existed a high level of vernacular singing associated with processions, pilgrimages, and confraternity activities. One only need trace the emergence of popular hymnody in the post–​Vatican II context to find its root in pre–​Vatican II devotional practice. One of the striking examples of

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this was the extraordinary commercial success of the CD release Faith of Our Fathers in 1996, which featured a host of these hymns, made popular by devotional practice and transferred to the vernacular liturgies of the post–​Vatican II context.118 Hymns—​such as “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name”; “Sweet Heart of Jesus”; “Hail Redeemer, King Divine”; “Faith of Our Fathers”; “The Bells of the Angelus”; “To Jesus Heart All Burning”; “Soul of My Saviour”; “Queen of the May”; “O Sacrament Most Holy”; “Lord of All Hopefulness”; “Hail Glorious Saint Patrick”; “I’ll Sing a Hymn to Mary, Hail, Queen of Heaven”; “Jesus My Lord, My God, My All”; and “We Stand for God”—​dominate the recording, with three short pieces of chant (Tantum Ergo, Ave Verum, Regina Coeli) and one Irish-​language hymn (Céad Míle Fáilte Romhat A Íosa) illustrating the widespread popularity of vernacular hymnody among the pre–​Vatican II Irish Catholic community. The popularity of chant festivals notwithstanding, the majority experience of Mass in the 1950s was of a “Low” Mass, with little or no sung chant, while, at the same time, the majority experience of religious song through para-​liturgical events was clearly vernacular. Conversely, while the liturgical movement in Ireland fully supported the increased use of the vernacular in the Mass, it is clear from a perusal of minutes and publications from the Glenstal congresses that the “pride of place”119 accorded to Gregorian chant in landmark liturgical documents such as Mediator Dei (1947), Musicae Sacrae Disciplina (1955), and culminating in Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963) was fully recognized and facilitated. No minutes of the congress exist from 1954 to 1959. The lectures from these first six years, however, were published in 1961 by the Furrow Trust, Maynooth.120 The devotional piety, characteristic of Irish Catholicism prior to the Second Vatican Council, is addressed in that volume by Daniel Duffy in a survey entitled “Eucharistic Piety in Irish Practice.” Duffy notes the large congregations attending Mass and receiving communion frequently, but also the largely silent participation, the “telling of beads” throughout the celebration. Prayer manuals, when used, are frequently interspersed with aspirations. Corpus Christi processions, Forty Hours devotions, and Exposition are popular, and well attended. Duffy concludes that there is little real preparation for our understanding of the Eucharistic liturgy, reflected in the continued use of alternative prayers, unceremonious entrances and exits, and an extreme shyness of singing at liturgy: in all, a liturgical practice and attitude out of contact with liturgical modernity. In his own contribution, “Liturgical Piety According to the Encyclical Mediator Dei,” Dom Placid also notes the lack of real understanding of the

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liturgical reform, beyond its exterior manifestations. Many priests would appear to feel that their duty … is to safeguard the elementary things among the general body of the faithful before they could attempt to go on to the refinements of the liturgy. This attitude is based on a misconception of the nature of liturgy and belittles liturgy, considering it to be no more than rubrics or outward ceremonial.121 The volume notes that the afternoon session of the first day of the congress of 1959 was dedicated to the “Chants of Holy Week.” Conducted by Fr. Kieran O’Gorman, director of Sacred Music in the Diocese of Killaloe, it consisted of a practical introduction to chants for use in an average parish liturgy. O’Gorman’s sense of the pastoral potential of chant is clear in his concluding aspiration, where he predicted that “if we succeed in Holy Week, it is but a short step to active participation in every Mass.”122 The three congresses from 1960 to 1962 were published in a second volume of Studies in Pastoral Liturgy, edited by Vincent Ryan, OSB.123 In “The Mass and the People in Irish Parishes,” William Conway suggests that a regular Missa Cantata in every parochial church would be desirable. Sung responses such as the Amen, Et cum spiritu tuo, Gloria Tibi, Domine, and Deo gratias give “visible expression to the nexus between the celebrant and the congregation.”124 Sung participation in the Mass is taken up again by Kieran O’Gorman, rooting the modern liturgical awareness of the role of music in the writings of Pius X and his conviction that participation in worship was the most critical and indispensable source of Christian living. Minutes of the liturgical congresses were kept from 1960 onward, first by Dom Placid and, later, in a more sporadic fashion, by Dom Paul McDonnell, OSB. The intrinsic connection between music and liturgy is highlighted by a discussion on the possibility of establishing a music subcommittee within the congress. The minutes of the annual general meeting of the committee on Tuesday, May 16, 1961, noted [a]‌suggestion in a letter of Fr. D. Linehan (Cork) to form a musical sub-​committee on the Congress. The general feeling was that the musicians should get every encouragement, but that the formation of a committee might emphasise the difference between “liturgy” and “music.”125

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The minutes note the organization of a Study Day, for October 19, 1966, including representatives from the diocese of Achonry, Cloyne, Derry, Elphin, Ferns, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Killala, Kilmore, Limerick, Ossory, Raphoe, Waterford, and Lismore. The guest speaker for the study day was Fr. Gy, OP, director of the Institut Supérieur de Liturgie in Paris. The question of music was raised by Mr. Ó Cléirigh (one of three lay representatives present). The Prior referred to the relative paucity of sung Masses in Ireland. Fr. Gy favored an optimistic attitude, noting how much had been achieved in France, suggesting that, generally speaking, there were no Sunday masses without chant, with the exception of Masses at seven or eight in the morning. He emphasized the role of the schola as a support for the singing congregation.126 Even this short overview of some of the more pertinent records concerning the place of Gregorian chant in the liturgical congresses at Glenstal indicates an appreciation for the place of chant in the context of liturgical reform, a position that Cyprian Love suggests is still evident in the liturgical life of the community: “[T]‌he traditional Benedictine option of Latin plainsong remains intact, though not slavishly so, in Glenstal’s worship, alongside a growing number of alternatives.”127 It may seem ironic, to some, that one of very few places where one can still experience Gregorian chant in a living liturgical context in Ireland is in the home of the most significant and sustained contribution to the innovations of the modern liturgical movement.

Conclusion This chapter has explored ways in which the somatic nature of singing can promote an encounter with the other through experiences of “bothness.” This same somatic character, however, can also be harnessed to promote divisive, repertoire-​based schisms in ritual communities. In his discussion on ritual efficacy, Johannes Quack cautions against any simplistic correlation of the body with ritual efficacy. Referring to Bell’s work on the ritualized body, he states that “her approach is problematic since she seems to be talking primarily about the fitting of a ritual habitus to a ritual milieu and that the mechanisms at work in such an effect are not at all specific to the process of ritualization.”128 A somatic approach to ritual repertoire does not guarantee ritual efficacy. But in making a “laboratory of the performer’s body,” as artist and performer Jan Fabre describes his artistic process, it locates the point of choice and experimentation within

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the potential of the body, rather than in the ideological discourse surrounding the ritual.129 In rooting ritual choice in somatic and sensory experiences, Gallagher and Zahavi note that “phenomenologists are not advocating a strong thesis concerning total and infallible self-​knowledge; rather, they are calling attention to the constitutive link between experiential phenomena and first-​personal giveness.”130 This is not to argue that the cultural specificity of repertoire is not important. Many cultures transmit musical expression (rhythm, pitch, harmony, timbre, etc.) almost exclusively through repertoire, and early childhood research demonstrates the centrality of repertoire in the transmission of music, even in prenatal experience.131 But it is at the level of repertoire that the role of music has been most divisive and contested in a ritual context. The contribution of stylized sound, which is structurally formalized, rhythmic, repeated, exaggerated, and elaborated, has long been linked not only to humanly created ritual cultures, but also to biological ritualization in animal behavior.132 It is not the presence of music in ritual that is usually contested, but rather its function and character. What one sings is often bolstered by ideological explanations concerning why one sings in ritual contexts, and repertoire frequently functions as a sonic flag, cueing doctrinal and ideological positions and beliefs. Many rituals, as well as the directives, publications, and associations supporting them, leave us with the impression that we are obliged to “choose” between the either/​or of repertoire-​driven traditions. Often our choice is presented as being between an aesthetic, high art, historical camp, on the one hand, and a popular, cross-​cultural, congregationally friendly repertoire, on the other. In his 1979 Radcliffe-​Browne Lecture, “A Performative Approach to Ritual,” Samuel Tambiah noted that “ritual oscillates … between the poles of ossification and revivalism.”133 But oscillation is not an either/​or; it is a constant movement back and forth and in between. Indeed, scholars such as Ronald Grimes argue that effective ritual must continually walk the tight-​rope between structure and spontaneity134—​that good ritual does not sit on the fence because it cannot decide which way to go, but rather it makes the fence its primary site of expression. This rejection of a blunt binary allows for the creative ambiguity of “bothness.” The paradox of bothness exists in many global “wisdom” traditions and has also been interrogated in postmodern literature as a means of deconstructing the clear demarcations of temporality and spatiality, allowing for greater slippage between these constructs. In early Irish culture and

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mythology, for example, the salmon was often used as a symbol of “bothness.” There are many theories concerning the dominance of salmon motifs in Celtic mythology. One proposal is that the salmon, in its ability to move between salt-​and freshwater, as well as to swim both with and against the current, represents the ability to move between worlds. The salmon does not have to reside exclusively in any one element, but can move between them, with them, or against them. This unique ability makes it a valuable mediator—​a bridge-​builder between worlds of difference.135 If the salmon represents the paradox of “bothness” in Celtic mythology, a similar arbitrator and mediator in the Judaic Wisdom tradition (which borrowed freely from Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources136) is Solomon, to whom God gave “immense wisdom and understanding, and a heart as vast as the sand on the seashore.”137 One of the great examples of Solomon’s wisdom, from 1 Kings, is the story of two women who both claim to be the mother of the same child. How is he to decide the rightful mother? Cut the child in half, he declares and give a half to each women. A simple either/​or, it would appear. Take one or the other. But the deeper wisdom is, of course, the point of the story. The real mother cries out to spare the life of the child, even if it means giving it away. Solomon declares this women the mother by virtue of her overwhelming desire to see the child whole and healthy, regardless of the cost to herself: “[A]‌ll Israel came to hear of the judgement which the king had pronounced and held the king in awe, recognizing that he possessed divine wisdom.”138 The child cannot be divided and live. The both/​and of the story is the paradox of love, which can only gain what it desires through its willingness to give it away entirely. Old Testament wisdom is replete with body metaphors: the heart is a metaphor for mental faculties; the throat or windpipe are often used as metaphors for the soul; compassion is located in the womb or the intestines.139 The body functions as both somatic source and metaphor. The both/​ and paradigm permeates much of Derrida’s published work, particularly in his deconstruction of dichotomies and dualities. One of the most explicit references can be found in his lecture entitled “Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German.” This lecture was delivered in Jerusalem in 1988 in the context of the Palestinian uprising and addressed the warring demands of nation and religion. In it, he quotes a letter from Franz Rosensweig: “Let us then be Germans and Jews. Both at the same time without worrying about the and[,]‌without talking about it a great deal but really both.”140

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Postmodernity reminds us that most either/​or models are eroding through a hermeneutic of suspicion around even such anchor concepts as history and time. In a 1967 interview, Foucault said, “we have to be wary about an overly simple linear conception of history. We consider the understanding of the way one event succeeds another as a specifically historical issue, and yet we do not consider as an historical issue one which is in fact equally so: understanding how two events can be contemporaneous.”141 Similarly, Old Roman chant scholar Edward Nowacki stated, “I have argued … that the neglect of the synchronic dimension in the analysis of chant may lead to deficient, even deceptive, theories of historical change, especially in the case of oral traditions. For the things that determine the form of orally transmitted chants may be not their parents and grandparents in the diachronic stream, but their brothers and sisters in the synchronic family.”142 Both these ancient and postmodern traditions suggest that looking for inclusive, relational, fluid solutions may be more holistic and sustainable than either/​or solutions. This chapter has proposed that these are more likely to emerge from an approach to ritual singing that takes the body as its point of departure. Musical repertoires are as likely to divide their participants along cultural, aesthetic, and stylistic lines as they are to bring them together. Repertoires can be used as weapons, propaganda, and ideology. But just as the shared ritual spaces explored in Chapter 1 facilitated a musical osmosis, remembering that different sung repertoires can share the same body is a useful point of departure for experiencing “bothness” and belonging in ritual singing.

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Finding Your Own Voice Mythologizing and Ritualizing Belonging at the Irish World Academy

Introduction In his essay “Feeling Into Words,” Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney wrote, Finding a voice means that you can get your own feeling into your own words and that your words have the feel of you about them; and I believe that it may not even be a metaphor, for a poetic voice is probably very intimately connected with the poet’s natural voice, the voice that he hears as the ideal speaker of the lines he is making up.1 While Heaney was referring to the poetic voice, his observations resonate also with the singing voice. Putting “feeling” into song is, at once, metaphoric, as well as actual: singers access their voice as a blind person would approach the things she cannot see—​through feeling, sensation, listening, and sounding. The motto and vision of the Irish World Academy, the educational setting where I have worked for the last 20 years, is derived from Heaney’s essay. “Finding Your Own Voice” is part of the mission statement of the unit, an invitation offered to everyone who comes to the Academy to teach, learn, perform, and listen.2 In the same essay, Heaney writes about Solzhenitzyn’s novel, The First Circle. The novel takes place in a prison camp where technically skilled inmates are forced to create a device for bugging telephones. As well as recording voices, this device can identify

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the sound patterns of individual voices, discovering their unique codes and signatures. Each voice becomes a sonic fingerprint, a unique identifier.3 Similarly, the Academy encourages its participants to develop a voice that is truly their own through a celebration of uniqueness and diversity, but also of inclusivity. A second motto, also evoked in the Academy’s mission statement, is “Cothram na Féinne do Chultúir na Cruinne,” which translates as “Fair Play for World Cultures.” A combination of these two ideas—​finding one’s own voice, but doing so in a context of equal recognition of all world cultures—​sums up the delicate balance between the individual and the community, as well as between the local and the global, which defines the ethos of the Academy.4 The Irish World Academy is one of the most culturally diverse performing arts education energies in Ireland and is a pioneer in the introduction of indigenous and global artistic practices into higher education culture. This chapter explores the ways in which mythology, symbol, and ritual are constantly evoked within the Academy to reinforce its self-​ professed core values of individual creativity and diversity, as well as inclusivity and equality. It also explores the transmission of these values through performed ritual, exploring how “ritual action transmits ‘knowing’ through ritual action itself.”5 While singing is the primary performance practiced traced through this book, the Academy includes dance, instrumental music, and other performance practices, from clowning to aerial performance, in its offerings. For this reason, the chapter explores the wider relationship between singing and performance generally. While Chapter 2 emphasized the physiological body of the singer, this chapter looks at the social body of a community of practitioners (including audiences, stage managers, directors, teachers, and entire communities of practice) and its intimate relationship with the individual creative artist. Drawing on Nettl’s analysis of a school of music as a set of dispositions and spaces guided by specific principles around social organization and governing the relationships between people, it suggests that the social and pedagogical infrastructure of the Irish World Academy is an embodiment of this founding ethos. This ethos is both celebrated and contested through performance, ritual, curriculum, and evaluation.6 Nettl also proposes that schools of music perform and embody their ethos. This can take the form of a kind of anthropomorphism, whereby certain guiding energies (e.g., “the great composers”) may be evoked in mission or vision statements, or may be literally or symbolically rendered as part of the architectural space.

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Looking specifically at the founder-​director as an example, as well as the physical space of the Academy, this chapter examines how institutions “perform” creative values and ritualize these through a variety of pedagogically based performance experiences. It also suggests that the performance of these values continues to be evidenced in student-​based practices.

The Irish World Academy The Academy came into being in 19947 with the creation of the first Chair of Music at the University of Limerick. The university was formed in 1972 as a National Institute of Higher Education and was granted full university status in 1989, making it the first new university established in Ireland since the foundation of the State in 1922.8 It is situated on a 600-​acre site, straddling the River Shannon, three miles outside Limerick city. It is one of the youngest of seven universities recognized under the Universities Act of 1997.9 Since its inception in 1994, the Academy has grown from a zero base to more than 300 students from over 50 countries across undergraduate to postdoctoral programs. It has also hosted more than 40 musicians, dancers, and singers as artists-​in-​residence, with a parallel program of artistic commissions resulting in new compositions, choreographies, and artworks. The faculty of over 25 musicians, dancers, and scholars is supplemented by weekly visits from international artists and academics. In their acclaimed study of Irish businesses that have successfully integrated “Irishness” into the demands of a global market, Bradley and Kennelly mention only three educational examples. One is a cookery school, one is a college of art, and the third is the Irish World Academy.10 The examples cited demonstrate how the most globally successful Irish businesses are defined by their ability to maintain their identity but also adapt to, and dialogue with, global needs, without sacrificing their core values. Bradley and Kennelly see these core values as authenticity, cultural awareness, a sense of tradition and place, as well as commitment to sustainability. These values are manifested across the businesses they surveyed through creative interaction between the local and the global and between innovation and tradition. In terms of the Academy, they note that with ritual and tradition central to the Academy’s programmes, there is likely to be increased demand for its graduates, even in businesses, as organisations seek individuals who can create

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meaningful products and services without diluting the essential artistic integrity of the creative process. The Academy is in the vanguard with its adventure-​some approach to learning, with positive implications for stimulating innovation throughout society.11 There is a growing recognition that the Irish World Academy, through its insistence on an inclusive approach to performance education, provides a unique voice in higher education internationally. At the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the Academy, composer and music therapist Nigel Osborne spoke about this uniqueness:  “I had a dream a long time ago that there could be an academy where all art could be together in the ways that express practice and touch people and an academy that would kind of touch the earth, reach for the sky. Guys, I think you’ve done it.”12 The growth of the Academy over the last two decades, however, has raised many questions about the institutionalization of artistic practices, particularly indigenous traditions with a history of community and domestic-​based practice and transmission. The opening of a bespoke building for the Academy in 2010 on the banks of the River Shannon led to a renewed media interest in this question, as seen in this Irish Times profile: But what of the tradition itself? Is its prominence within the halls of academe a reflection of its rude state of health or could it be simply a highly marketable bauble for the humanities? Might all this academic scrutiny act as a tourniquet that could ultimately stifle our traditional arts?13 Within the academy, there is also a spectrum of opinion regarding the fine balance between honoring and teaching “the tradition” and the space to create and innovate. In his doctoral work entitled The “Ivory Tower” and the “Commons”?: A Problematisation of Irish Traditional Music Pedagogy in Irish Higher Education, Jack Talty provides a number of rich, ethnographically based perspectives on this question.14 One manifestation of this question is expressed as concern around an emergent “university style” of traditional music: I think there is UL style coming through… . It’s all band-​work, high-​ octane, newly-​composed tunes, or tricks, sometimes. To me they just sound like tricks, in 7/​8, 11/​8, or in 5/​8. It seems mandatory

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now to have those tunes in your recordings, or part of your set. (Irish World Academy Tutor, May 2014) Linked to this is a concern regarding a potential overemphasis on innovation, at the expense of tradition: I did get the impression that it was about innovation for the sake of innovation, not for the sake of an emotional experience. And some people tried to make it appear that you’re innovating because you shouldn’t feel a boundary. What if I want to feel a boundary? What if I  feel that I’m playing music that has parameters that I need to follow? Why can’t I just be creative within that? Why do I need to innovate outside that? There are people here who can play in 7/​8 and play in 12 keys, but get them to sit down and play the Connaughtman’s Rambles and make it interesting, and they won’t do it, which I think is a shame. The Irish traditional music community have [sic] this opposition towards it and although it might seem ignorant, I don’t think it’s far off being accurate. I’m not saying that it’s not good to innovate and that we shouldn’t be exposed to it. But we’re getting all this and not getting enough of the fundamentals. I’m lucky that I know the fundamentals, the foundations, because I’ve always studied them so I can look at [experimental approaches], and take it or leave it. Unfortunately, not everybody can. (Academy graduate, November 2013) Other graduates express the view that a range of tutors and approaches safeguards against any one dominant ideology or “style”: I don’t think [the Irish World Academy] goes too far with experimentation at all. If you look at the tutors there, they’re all equally pushing the boundaries as well as maintaining the tradition, I think. From my experiences there, I thought it was a very healthy balance. You were always encouraged to know where the music came from but you were equally encouraged to try and make it your own too—​to make it personal… . I think you were encouraged in the right way to be yourself, and to make your own music, but at the same time you had one on one contact every day with masters of the tradition. You could take away what you wanted. (Academy graduate, March 2016)

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Music education historian Marie McCarthy identifies the Academy and its founder, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, as key players in the expansion of what was considered “Irish” music. From the 1960s to the late 1990s, a growing acceptance of diversity and pluralism in society was reflected in attitudes toward music. The international revival of interest in “folk” music also led to an increased set of social and cultural opportunities for Irish traditional music and a related rise in its status. Similarly, the international recognition of Irish popular and rock musicians, including U2, Bob Geldof, and Van Morrison, also broadened the notion of what could be considered “Irish” music.15 Equating Irish music with traditional music has been described by Ó Súilleabháin as “a tribal rather than a national definition” in his proposal that Irish music encompass all creative music-​making in Ireland.16 The “Irish World” Academy is one of the key cultural and educational projects to develop in the context of the “new Ireland” of the late twentieth century, defined both by its commitment to Ireland in the world, as well as the world in Ireland. This new Ireland is inclusive, but not generic. It is characterized by local voices, as well as by transnational, intercultural, multicultural, and marginalized ones. It recognizes that “finding one’s own voice” is both a highly personal and a highly relational activity. The transmission of these core values to students, staff, artists, and musicians over the last 20 years has resulted in an ethos that permeates all of the Academy’s offerings. This transmission is ritualized and performed, as well as being symbolically expressed in its physical space and language. A key concept expressing this ethos is located in the old Irish word imbas.

The Quest for Imbas Early Irish and Celtic mythology is replete with references to the high cultural value placed on knowledge. One of the most prized forms of knowledge was called imbas. This has been translated in many ways (creativity/​wisdom/​prophecy/​foreknowledge), but its primary characteristic is that it was acquired not only through normal human endeavor but also through magical or supernatural means.17 In the mythological cycles, the most common point of access to imbas for mortals was through imbibing the hazelnut. The hazel is one of the most important sacred trees in Ireland, and medieval literature describes the imbas forosna (“encompassing knowledge” or “illuminating wisdom”) contained in the nuts of this sacred tree.18 With their tendency to grow in groves around a water source,

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clusters of hazel trees or “wands” (usually nine) appear in many legends surrounding sacred wells or pools. Niall Mac Coitir notes that, “a well of knowledge surrounded by hazel trees seems to be at the centre of Gaelic cosmology.”19 The Tuath Dé Danann (the pre-​Christian gods and goddesses of Ireland) were said to have such a well, with seven streams of wisdom flowing from it. In other sources, this is called Connla’s well and is the source of the River Shannon (which will be described in greater detail later) and the seven chief rivers of Ireland. The hazels trees surrounding Connla’s well are said to contain the wisdom of creativity and inspiration. The leaves, blossoms, and nuts of these sacred trees all appeared simultaneously and would fall into the well, creating what is variously described as purple bubbles or a purple shower of water. The hazelnuts that fell in were eaten by the five sacred salmon living in the well. For every nut eaten, a red spot would appear on the salmon’s belly. In this way, the wisdom of the hazelnut passed into the salmon, and anyone who ate it would imbibe this sacred knowledge. Eating the salmon of wisdom is another staple of Irish folklore. The great mythological hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill is left watching over a cooking salmon, captured by the seer Finnegas. Fionn bursts a blister on the salmon’s skin and then sucks his burning thumb, instantly acquiring knowledge of all things. As discussed in Chapter 2, the salmon was often depicted as a mediator or liminal figure between the natural and supernatural world, a point through which humans could access the otherworldly. For the Tuath Dé Danann, the three most prized symbols were the plow, the sun, and the hazel.20 The Last Tuath Dé Danann kings of Ireland were called Mac Cuill (Son of Hazel), Mac Gréine (Son of the Sun), and Mac Cecht (Son of Plow). These are related to the three main castes of Celtic society (the priestly, the warrior, and the peasant), with the hazel representing the priestly caste, whose function was to mediate with the gods and hold their sacred wisdom. The Druidic class of Celtic society engaged in documented rituals in the quest for imbas. A seer or fili would chew on a raw piece of meat from a pig or goat or cat, spit it out and put it on a stone behind a door. He would chant over it and over the palms of his two hands. Putting his palms onto his cheeks, he would go to sleep and imbas would reveal itself.21 Evidence of the prestige of the hazel and its association with wisdom continued into the early Christian period. When the monastic community he had founded on Scattery Island faced a severe drought, the sixth-​ century Saint Senan is said to have plunged a hazel rod into the ground

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beside a well. By the next morning, the stick had taken root and grown into a majestic tree. Similarly, Saint Colman mac Duach built his oratory in a remote hazel wood at the foot of Slieve Carran in the Burren area of County Clare to better communicate with God.22 If the hazelnut, the salmon, and the waters of wisdom are core symbols of both pre-​Christian and Christian Celticism, they are also foundational symbols in the creation myth of the Irish World Academy. The Academy has grown up on the banks of the longest river in Ireland, the River Shannon. In Irish folklore, there is a branch of poetry and storytelling called dindshenchas. The word is used to refer to traditional knowledge or lore (senchas) about well-​known and important places (dind). This tradition has its origins in the aristocratic hierarchy of pre-​Christian Celtic society, where the fili (poet or seer) was expected to know not only the genealogies and pedigrees of the noble family he served, but also the origins of significant place names. This poetic tradition forms the basis for later folkloric inheritance. The story of how the River Shannon got its name has been preserved as part of the tradition of dindshenchas. The river originates in the “Shannon pot” in County Cavan and empties into the Atlantic at the Shannon estuary. Folklore tells us that the river originated at the well of Connla. The well was surrounded by nine hazel trees, producing magical, wisdom-​giving nuts, which dropped from the trees into the well below. Salmon swimming at the bottom of the well ate these nuts and imbibed their wisdom. From the juice of these nuts came the magical bubbles of imbas, which floated to the well’s surface. There was a young girl called Sionna (Shannon), a daughter of the ancient gods (the Túatha Dé Danann), who possessed every virtue, lacking only the imbas or wisdom of the hazels. One day, she jumped into the well to seize the bubbles. The water surged up around her and became a mighty river carrying her name.23 Sionna’s search for imbas—​for creative wisdom, insight, and inspired knowledge—​is a metaphor for the quest of every scholar and artist at the Academy, trying to “find their own voice.” This voice cannot always be accessed through mere learning, but must take the leap of faith required of all creativity. It is a quest that is sometimes overwhelming and sometimes solitary, but also one that happens within a shared artistic community. If you walk into the foyer of the Irish World Academy, one of the most visually arresting images you will see is a large mosaic, wrapped around “the Tower,” a performance space in the round, rising up through the center of the building (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Designed by Irish artist Des Kenny and constructed in Venetian glass by his team of artists, the mosaic depicts

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Figure 3.1  Sionna Mosaic, Irish World Academy. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

Figure 3.2  Detail from Sionna Mosaic, Irish World Academy. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

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the myth of the River Shannon. Its story also appears in calligraphy by Kenny on a plaque in the foyer; … the unstoppable had happened once the mirror of the pool’s surface had been broken. The terrible beauty of the Goddess Sionna shimmered and pulsated across the pool driving into the red earth and throwing up banks on either side as she raced across the sacred land of Eiré toward the sea, beginning the great river that bears her name. The river has been regularly evoked by the founder-​director of the Academy, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, both as an actual and poetic site of learning. During the early medieval period, when Ireland was known throughout the Europe of the Dark Ages as the “Isle of Saints and Scholars,” the river was dotted with monastic settlements (including St. Senan’s foundation on Scattery Island), which formed some of the most important centers of learning in all of Europe.24 Many of these are sixth-​century foundations, representing the turning point in Irish history, from the Celtic religious cosmologies ritualized by Druidic orders to the development of a monastic-​based, Celtic Christianity. From island foundations such as Holy Island in Lough Derg, Hare Island in Lough Ree and Devenish, White and Boa islands in the Lower Erne, to great monastic cities such as Clonmacnoise on the banks of the Lower Shannon, these foundations attracted students from across Europe to study theology, philosophy, Latin, Greek, and Irish. The metaphoric image of Sionna searching out imbas, as well as the historical lineage of the river as a spine of learning, are key parts of the Academy’s creation story. This story is literally built into the fabric of the building from the imposing mosaic, to a specially commissioned Celtic-​Zen garden with a stone river, designed by gardener Robert Ketchell.25 In his ethnomusicological study of schools of music, Heartland Excursions, Bruno Nettl notes the almost temple-​like configurations of such schools, with the higher “gods” of the school displayed most prominently (e.g., busts of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart) alongside smaller images of lesser deities including Schubert and Dvorak, among others.26 The pantheon is all male, all white, and almost all European. Just as the many images of Mary in Catholic and Orthodox churches tell us a great deal about her role in these Christian traditions, we can learn as much from the lack of her image in most Protestant churches. You will not see any

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of the “great composers” when you come into the Academy building. The primary icon of the Academy is not a particular musical tradition, but the river that runs through the campus. In 2014, as part of the celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the Academy, three artists were commissioned to create a work in dialogue with the Academy archive. Each of the artists decided independently to create work around the river.27 In addition to the obvious river metaphors found in the structures of the building, its artworks and natural surroundings, an exhibition of photographs, commissioned for the opening of the building, will also catch the eye. The photographs, enlarged to the size of a large television (as well as a single, enormous photo of a dancer in full flight) are hung around the foyer, in the café, along the corridors, and in the large dance studios. All the photographs were taken by photographer-​in-​residence Maurice Gunning and feature students, faculty, and visiting artists at the Academy. You will see African drummers, Cuban salsa dancers, contemporary dancers, popular musicians, Irish traditional dancers, Irish traditional musicians, Latin chanters, Western art musicians, and the entire spectrum of performance practices studied at the Academy. The iconography of the building is a celebration of artistic and cultural diversity, under the “meta” symbol of the river. Most significantly, at the heart of the building’s symbolic art and architecture is a ritual pit built into its foundation. This serves as the primary site of annual ritual performances, evoking the Academy’s founding mythology.

The Ritual Pit Underneath the imposing mosaic in the foyer of the Irish World Academy, there is a lone slab of Irish blue limestone, contrasting starkly with the otherwise cream-​tiled flooring of the foyer. If you were to lift up this slab of stone, you would find a hollow pit (Figure 3.3). Within this pit, wrapped in a cloth, is a bodhrán, a pair of bones, a replica Bronze Age horn, and a bag of hazelnuts. The bodhrán and bones represent the earliest instruments of prehistoric, agrarian Ireland; the Bronze Age horn is an instrument contemporaneous with Ireland’s great megalithic, ritual structures, including passage tombs and stone circles such as Newgrange and Lough Gur. The bag of hazelnuts are the recurrently evoked source of imbas—​ the creative, intelligent, prophetic wisdom of the nut, the salmon, and the river.

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Figure 3.3  Ritual pit offerings. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

This ritual pit was built into the foundations of the building, following a conversation between Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and the building’s architect, Daniel Cordier. Cordier responded to two interrelated ideas suggested by Ó Súilleabháin:  the tradition of building foundation pits in new and important structures, and the Irish tradition of dancing on stone flags, often built over a hollow space in the floor.28 There are many theories as to why these pits were included within the foundations of significant buildings, the most common being that digging the earth created a disruption in the cosmological order, which called for an offering to appease the gods and to redress the balance of the cosmos. The oldest archaeological and representational records of ritual pits are from Mesopotamian and Egyptian culture, and the evidence suggests that such pits were ubiquitous across the ancient Mediterranean world. The building of important structures such as temples, tombs, palaces, forts, and town walls was surrounded by ritual, including rituals to fix the plan of the structure, a scattering of gypsum or sand across the construction site, the digging of the first foundational trench, and, most important, the placing of materials in pits lined with brick or stone at key points in the building’s architecture. These ritual deposits included bricks, plaques, figurines, and small votive objects. In Bronze Age Greece, ritual pits are

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found in numerous archaeological sites across Crete, Cyprus, and Western Asia Minor, and include deposits of coins, jewelry, figurines, ceramic drinking vessels, and miniature votive vessels, as well as the remnants of animal and vegetable sacrifice.29 The most comprehensive description of ritual pits in Ancient India is found in the eleventh-​century Kasyapasilpa, a Sanskrit treatise on art, architecture, and literature. Its description of ritual pits and deposits in temples and human settlements resonates with archaeological finds across the so-​called Sanskrit cosmopolis of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Veitnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The treatise describes the ritual for placing the deposit box. This ritual is called garbhanyasa, which means “the placing of the embryo.” The constructed box for the ritual deposit was often referred to as “the womb house” and was divided into compartments, which contained objects of symbolic value, such as minerals, grains, metals, precious stones, herbs, and earth, taken from different locations. While the Sanskrit treatise refers to Hindu rituals, the archaeological finds are from both Hindu and Buddhist sites, demonstrating a continuity of ritual practice across these religious traditions.30 In addition to these ritual deposits clearly associated with new buildings, there is also evidence of the creation of ritual deposits or hoards associated with important cultural practices. The role of weaving in Mayan culture, for example, is suggested in the archaeological find of 200 ritually broken spindle whorls at the Late Classic Maya Site of El Pilar, Belize, probably deposited as a votive offering to Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of the moon, water, weaving, and childbirth.31 Similarly, in Ireland, Bronze Age hoards included instruments such as horns and crotals, suggesting a ritual significance associated with the music of these instruments, as well as jewelry and weapons.32 The presence of human and, later, animal bones is also a feature of many foundation offerings. Horse sacrifice, for example, is common across the Indo-​European world. The Yajurveda (one of the four Vedas, or Hindu canonical texts) provides a detailed description of the ritual of horse sacrifice, the Aśvamedha, seen as essential for the maintenance of cosmological balance. Horse sacrifice was also common among the Romans, Celts, Slavs, and Scythians. The medieval historian Giraldus Cambrensis describes an Irish ritual of mating the king with a horse, a ritual bearing striking resemblance to one recounted in Sanskrit wherein the king’s wife lies down with a freshly killed horse. The Greek historian Herodotus also describes a similar practice among the Scythians,

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while the nineteenth-​ century Russian ethnographer Serge Maksimov describes the ritual killing of a horse to counteract the outbreak of disease in animals.33 The ritual power of the horse is also evidenced by the widespread practice of burying horse skulls in wells, settlements, under bridges, and in domestic buildings, with archaeological evidence from Iron Age Poland to third-​century Roman settlements in Germany.34 The practice of burying horse skulls in domestic dwellings in Ireland continued up to the modern era, with examples found in houses built as late as the 20th century. A number of oral narratives from the mid-​twentieth century attest to the vibrancy of this practice: In my home county, in Croom, in Killaloe, in Fedamore, in Ballingarry and in Fethard, it is generally believed that in the old days, when they were building a house, the skull of a horse was buried beneath the floor of the kitchen near the hearth and opposite the fire. (David Cantwell, Croom, Co. Limerick)35 The most common position for the buried skull was under a flag in front of the fireplace, and the most frequent explanation for this was the creation of an improved acoustic sound—​a “macalla” or echo, usually associated with dancing: … all my life I used to hear the old people say that it was put there for the purpose of giving a fine hearty echo (“macalla”) to the house … they put the head (with the coppers) in the floor so that their dancing would sound better, for the old people were all for sport. (Seán Mac Mathghamhna, Doolin, Co. Clare)36 Some scholars regard the macalla theory as one developed in hindsight, as a practical explanation for a forgotten ritual practice, but others also note the use of a buried, hollow pot, particularly in Clare, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, which certainly supports the theory of an acoustic dimension to such burials: A lot of people said that the stone in front of the fireplace was laid with a space underneath containing a hollow metal vessel to add to the sound of the dancer’s feet. (Mícheál Ó Scannail, Killarney, Co. Kerry)37

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Whether these domestic pits contained buried horse skulls or hollow pots, they were frequently found in ceilidhing, or gathering houses, locally known for music, dancing, and socializing.38 These ritual, performative traditions informed the building of the pit at the Academy, the selection of items placed in it, as well as the numerous rituals and performances that have taken place around it since. The bodhrán was one of the last instruments made by the great Irish bodhrán-​ makers, Charlie Byrne from Thurles, and was donated by Tommy Hayes, a pioneering bodhrán player and graduate of the MA in Music Therapy. The pair of bones were presented by Mel Mercier, Head of Music and Drama at University College, Cork, and a doctoral graduate at the Academy. Mel’s doctoral work investigated cross-​cultural traditions in bone playing, and the pair of bones he donated were cut from the shin of a calf and were made by Steve Brown in Massachusetts. The Bronze Age horn is a reproduction of the Shannon Adharc, a Bronze Age horn from the North Kerry/​ Shannon area, presented to the Academy by Ancient Music Ireland, and the bag of hazelnuts were collected at Beal Boru, the early medieval fort of Brian Boru, located one mile north of Killaloe and overlooking the Shannon at Lough Derg. To mark the opening of the building, the items were interred at a ritual to seal the pit, facilitated by Seán Ó Duinn, OSB, a monk of Glenstal Abbey. Ó Duinn is an internationally recognized scholar in Celtic spirituality and a lecturer in the MA Ritual Chant and Song program. The ritual included the recitation of the alphabet in Greek, Latin, and Irish as all the participants moved deiseal, or clockwise, around the pit three times (Figure 3.4). As in many traditions, moving deiseal was viewed as auspicious in Celtic spirituality, following the Druidic practice of moving sunwise around their temples. Another part of the ritual included faculty member Catherine Foley dancing the Irish traditional step dance, “The Three Sea Captains,” around the pit. Since this opening ritual, the Academy has held annual days to celebrate the new building. This so-​called Day of Light has included rituals around the pit, such as a blessing ritual for the Academy by Nepalese shaman Yarjung Kromchai Tamu. For the twentieth anniversary of the Academy, a torchlight ritual procession was held to mark the rising of the sun at Imbolc, a Celtic festival marking the end of winter and the arrival of the new life of spring. The ritual procession crossed the Shannon and ended at the ritual pit. It commenced with the blowing of a Bronze Age horn and included flute and drum marches, as well as a chant to Brigit

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Figure 3.4  Ritual for opening of the ritual pit, March, 2010. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

(the Christianized saint of Imbolc) and the drone of the Iron Age trumpa. As participants crossed the bridge, they threw hazelnuts into the river. It is interesting to observe the continued ritualization of the Academy through its performed connections with ancient Ireland (prehistoric instruments, prehistoric river mythology, medieval monastic, pedagogical foundations), as well as its conscious reaching out cross-​culturally through diverse ritual practices. In addition to the performances designated as “rituals,” a number of other performances have been inspired by the ritual pit. A solo choreography by dancer Grant McLay, for instance, called “One Wish,” was devised as part of his work with the Master’s in Contemporary Dance Performance and featured a solo dance on top of and around the pit. A massed choir sang and over 40 dancers performed a new choreography by faculty member, Mats Melin around the ritual pit, on the occasion of the first visit by President Michael D. Higgins to the Academy (Figure 3.5). The architecture, artifacts, and performed life of the Academy all contribute to a ritualizing of its founding values, including openness to cultural diversity and its devotion to creativity, flow, and embodied, performed wisdom. The idea that knowledge can be generated through performance and that practice can be epistemic is at the core of the Academy’s search for imbas.

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Figure 3.5  Choir and dancers at the ritual pit, December 14, 2011. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

The inclusion of performance—​even in performing arts education—​is a relatively new phenomenon in the Western university. The Irish World Academy was born out of a desire to redress the separation of theoretical and practical approaches to music education, as well as in reaction to the hierarchy of value placed on different performance cultures in Western music education. Ireland inherited this culture through the influence of English models of music education, including the syllabus reforms of Sir Gore-​Ousely at Oxford in 1862.39 This resulted in most music degrees in Ireland being heavily biased toward historical musicology in the Western art music tradition, while performance tuition was largely the remit of schools of music. Irish musician and musicologist Gerald Gillen highlighted this inheritance at the Music Education National Debate in 1995, where he decried the traditionally low status given to performance in university programs: “We have been known to shrug off incompetence in this area on the subconscious notion that the performing element bore a kind of stigma of vulgarity, which debarred it from more than the most lowly place in academic courses.”40 If music education in Irish universities was characterized by a bias against performance, it was equally characterized by a bias in favor of the canon of Western art music. The fact that most non-​Western music

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traditions do not separate theory from practice makes it virtually impossible to teach one without the other. This is certainly the case for the indigenous music of Ireland, whose transmission occurs primarily through performance practice. The “practice turn” at the heart of the Academy’s success is part of a wider, global recognition of the ways in which the body can generate, practice, and perform knowledge. This growing awareness can be found in philosophical, linguistic, neurological, cultural, and musicological discourse. A short theoretical interlude will offer a brief overview of the key insights informing this turn toward practice.41

Performance as a Key Element of Sung Belonging The somatic turn, or rehabilitation of the body as a site of epistemic practice, discussed in Chapter 2, led to an increased preoccupation with the agency of the body and its practices. The body was now viewed as a juncture between the mind and activity, as well as between the agency of the individual and society. The relationship between practice and performance became an important site of discourse for performing artists, with the processual dimensions of performance receiving renewed attention, rebalancing the earlier emphasis on performance outputs or products. Practice theory in particular began to champion the distinctive character of intelligent human practice, locating it strongly in creativity, intuition, and invention, a perspective of obvious interest to performing artists, including singers. This turn toward practice has historical roots in the works of philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Dreyfus, and Taylor; social theorists such as Bourdieu, Giddens, and Ortner; and cultural theorists, including Foucault and Lyotard. Schatzki notes that “thinkers once spoke of ‘structures,’ ‘systems,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘life world,’ ‘events,’ and ‘actions’ when naming the primary generic social thing. Today, many theorists would afford ‘practices’ a comparable honor.”42 Practice was seen to blur the distinction between subject and object, to highlight the malleability of structures in the face of actions, and to throw into relief non-​propositional and tacit forms of knowledge, which had hitherto been overlooked or dismissed in the face of a more cognitive approach to intelligence. For performing artists, this turn toward practice validated their intuitive sense of the epistemic nature of their craft and led to a growing recognition of the “intelligence” of artistic practice, not as

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explained or articulated by historians or sociologists or cultural theorists, but as performed by singers, dancers, actors, and musicians.43 In the 1970s and 1980s, practice theory emerged as a core theoretical framework within a landscape hitherto dominated by three major paradigms. Interpretive or symbolic anthropology associated with the work of Clifford Geertz generated widespread, interdisciplinary interest in constructs of “culture.”44 Marxist theories of political economy,45 as well as the French school of structuralism initiated by Lèvi-​Strauss and later embracing post-​structuralism,46 were engaged in an examination of the underlying economic formations or “structures” that informed social systems. In her examination of these paradigms, Sherry Ortner makes the point that, while these were often contradictory enterprises, all three had one thing in common in that they were essentially theories of constraint.47 Each investigated ways in which human behavior was shaped and constrained by external cultural, economic, and social systems and underlying structures. If great emphasis was placed on the external forces that shape human behavior, it was felt by some that not enough attention was given to human agency and the way in which human processes and behaviors on the ground interacted with the systems within which they manifested. Bourdieu,48 Giddens49 and Sahlins50 tried to articulate the relationship between social practices and the actors who perpetrated them, on the one hand, and the larger structures or schemas within which these actions took place, on the other. Practice theory argued for a dialectical rather than an oppositional relationship between agency and structure. In this way, the “objectivist” approach of, for example, Marxist theory and the “subjectivist” stance of interpretive anthropology were not viewed as oppositional, but rather as part of the relational discourse of social life. These earliest manifestations of practice theory sought to restore the actor to the social process without losing sight of the larger structures within which this action occurred. Notwithstanding the significant minority of “post-​humanist” scholars who argue that practices may also include activities of nonhumans (e.g., machines), the majority of practice theorists focus on human, embodied activity. Practice theorists, as Sherry Ortner observes, set out to conceptualize the articulations between the practices of social actors “on the ground” and the big “structures” and “systems” that both constrain those practices and yet are ultimately susceptible to being transformed by them. They accomplished this by arguing,

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in different ways, for the dialectical rather than oppositional relationship between the structural constraints of society and culture on the one hand and the “practices”—​the new term was important—​of social actors on the other.51 This relational understanding of structure and agency implies that acts carry aspects of their own structures (both their limits and possibilities) within themselves. Philosophers such as Charles Taylor have elaborated on this premise with the proposal that we all operate out of a “background of understanding”:  an embodied, practical knowledge that exists in the form of habits and dispositions.52 Similarly, in a study on religion, anthropologist Talal Asad argues that religious dispositions are not formed primarily through conceptual knowledge about rules and doctrines, but rather through embodied disciplines and rituals that imprint dispositions onto the practitioner: Theological discourse does not necessarily induce religious dispositions … [C]‌onversely, having religious dispositions does not necessarily depend on a clear-​cut conception of the cosmic framework on the part of the religious actor … [I]t is a modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge.53 Much of what is proposed here about practice, embodied agency, and the skilled body is familiar to performing artists. Indeed, in contemporary literature on arts-​based research, one is much more likely to see the work of a musician or dancer described as their “practice” rather than as a “performance.” For many, “performance” emphasizes the end product over the process. Indeed, critics of performance studies, such as Susan Melrose, would argue that performance studies would be more aptly referred to as “spectator studies,” viewing the performance from the spectator’s point of view, rather than experiencing it as a somatic, lived experience.54 Nonetheless, performance studies has made a significant impact on an embodied understanding of what we do as performers. Three aspects of this understanding of performance are particularly important here. The first concerns the relational character of performance. Schechner’s pithy definition of performance, as a combination of “being,” “doing,” and “showing doing,”55 emphasizes the existential, ephemeral, and action-​ based character of performance. But it is the third element—​“showing

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doing”—​which points to something that distinguishes performance from other types of practice. This is the dimension of performance that is self-​ aware and that manifests itself deliberately in acts of sharing. Performance is not just something we are or do, but something we wish to show, display, highlight, or have witnessed. As such, it is essentially relational. Schechner’s metaphor (“showing”) is visual, but, as musicians, we can equally speak about the relational dimension of the musical experience that has to do with listening and being heard. Deborah Kapchan reminds us that “to perform” is a transitive verb: it implies both a performer and someone/​something to which we are performing.56 Peggy Phelan emphasizes this aspect of performance, noting that we perform our desires and identities through such relational exchanges.57 This understanding of performance involves both production and reception: listening and making music are both central concerns of performance (and indeed, listening is a performance of sorts). Kapchan observes: Performance relies on an audience; indeed, inherent in the concept of audience or audition is the sound wave, which, travelling invisibly, affects everyone with whom it comes in contact. No performance fails to resonate with its auditors in this fashion… . But waves do not travel in one direction. Rather, they spiral in a dialogic dance of interactive forces.58 One of the results of this understanding of performance is that creative authority does not reside solely or exclusively with the performing artist (or composer/​choreographer), but rather, is shared by the entire community of participants. There are parallels here with Barthes’s idea of the “readerly” text, which acknowledges that interpretive authority is not the exclusive privilege of the author, but is shared with the reader.59 According to this understanding, the audience does not consist of spectators, as Melrose might suggest, but of co-​creators in the act of performance. A second reason that motivates me to think about what I  do as a singer as “performance” involves the concept of performativity, which has had a strong influence on the development of performance studies. Performativity has its roots in the work of J. L. Austin and his suggestion that speech is a form of action. This way of understanding language proposes that we “perform” or create meaning when we speak. This insight has been applied beyond the linguistic situation to, for example, the performance of gender. Judith Butler has proposed, for instance, that there

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is no such thing as gender identity outside of its enactment or performance:  “Identity is performatively constituted,” she writes, “by the very ‘expressions’ which are said to be its results.”60 This understanding of performance, it seems to me, is key to our understanding of singing and music-​making as the “performance” of identity or meaning. A final aspect of performance studies that resonates with this project stems from the “broad spectrum approach” to performance, developed by scholars including Kirshenblatt-​Gimblett,61 Peggy Phelan,62 and Richard Schechner.63 Some approaches to performance argue that the concept should be reserved for behaviors exhibiting high levels of skill or mastery and specialized knowledge.64 But the broad spectrum approach, while conceding that there are certain practices within particular cultural contexts that are readily identified as “performances” in this specialized sense (certain acts of singing, dancing, or playing music, for instance), there is also a world of meaning to be mined by looking at all human behavior through the lens of performance. Drawing on Goffman’s work concerning the “performance” of everyday life and the rituals embedded in social interactions65, this approach to performance expands it in two ways; first, through the inclusion of performance practices not usually accepted within a high art view of performance (such as Shusterman’s exploration of rap and country music), and second, through the invitation to frame human behavior outside of the “performing arts” as performance. Such an approach allows us to consider the performative elements of a convocation, for example, or a meeting of the Academic Council. I will draw on this meaning of performance later in the chapter in discussing the ritualizing performances of the Irish World Academy. If practice theory and performance studies have argued for the epistemic value of the body, the so-​called new musicologies have emerged out of their own crisis of “disembodied” understandings of music. The division of mind-​based and body-​based learning in Western music can be traced back to the emergence of the medieval university. This division is beautifully illustrated and illuminated in many medieval manuscripts, but one example might suffice here. I first came across Hortus Deliciarum, (the “garden of delights”) when the early music group I sing with was studying some pieces from a manuscript of this name. This manuscript was compiled under the direction of a woman called Herrad of Hohenbourg, the abbess of the convent of Mont St. Odile at Hohenbourg near Alsace, a rich and powerful convent and a school for the daughters of the local nobility. The manuscript is a twelfth-​century encyclopedic compilation, most likely

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created as a teaching manual for the young novices of the convent. It is one of the most opulently illuminated manuscripts of this period, consisting of texts, poems, music, and illustrations concerning the history of salvation from the creation of the world to its apocryphal ending. The musical items in Hortus Deliciarum are among the oldest sources of polyphony emerging from a female community.66 One of the more sumptuous illustrations in the manuscript is of a beautiful, crowned woman entitled “Philosophia.” Seven streams are depicted as flowing from her breasts, four from her right and three from her left. These flow down toward two seated men, Socrates and Plato, who are bent toward their books, with writing implements in hand. This image, a variation of a common medieval theme, is of the seven streams of wisdom, representing the trivium and quadrivium, or the seven disciplines of a medieval education. The trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the disciplines of the tongue or of language. These were followed in a medieval education by the numeric disciplines of the quadrivium; arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. In the medieval university, these seven disciplines were collectively viewed as the liberal arts, a necessary foundation for the study of philosophy.67 The influence of the linguistic and numeric approaches to learning (or the “love of knowledge”/​philosophia) represented by the trivium and quadrivium cannot be underestimated in the history of Western education. The emphasis on cognitive systems, independent of more somatic processes, is exemplified in the divorce between practical and conceptual music education, for example, with the musica of the quadrivium taught at universities excluding actual music making. For many of us educated in the Western hemisphere (as well as many of those educated in countries with a colonial history linked to Europe or North America), the word “musicology” will be understood as the scholarly study of a particular subset of Western musical practices called, variously, “classical” or “art” music. Our music education evolved around the “great works,” created for the most part by European, male composers. It also included “music theory” that was concerned primarily with the evolving styles of harmonic language prevalent within this canon of works. This approach to musicology was more concerned with appreciating the compositional structures and the musical systems underpinning them than with acts of musical creation and performance themselves. Performances and performers were logically involved, but not as critical contributors to music’s genesis or meaning. Cook notes that this approach to music

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eliminates “the musician as an individual, and replace[s]‌him or her by a theory whose input is some kind of musical text and whose ultimate output is an aesthetic judgment.”68 This understanding of musicology has been challenged vigorously in our time. With a growing awareness of the diversity of musics in the world, as well as a recognition that the enforced dominance of Western culture globally is not defensible, Cook and Everist claim that musicology faces a crisis of identity and purpose: “The history of musicology and music theory in our generation is one of loss of confidence: we no longer know what we know.”69 One response to this crisis of identity has been the emergence of “new musicologies.” These approaches often reject musical positivism, the “objective” treatment of music as artifact or entity that is presumed to exist independently of our engagement with it, and argue instead for understandings of music as a “mutual interplay between musical experiences and its contexts.”70 Others, Susan McClary71 notable among them, have explored things like the construction of gender through music, and have urged recognition of the ways in which musical practices shape and transmit social knowledge. Music philosopher David Elliott aligns his praxial understanding of music with this same impulse: “without some form of intentional human activity, there can be neither musical sound nor works of musical sound. In short, what music is, at root, is a human activity.”72 Kramer summarizes these diverse concerns succinctly:  “The new direction in musicology as I understand and support it is simply a demand for human interest.”73 If the new musicologies are an effort “to situate musical structures within their larger cultural context,”74 one might be forgiven for thinking that “new” musicology sounds an awful lot like “old” ethnomusicology. The understanding of music as culturally contextualized performance has long been central to the definition of ethnomusicology, where musical performance is viewed as a significant site for the negotiation of social knowledge. The centrality of performance is also evident in the growing interest in performance ethnography. Performance ethnographer Joni Jones asks, “Can performance stand alongside print and film as ethnographic documentation? What does performance reveal that print may obscure and vice versa?”75 There is a weave of recurring motifs through all of these disciplines. The agency of the body is one. The epistemic potential of practice and performance is another. The need to re-​evaluate our approach to bodily practices such as music in light of these understandings is crucial.

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All of these insights are also central to our understanding of ritual. As Grimes reminds us, ritual is by its nature embodied and performed. It is “one of the oldest forms of human activity we know. It may have been the original multi-​media performance—​an archaic, unifying activity. It not only integrated storytelling, dance and performance, but it also provided the matrix out of which other cultural activities such as art, medicine, and education gradually emerged.”76 This rehabilitation of the performing body and its ability to generate epistemic practices remind us that although we tend to perceive ethos as belief or ideology, it is more often something that is performed, negotiated, and embodied by individuals or groups of people. In the case of the Irish World Academy, the musical practices of its founder-​director provide a provocative case study of how a musician can “perform” musical values through, for example, the creation of an educational institution and draw on ritual, symbol, and performance to affirm, contest, and (re)create these values.

Performing the Academy I have written elsewhere about how the Academy emerged, not so much out of an articulated, conceptual philosophy, but more as a result of the practice-​based experiences of its founder-​director Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin.77 Ó Súilleabháin was appointed a lecturer in music at University College Cork in 1975 where he worked for the next 18 years before accepting the position of the first Chair of Music at the University of Limerick. Since 1976, he has recorded over 12 albums, which include major compositions for traditional flute and string orchestra, piano and chamber orchestra, sean-​nós dancer, jazz band, and African-​Irish ensemble. As a performer, he is credited with the creation of an internationally recognized “Irish piano style.” His technical virtuosity and deep sensitivity to the Irish tradition have allowed him to unlock the piano’s potential to bridge the sonic worlds of traditional, classical, and global music repertoires; a review from The Herald is often used in publicity material to summarize his approach and influence: Ó Súilleabháin is one of those rarities, a musician who grasps absolutely both the classical and traditional idioms, and his take seems to be that, not only can they co-​exist, they should burst forth together in something that goes beyond mere fusion.78

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Ó Súilleabháin’s professional career has consistently moved between academic reflection, performance, and composition. The divide between reflection and practice, mind and body, or thought and action is not one that resonates with his experience. He writes of “eleven brains” he uses for thinking and performing:  “Music is not made through the mind, even if the mind is the cockpit of the endeavour. I often feel, as I watch my fingers move across the piano keyboard that I have ten brains, five on each hand and an eleventh in my head, which informs and processes the others.”79 While Ó Súilleabháin advocates the inclusion of the poetic, the creative, and the performed, he does so in a context that recognizes the vital contribution of reflection and mindfulness to the fullest possible facilitation of musical experience, learning, and creativity. As a scholar and musician, he “performs” his belief in the mutual enrichment of performance and reflection through his lifelong professional movement between these two worlds and through creative and pedagogical endeavors that seek to bring these ways of knowing into closer contact. If, as founder-​director, Ó Súilleabháin symbolizes an embodiment/​ incarnation of the dialogue between the mind and the body at the heart of the Academy, his own teachers also represent an “ancestor” energy, often invoked in the “performance” of the second key aspect of the Academy’s ethos: the integration of Irish indigenous music and other global music traditions into the university. No other higher education institution in Ireland has achieved the same level of openness and integration between diverse artistic, performance practices and intellectual processes as the Academy. When questioned about the origins of this vision, Ó Súilleabháin often quotes the influence of key mentors on his musical development, including Seán Ó Riada and Aloys Fleischmann in Cork, as well as John Blacking and John Baily in Belfast.80 Ó Súilleabháin was educated in University College Cork, where he encountered two very different but overlapping creative energies. Seán Ó Riada (1931–​1971) is perhaps best remembered for his passionate championing of Irish indigenous music and for his struggle, throughout his compositional career, to find meaningful ways to integrate it into his compositions and performances. Aloys Fleischmann (1910–​1992), born in Munich to Irish-​based parents of German origin, was a composer and professor of Music at University College Cork from 1934 to 1980. Ó Súilleabháin conducted his doctoral research with anthropologist and musician John Blacking (1928–​1990), as well as studying with John Baily;

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both were pioneers in the introduction of ethnomusicology into Irish higher education at Queen’s University, Belfast. These figures each represent a dialogue with “the other” out of a primary base in Western art music, Irish traditional music, or another world music tradition (in Blacking’s case, the music and culture of the Venda people of South Africa; in Baily’s, the music of Afghanistan). The influence of each (as well as his own early experience with the emergent world of rock music) contributed to Ó Súilleabháin’s belief in the enrichment of musical traditions through exposure to each other, a belief that not only permeates his musical style, but also became the guiding value of the Irish World Academy. Following Butler’s use of performativity, one could suggest that the Academy, its philosophy, its ethos, and its educational identity were performed into being. When Ó Súilleabháin accepted the Chair of Music at the University of Limerick, he set about creating a center of learning that sought to redress the biases existing in performing arts education and to develop an approach to music pedagogy that would bring performance back into the heart of the educational process. At a curricular level, this has resonated in many ways with his own musical journey. First, the inclusion of performance threw into relief the artificial separation of music performance from other forms of performance. In the case of Irish traditional music, for example, much of the repertoire is dance music. Similarly, several African music traditions exist hand in glove with dance. For this reason, the Irish World “Music” Centre was quickly transformed into the Irish World Academy, inclusive of dance, as well as other related performance practices. A program in “Festive Arts” has expanded the remit of the Academy beyond music and dance to also incorporate street theater, storytelling, puppetry, mime, and a variety of other performance practices. Second, by introducing programs in Irish music and dance, as well as ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, the Academy staked a claim for the inclusion of Irish indigenous traditions and world cultural practices in its offerings. It also offers programs in Western Art Music, but these exist on an equal footing with all other programs. This openness to the complexities of performed knowledge is not without its challenges All of us engaged in the transmission of musical culture today face a central problem: too many competing voices and not enough time or space to accommodate them all. The recent explosion of postmodernist critical theory from musicology, ethnomusicology, gay

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and lesbian studies, feminist, literary and cultural criticism … has exposed the hegemony of the dead, white, European, heterosexual, male musical canon.81 The ethos of the Academy is not canonical, but performative. Its values are created, re-​created, and contested through performed engagement and expression. Its ethos of belonging through diversity, inclusivity, and “finding your own voice” are constantly ritualized and mythologized—​driven deeply, as Grimes describes, “into the bone” by repeated performances and the constant recreation of the foundation mythology. Of course, the indications of the dynamism of this ritual culture may be sought, not primarily in its founders, but in those to whom it is transmitted. In an educational setting, these are our students. If the origins of the Academy have been “performed” by its founder, its continued ethos is performed by its students. While this is done on an almost weekly basis with the many performances that occur at the Academy, one particularly interesting example of the ritualized performance of the Academy’s ethos is the student flash mob at Shannon Airport in 2014. Since the social experiments of Bill Wasik in 2003, which brought random people together in a public space for a brief period of time in order to perform a shared activity and then disperse, flash mobs have become significant public performance events across the globe.82 Scholars such as Jekaterina Lavrinec suggest that flash mobs are a new form of urban ritual. By disturbing everyday rhythms and habitual usage of space, flash mobs can create a reflexive distance from the usual “choreography” of a space and suggest alternative scenarios of behavior.83 They can be used to stamp a new suggestion of activity, agency, and usage on spaces and events. On April 1, 2014 (the date itself, Fool’s Day, is a hint to the “game” about to be played), a flash mob was staged at Shannon Airport by the students of the Irish World Academy. The public, commercial consensus (and the invitation) concerned the desire to highlight new summer flight routes opening up at the airport. The flash mob became an instant media success, with over 160,000 YouTube hits in its first week.84 The flash mob commences as an everyday scene at a busy airport, with passengers and workers going about their business. Suddenly, a young man bursts out of the waiting queue wearing a Munster rugby jersey. He begins to dance and is soon joined by cleaners, check-​in attendants, a group going to a bachelorette party, flight attendants, and a variety of other passengers, workers, and onlookers.

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The dancers are, of course, students from the Academy. They represent every walk of life in their dress (including an homage to the madness for rugby in Limerick), and every activity from the functional (sweeping the floor) to the celebratory (the bachelorette festivities). The dance they begin is clearly “Irish” (as is the music), but it soon morphs into an outpouring of movements from step dance to set dance to hip-​hop. The dancers are from Ireland, America, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Mexico. The Irish dancers dance hip-​hop and the hip-​hop dancers swing their partners in a set move. The four-​minute flash is a wild, exuberant coalescing of people, cultures, and performances that embraces dancers, onlookers (clapping and recording on smartphones), workers, and virtual audiences. There is no mistaking the inclusive, performed, embodied fun of this “ritual” intervention. And this is the final “value” performed regularly at the Irish World Academy—​the value of celebration. Irish World Academy students are known for their “disruptive” energy at, for example, University of Limerick conferrings. The conferring is a formal and dignified ritual during which each student walks up to the stage and is handed his or her diploma by the university president in the presence of the robed faculty. Almost every year, when Irish World Academy students come up, there is spontaneous whooping and hollering from the students. One year, one of the students handed the president a rattle, which she pulled out from under her conferring robe. There is an infectious joy about these students, which always succeeds in breaking down the formality of the ritual. The Academy has been described as a space of celebration and inclusivity. As such, it is both aesthetic in its utilization of the expressive power of song, music, and dance, but it is also ethical in its insistence on the value of celebrating all forms of artistic expression equally.

Conclusion At the beginning of this chapter, the early Irish concept of imbas was introduced as an example of how the Academy draws on Irish mythology and symbol to articulate its core values. This mythology is physically present in the Academy’s building, but is also ritualized and performed through its key activities. The core values of the Academy are at once creative and ethical. They champion the right of the individual to form and follow his or her own unique voice, but insist that doing so with a disposition of respect for other ways yields the greatest creative possibility.

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The practice turn in contemporary scholarship is particularly resonant for the Academy, as it often highlights the connection between aesthetic and ethical action. As noted earlier, Shusterman suggests that philosophy is ultimately our way of inquiring into experience so as to suggest “the right way to live.” This is one of the key implications of rehabilitating performance within education: it invites performed experience to inform and interrogate our ethical senses of “right action.” It brings critical questions to bear on what it means to perform “rightly,” both within artistic traditions and educational curricula. It acknowledges the capacity—​indeed, the obligation—​of performance to be critical, creative, generative, inclusive, and representative of ways of being in the world. As with many places that have engaged in the practice turn in contemporary pedagogy, the Academy is asking important questions about the role of performance in education. Music education philosopher David Elliott has developed an approach to teaching and learning called “performative pedagogy,” recognizing that, just as practice is central to how we teach and learn, teaching and learning can themselves be understood as ritualized performances.85 Bowman and Powell also note the political consequences of a rehabilitated sense of practice: Once music is recognized as embodied, music education’s exceptional interest in controlling and shaping the body raises political issues from which music education has long claimed immunity … [R]‌ecognizing music as a potent means of individual and social influence and control has far reaching implications for the range of concerns considered professionally relevant to music education.86 If the Academy is asking important pedagogical questions, it is attempting to answer them through performance. Its ritualization of core values not only affirms and presents these values, but also provides the space to critique and question them. There is an Irish proverb which says, “Ní dhéanfaidh smaoineamh an treabhadh duit.” It means, “You’ll never plow a field turning it over in your mind.” Grimes reminds us that “unlike some forms of creativity, imagining ritually cannot transpire merely ‘in the head’ but is necessarily embodied and social.”87 The educational values of the Academy do not exist primarily in the ideological realm. Rather, they have been consistently mythologized and ritualized through performed processes of “inheriting, discovering, or inventing, value-​laden images that are driven deeply, by repeated practice and performance, into the marrow.”88 These

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values have been embedded into the walls and foundations of the building, as well as into the bodies of the artists, students, and scholars who study and perform here. Through its art, architecture, music, dance, singing, torchlight processions, flash mob, conferring ceremonies, and festivals, it encourages searching and celebrating—​finding a voice and playing fair. In a recent interview for the WATERMARK exhibition, Ó Súilleabháin likened the Academy to a garden on the banks of the river. You’re in the context of growth. That you’re hoping for all the time you are trying to create. I’d love to think that the Irish World Academy was in fact a kind of a garden. In a way, and I remember when we were using the word Academy we were saying is it a centre? An institute? Is it a school? Is it an Academy? What word will we use? … I remember thinking, oh I bet you now that the word Academy must be the Greek word for school. So I went searching for it in the dictionary of etymology and up comes Academos … Explanation:  a friend of Plato, after whom he named his garden. That notion of Plato walking around the garden with the students being kind of the embryo for the university…. So the notion of the school as a garden of possibility and again particularly in that beautiful building beside all that water, is powerful.89 An early cartoon for the Sionna mosaic shows Academos on the riverbanks reaching out and holding hands with Sionna; an anthropomorphological/​ embodied representation of the meeting of Greco-​ Roman philosophy and Celtic mythology in a common quest for embodied learning. The mythology of the Academy is still emerging. Our building is too young to have a ghost, but Ó Súilleabháin sometimes jokes about it having an alien (it is called “nois”—​an abbreviated, backward “Sionna,” which is also an abbreviated form of the Irish word for “now,” anois). Its rituals are part of the constant flow of a building dedicated to performing arts education—​lunchtime concerts, seminars, conferences, meetings, evening events—​as well as those special “rituals” discussed earlier. These rituals and the values they embody spill beyond the building as our students graduate and bring with them, in tacit, cognitive, expressive, and performative ways, the “art of living” they have absorbed during their time on Sionna’s banks.

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Singing Belonging in the Ritual Lab

Introduction As discussed in Chapter 3, ritualizing is not only a powerful tool for performing the core values of an institution; it is also a very effective pedagogical method. This is particularly true for students of performance, many of whom have engaged with practice-​based learning throughout their lives. This chapter explores the use of a ritual laboratory for teaching students of singing, based on the model developed by Ronald Grimes.1 Using ethnographic material from over a decade of teaching the lab, it explores a pedagogical use of ritual for another group of “new Irish”:  the non-​ permanent migrants who come to the Academy from around the world to study as part of our Ritual Chant and Song program.

Entering the Ritual Lab My introduction to ritual studies was something I stumbled upon, rather than something I was seeking. While writing my doctoral dissertation on liturgical music in Ireland since the Second Vatican Council, I was trying to develop a theological framework capable of facilitating the vast spectrum of music emerging since the 1960s, much of it unique in the historical context of Roman Catholic liturgical music. I  had somewhat naïvely assumed that a theological framework was the only possible one for this enterprise, even though a corner of my mind was already uneasy with how little understanding of the experience of singing I could find in much of the theological material I was reading. A year into my research, I presented some work at a conference hosted by St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, a Pontifical university on the same campus as the National University of

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Ireland, Maynooth. At the end of the presentation, Thomas Whelan, then Dean of Kimmage Mission Institute (an institute founded in 1991, when a number of religious and missionary groups came together to offer theological courses with a strong intercultural perspective)2 approached me and suggested that I consider ritual studies as a possible framework for my research and recommended a book called Beginnings in Ritual Studies by Ronald Grimes. Not only did this encounter change the entire direction of my research, it also introduced me to the concept of the ritual lab. It was a key formative moment in my own development, resonating as it did with so many of my concerns regarding the experience of ritual singing and the challenges of articulating that experience. It is worth revisiting some of the insights that motivated Grimes’s development of this approach to teaching ritual. He noted, for example, that “one of the most sadly neglected roots of scholarly method is bodily attitude. Hermeneutics speaks of the interpreter’s viewpoint, but does so only metaphorically.”3 Grimes’s encounter with actor training (similar, in key somatic aspects, to the training of singers and dancers) led to an approach to ritual training that emphasized “learning to follow and respond to sounds, objects, gestures and spaces.”4 Interestingly, Grimes describes this skill-​based approach as similar to teaching music or painting. At this point, I  had started to teach methodological modules in our Master’s program in Chant and Ritual Song, a program with a strong anchor in Western plainchant performance but an openness to other ritual song traditions. With the tradition of ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology at the Academy, our methodological approach was primarily ethnographic. The model of ritual lab presented me with the opportunity to introduce another way of studying ritual song, which involved not only experiencing the singing of others, but also the inclusion of observations concerning one’s own ritual-​making and song-​making. It provided me with a medium through which to explore the key experiential aspects of ritual singing (its use of embodied and environmental space; its temporal transience; its relationship to breath; the phenomenology of singing with others, to others, and alone), which I had found to be so elusive in theological and musicological literature. In an essay written with Susan Scott more than 20 years after Beginnings in Ritual Studies, Grimes revisits his experience of the ritual lab, spanning a teaching life of 30 years.5 As his initial description of the lab provided a template for my teaching for over a decade, so too did his reflections

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provide a framework within which to reflect on my own (and my students’) observations of the Ritual Chant and Song Lab. While this chapter does not specifically reflect my work with new migrant communities in Ireland, it resonates with it in a number of significant ways. First, it is not coincidental that my introduction to ritual studies and the ritual lab came through a leading faculty member of one of the most important institutes in Ireland dealing with the relationship between theology, culture, and the missionary movement. Ireland’s missionary history is one of the frequent explanations offered by asylum seekers (especially those from Africa) for their decision to come to Ireland. Several of my musical colleagues from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria noted that they first heard about Ireland from Irish missionary teachers and religious figures. At the height of the Irish missionary movement in the 1970s, there were over 7,000 Irish priests, brothers, sisters, and laity working in over 80 countries in Africa, Asia, and South and Central America.6 In the Irish context, these missionary orders were among the first to introduce a more anthropological understanding of culture to theological discourse, grounding their scholarship in an experiential and cross-​cultural framework. Ritual studies in Ireland, therefore, emerged primarily within the context of Ireland’s relationship with new cultural communities. Also, the student population I have worked with over the last decade and a half is itself part of those communities of migrants we call “impermanent migrants,” coming to live in Ireland for a period of time and then returning to their home country or moving on to another county. Since the commencement of the Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song program in 1998, almost half of our students have come from outside Ireland, from countries including Australia, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Scotland, Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, and Vietnam. The observations of the students I have worked with are all from singers, but singers from a wide variety of traditions, repertoires, and cultures. The responses I  quote here are taken from student reflections spanning the very first year of ritual lab to my most recent class group. In 2014, the Irish World Academy celebrated its twentieth anniversary and, as part of our celebrations, we held a convocation of all past students, faculty, visiting lecturers and performers, external examiners, and the interested public. Program directors were asked to contact all their past students and to create a database for the event. This provided me with

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an excellent opportunity to reconnect with students and to ask them if they wouldn’t mind helping me with some reflections I was writing on the ritual lab experience. I sent a series of questions to all the students, and these responses and reflections come from their virtual responses. The students who replied come from Australia, France, Ireland, Nigeria, Japan, Taiwan, the United States, and Vietnam. There was an almost equal response rate from men and women, with diverse professional careers including professional singers, academics, members of the clergy, artists, workers with not-​for-​profit organizations, and business people. Their insights into our shared ritual lab experience have guided much of my thinking on the dialogue and synergies between singing and ritualizing. I  will include selected excerpts from this feedback in italics in the following text. One of Grimes’s initial reflections concerns the use of the word “lab.” For Grimes, the lab was essentially a bare room. He would have liked to call it an incubation chamber, “a place where one sleeps in search of a revelation or vision,” but universities, he suggests, don’t like bare rooms; “to create any kind of experimental space at a university, you have to call it either a lab or a studio.”7 It came down to “a coin toss” between calling it a lab or a studio, with Grimes reflecting that his choice of lab was perhaps echoing Grotowski’s Polish Theatre Lab and its exploratory work at the interface between theater and ritual. In student responses to the question of course title, it is interesting to note that most of those who favored the use of the term “lab” also used the word “experimental.” The lab was a space where experiments could happen: “Lab” sounds like we can try and see what will happen inside. Those who liked the word “lab” also emphasized its usefulness for observation, exploration, and critical engagement. One felt that the word “lab” also conjured up a sense of chemistry and alchemy. Those who leaned away from the term viewed it as associated too much with science and were critical of it for leaning too strongly into the experimental—​the same reason others viewed it as a positive term. For those emphasizing creativity, the preferred term was “studio.” It is interesting that artists associate the studio with creative work, even though much of this is also of an experimental nature. Two of the respondents felt that “ritual experience” might be more appropriate and both suggested that blending ritual experimentation

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with exposure to existing rituals would be useful. Whatever the terminology, the intimacy of the shared experience came across in a number of the responses: Our lab experiences were so personal, intimate and emotional, that “lab” feels cold. It was such a safe, nurturing environment where belief systems (which could be highly emotional /​volatile) were recognized and appreciated, but also challenged. When the Irish World Academy building was designed, one of the initial decisions was to design a building of bare rooms with sprung floors and acoustic walls but nothing else. The rationale for this was that there were several spaces across the university campus where students could read or write but none designed where they could dance or sing. While a certain number of chairs and tables (and bean-​bags and sound systems) have crept into the rooms, the majority are still empty spaces. However, in the early years of teaching ritual lab, we were still in transitional spaces, waiting for the new building to be completed, and the lab was scheduled in all kinds of rooms, from large converted museum spaces to conventional classrooms and tiny former offices. Even in the new building, we do not have a permanent “home,” so ritual lab is realized in many different spaces. Perhaps because of this history, as well as our focus on sonority, our lab has been both more and less concerned with the surrounding space. We are less focused on it because it is arbitrary and nomadic, but also very interested in the acoustic potential of the spaces we use. Whether we are indoors or outdoors, I notice that students pay attention to the acoustic environment they select. For most students, the flexible approach to space meant that space itself became something to explore: I think that a virtual space is more useful in ritual lab since it allows for a fuller incorporation of the actual types of spaces used in ritual activities: different types of rooms, indoor and outdoor settings etc. Using one concrete space could restrict the factors that are being studied. This flexibility was also associated with levels of creativity: If students are tied to a particular space, I believe the creativity of the experience would suffer.

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Several students noted that restricting the space would also restrict the kinds of rituals that could be studied: At least with our group, most of them could not have taken place the way they did without the ability to either shift the room or leave it entirely. One student noted that the “virtual space” becomes concrete once the ritual begins (Figure 4.1): I think even with the idea of a virtual space, the moment we move from theory to practice, then the virtual space becomes concrete. Since ritual lab belongs to the domain of practice (if there must be a correspondence between it and the root meaning of the word “lab” from Latin “laboratorium” meaning to labour) and virtual space within the regime of a ritual lab, is a potential concrete space. Two respondents felt that a “fixed” space was important but not necessarily as a prerequisite of the ritual space. For one respondent, the fixed space was simply a “home” where the group would meet but not necessarily carry out their rituals: I think that any group meeting for a particular purpose finds it easier to gel if they return to the same space. (Though now that I think of it, possibly even more so for ritual lab because safety /​trust /​a sense of solid ground are all very important.) Having a room of one’s own helps to create that even if the rituals themselves are mobile. One respondent made the point that while a preexisting “fixed” space is not necessary, ritual itself “fixes” space once it is performed: Once the ritual begins in real time, the space is no longer virtual—​it becomes concrete. For virtually all the respondents, the acoustics of the space was an important consideration, but for a surprising variety of reasons. For some, acoustics were important in order to enhance the beauty and clarity of the sung sound: As a musician, I am always very conscious of acoustics and sound and would hope that the music /​experience is enhanced by acoustics. The

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Figure 4.1  Creating the ritual space, student journal. Photograph, Lucy Ridsdale.

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ritual can be influenced by the presence of a sensitive acoustic which can help it to emphasize the text etc.; space and sound are interlinked since the higher the acoustic quality of the space, the better the sound. Rough spaces tend to dissipate sound waves and lead to poor sound quality. For those who felt that a fixed ritual space was desirable, finding one with good acoustics was viewed as a priority: If making a certain place to be the concrete lab, good acoustic equipment is basic. Similarly, it was noted that rituals which depend on a great deal of singing benefit from good acoustics: Certain rituals use a lot of sound, singing in particular, and a place with suitable acoustics surely helps a lot. It is not only for our ritual labs but also for the real rituals performed by the various ritual communities when there is an element of sound; they often have to choose a space with suitable acoustics. A concrete example of how acoustic experience can be “created” was the use of sound to simulate a feeling of privacy. In one particular ritual, participants were asked to share paired experiences in different parts of a room and music was used to “mask” these exchanges: I was aware of creating a space where people were comfortable talking in pairs without fear or awkwardness of being overheard, hence I had to ensure that the sound being produced during the ritual filled the space at a volume which was loud enough to mask conversation between one pair and the next, but soft enough not to be too intrusive. While good acoustics were viewed by many as desirable, others felt that studying the effects of differing acoustics (even “bad” ones) was of value to ritual lab: I think that acoustics are important but also that study of a variety of spaces, with varying qualities, is important. Ritual labs should not be conducted only in “good” spaces for singing.

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One of the more surprising results for me concerned the large number of respondents who noted that the experience of singing and ritualizing together was more important than the search for a “perfect” acoustic. As almost all of our students are singers, this emphasis on the experiential over the performative struck me as particularly interesting (Figure 4.2). It appears that the ritual lab provided a space where the technical aspects of singing (perfection of production, acoustic, delivery, etc.) were trumped by the value placed on the efficacy of the experience. One respondent noted that [w]‌hat matters is how we connect to each other using sounds in the lab.

Figure 4.2  Score from vocal improvisation ritual. Photograph, Lucy Ridsdale.

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Another student who conducted her ritual outdoors (Figure 4.3) felt that the presence of nature was more important than the acoustic to her ritual: Although we were outside (where acoustics were not good) the sound of the river flowing behind us, the birds, bees and wind in the air and people walking by aided in the meaning of my lab. I was asking people to listen for the Divine in nature … the outdoor cathedral provided the perfect atmosphere for this to happen. Again, if we had been in a lovely indoor acoustic, my lab experience wouldn’t have made sense. Commenting on the dead acoustic of the room in which her lab took place, another respondent noted that the nature of the space did not have a negative impact on the sonic dimension of our rituals because in the ritual contexts created it was not a “perfect performance” of the song (etc.) that was required.

Figure 4.3  Image from ritual lab on listening to the divine in nature. Photograph, Lucy Ridsdale.

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This point is of particular interest when considering the various ways in which song plays a role in ritual. While the aesthetic standard of a performance is always important, it would seem to suggest that other values are also at play. My voice teacher told me a story about an interview she heard with an 80-​year-​old Gospel singer who was still able to produce an incredible vocal range at her advanced age. Asked by the interviewer what her secret was, the singer replied, “Honey, God never minded a bum note.” Ironically, by giving herself permission to “fail,” she was better able to produce at a higher level than many singers who were fearful of not reaching an aesthetic standard. Several of the respondents to the survey seemed to see the lab as creating this kind of possibility. As with Grimes’s classes, our ritual lab was “wonderfully and necessarily small,”8 with the largest group including 10 students and ranging down to three. Our Master’s program is a one-​year, full-​time program, and ritual lab took place in the spring semester. This meant that I  had an entire semester to get to know my students before we embarked on the lab. From the beginning, ritual lab was the module I  most enjoyed teaching, but it was also the one that brought the most trepidation. A colleague once told me that a singing teacher should always have a box of tissues handy: singing lessons often left students in tears, not because they were doing badly but because the emotional and psychological release of intensive breathing and singing often created the need to cry or laugh or simply sleep! The intensity of singing was something I understood and worked with regularly with choral groups and vocal ensembles. One time, at a final rehearsal for a performance of Arvo Pärt’s O Antiphons that I was conducting, I broke down myself, unable to maintain a “professional” distance between the beauty of the sound surging around me and the job I had to perform. I wondered how I would manage in facilitating a sonic, ritual lab, which was designed to explore these very experiences. During my first year of teaching, I talked a lot about these worries with a colleague in music therapy and invited her to share a session with me. I learned a number of very important things from her. The first was not to try to be a “super” ritual facilitator and to acknowledge my own limits. Safety is a constant preoccupation for me, and I have often found myself in the role of pulling back proposals from what seemed to me to be dangerous cliff-​ edges. A  more fearless facilitator might have gone with ideas I  instinctively shied away from, but I learned to disclose and share these fears with my students, rather than trying to rise above them. A second important thing I learned from my colleague in music therapy was the importance of

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closure at the end of a lab. I felt keenly the transitional and impermanent nature of our small community and worried often about opening up experiences that did not have the subsequent support of an ongoing ritual community. Bringing the experience “back to earth” at the end of the session was always important for me. One of the student participants, who herself had a strong background in arts therapies, suggested that a good way to ground experience is through eating—​and she often brought a supply of cookies for this purpose! The final important thing I learned was not to try to control the experience. This was the most difficult lesson for me, and it took me a long time to trust that a ritual lab, with consensual, negotiated boundaries, was capable of generating experiences beyond any of our control—​experiences from which we could learn more about ourselves and others as ritual singers.

Ritual Leaps of Faith For Grimes, “the work of the lab was to demystify the act of ritual construction and then to re-​mystify it again.”9 For us, our primary work was to engage with the sound of our own singing in a ritual context. In the early years, I tended to facilitate most of the labs myself. As I became more confident, I was better able to share the task of ritual facilitation. I began each module by modeling modes of facilitation, and then we divided the role of facilitation among all the participants, with a different person facilitating each week. The structure was simple and always the same. We had a two-​hour lab that would commence each week with a short reflection and discussion of the lab from the week before. Then the session would be handed over to the facilitator, who would share his or her ideas in whatever way seemed appropriate, using language, gesture, artifacts, and sound. The only requirement was that the ritual experience had to include a sung element. Sometimes this would be a piece of repertoire that had to be taught; sometimes it involved improvised vocalization. It might be solo, ensemble, or a mixture of both. Any form of presentation was acceptable, as long as there was consensus within the group. The proposal stage was often followed by “rehearsal” (if needed) and then a short break (which we usually took in silence) preceded the “ritual.” We usually departed from the ritual without conversation or analysis. We would all journal our experience during the week and begin the next session again with feedback and reflection.

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At the commencement of the module, I would outline the concept and practice of ritual lab and detail how we would make use of this model to explore ritual singing. I would suggest that we begin this process by designing our own “ritualizing contract.” Drawing on learning contract theory,10 which proposes that consensus is best reached and maintained through negotiated agreements, I  would propose a number of guiding principles that needed to be addressed, and we agreed on a statement of practice around each. An important area of negotiation concerned religious beliefs. The anchor repertoire of our program is Western plainchant, and many students come to this repertoire from a strong faith perspective. However, several students also come to this repertoire as secular, professional singers and scholars. Still others come from a faith background outside this repertoire practice. Our university is a secular institute of higher education and does not offer programs from a faith-​based perspective. Nonetheless, it seemed to be important that we didn’t simply take an attitude of “leaving it outside the door” during ritual lab (even if that was possible), but to negotiate how we would deal with it. In most cases, we agreed that the ritual lab space was respectful of different approaches to ritual repertoire, but that it was not appropriate to use the space for proselytizing activities. The wide spectrum of student responses to this issue seem to reflect the various points of departure from which one can enter ritual lab, all of them valid and valued. For some students, ritual lab had very little impact on their personal belief systems: I do not think that the ritual space was relevant or irrelevant to my personal beliefs. I do not think they were affected one way or the other. It was not a focus on religion or anything like that but we were able to share things that related to our personal faith if we so chose. For others, it provided a useful context to explore beliefs and values: Of course the meaning vested in a ritual enhances its importance to us. Think of the improvised mass rock ritual space. So the ritual lab did indeed provide an interesting way to explore beliefs. Some students, with strong beliefs, were challenged to find ways in which the lab could be meaningful: Because of strongly held beliefs in my regular ritual practice, I avoided creating a ritual that was directly related to the Sacred or supernatural.

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However, I still found it important to incorporate some message of truth to explore which could lead to the supernatural, namely an exploration of the transcendentals, reflections of God in His creation, in the natural world. Creating a space where different value systems were respected was a motif in many of the responses: Even if we keep them to ourselves, the perspective[s]‌ from which we look at the rituals or respond to others are still very much influenced by our beliefs. I think it is much better for everyone to share openly from which perspective or background he or she is coming from instead of trying to be neutral, politically correct or safe. Creating a space within which students feel safe to experiment, challenge and create through ritualized singing is the primary goal; At the beginning of the term, I was very concerned about what this meant and how I would be able to create an experience of worth. Looking back on this course, I believe it was one of the most significant and powerful classes I had in UL. In addition to finding ways to respect faith and non-​faith based perspectives in the lab, we also negotiated the nature of participation. My point of departure was usually to suggest that no one should feel compelled to do anything with which they felt uncomfortable but, insofar as possible, it was preferable for everyone to stay with the experience (even as a silent witness) so as to be able to contribute to the discussion afterward. Even negative experiences were of value to the process if they were not disturbing to participants. We also spent time talking about what constituted a “respectful” approach: how inclusive such an approach could be of criticism, and the importance of recognizing vulnerability in the process. In all my years of teaching, we never reached an impasse where we could not agree on a set of guiding principles, even though one of those principles was often the right to change any of them if we felt we needed to! A guiding principle of Grimes’s approach to ritual lab was “never to pilfer existing ritual traditions, even though a particular element might echo a specific tradition.”11 Interestingly, this issue caused some of the greatest debates in our ritual community. Artists take varying attitudes toward “pilfering.” Some view it as their right; many do it without even

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realizing it. I  noticed that students coming from strong anthropological backgrounds (for example, ethnomusicology) had been schooled to believe that all forms of cultural appropriation were suspect, and they reacted accordingly. Those with more performative training often took a different view, speaking of “creative inspiration” where others saw disrespect. A  strong “artistic” motif in many of the responses concerned the view that there are no original ideas and we are all, always simply “reinventing”: I think that there are no completely original ideas; someone somewhere has done a form of nearly everything so we cannot help but to borrow. Whether we are aware of it and can give credit where it is due is another matter. Another student makes a similar point: It appears to me as though a great number of rituals throughout time and place have many similar factors, as though man has a common story to tell … the idea of creating something that is completely ritually original is questionable, when history appears to have done only otherwise. For some, the ritual lab was similar to the artist’s studio, where artistic freedom is the dominant value: A lab is a type of independent space. Materials are separated from their original context and brought to this space by people who want to use them for specific reasons. Many students advocated for “respectful” borrowing: Maybe what we need is a “careful” attitude, that is, in our best capacities, making sure that the created ritual does not offend in any way the original ritual or ritual community. [and similarly]:  I think it is very important that we are respectful to existing rituals. I believe it is ok to borrow from existing rituals so long as we use them in the proper context i.e. music from another area should not be altered but should find a fitting place in a contemporary ritual.

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The challenge in knowing how to be respectful in the case of music was also raised: I think that each lab facilitator should think critically about the elements that he or she wishes to use and, if he feels that he has the authority or permission to appropriate anything, this could be done. This is especially the case with music as people will know repertoire from many traditions. If one over-​analyses the issue, no ritual practice could be carried out at all. Similarly, the varying interpretations of “appropriateness” were mentioned: What I find respectful as an artist might be considered offensive in the eye of another person, maybe even a member of that very community from whom we “borrow” certain ritual materials. One example is our use of the Muslim call for worship, which in some communities can only be performed by males, not females. Some respondents felt that nuances needed to be exercised in, for example, distinguishing between dominant and minority cultural traditions: I think it’s impossible to generalize in this matter, for instance, questions of appropriating ritual elements from minority cultures who have been colonized and in many cases cut from language /​culture /​tradition /​ancestral lands are very different from those taken from dominant cultures. Most of the responses addressed the difficult point of adjudication between freedom and respect: How much flexibility or freedom do we have with existing materials? Do you explore the possibilities with as much freedom as possible, or not touch it because it is a relic? I’m not sure I have an emphatic answer to this question. I do feel that the freedom to explore openly produces more creativity; however, at what cost? The labs created by students over the years took many forms, from chanting circles to the ritual of an orchestral rehearsal, from singing while walking to singing while eating. Thematic rituals included seasonal

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celebrations and end-​ of-​ year gatherings. We had rituals inspired by Shinto, Celtic, Islamic, Quaker, Native American, and Sami practices. While sound led the experiences, ritual artifacts were often used as well (Figure 4.4). Grimes noted that “as students came and went, year after year, they left gifts, often handmade or found objects, which became ritual implements or served as ceremonial décor to be used by the next generation of students. Drawing on such deposits, I would spin ‘ancestral myths’ about the forebears of that year’s class.”12 Because we had no permanent space for our lab, we did not have the same sense of continuity through artifacts, but my office became a kind of unofficial space for the display of left or gifted objects. I have candles, incense sticks and burners, gongs, bells, and hangings from years of lab. The ritual I model each year always makes use of water and rocks. Each year, I use a drop of water from the year before to infuse the new experience with the old. I  have a bowl of stones to which students have spontaneously added over the

Figure 4.4  Ritual objects. Photograph, Lucy Ridsdale.

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years, and they often share with me the story of where they gathered the stone or what its significance is for them: I think having ritual objects was a powerful part of the lab. I think about the size, colour and shape of the rocks with your lab. Did the colour or weight of the rock have an influence on the person who chose it? I chose a green rock because it was the colour of my father’s eyes. Generally, I  would say that for our rituals the artefacts tended not to be the most important, however Helen’s ritual (choosing the stone to signify the burden and laying it in the bowl) and my ritual (which was actually very focused on artefacts with people bringing something precious to them and the collective building of the “prayer” using different objects and taking different objects away at the end) were exceptions to that. Several respondents felt that artifacts did not play an important part in our rituals: For me, I  still emphasize sounds first, because it’s time-​variant and it makes us immerse in an atmosphere. Artefacts are static and they are not so dynamic. Some emphasized artifacts of a sonic nature: The exotic bells served to convey the impression that we were doing something different from our daily lives, allowing us to enter the ritual easily. Most of the respondents who felt that artifacts played an important role noted their importance in facilitating multi-​and inter-​ sensory experiences: The way these artefacts engage with our senses (visually, physically, aurally, etc.) makes greater impact in regards to both our experience and our lasting memory of it; … Sound is never alone, and the experience of ritual is synesthetic. Thus all artefacts, as they engage our senses, are important. None stand out for me as they all formed synergies within the labs. Experiencing sound does not entail a fast from the other senses but evokes them.

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During two transition points in the program when I was on leave or not acting as course director, I  asked two of my PhD students to facilitate the lab for me. Their responses reminded me of the important difference between facilitating/​leading a ritual and participating in it. In many ways, it resonates with the experience of leading or participating in a vocal ensemble. For most of my life, until my son was born, I led choirs as a conductor or leader from the organ. After my son was born, I gave up most of my choirs, as I was unable to commit to evening rehearsals. I found that I missed singing much more than I missed the responsibility of leading. I asked my colleague, a professional early music singer, if she would consider being artistic director of a new female vocal ensemble, which subsequently became “Cantoral.” I found that singing in the group gave me a whole new desire to understand the human voice—​and my own voice—​ better, one I never really appreciated as a conductor. Both of my doctoral students noted a difference in their attitude when asked to lead the class: As a teacher, I did my best to ensure that the ritual lab was safe for all my students. As a member, I tried hard to make the ritual lab a success. In teaching ritual lab, I  felt much more responsible for students’ understanding of the method, of profitable participation, and of comfort regarding all rituals and not just the one that I facilitated. Both noted the importance of their role, not only in facilitating the ritual experience, but in assisting the students in their analysis and critical engagement in the process: A facilitator for the entire class should have a wide understanding of ritual, knowledge of various elements, awareness of ethical issues, knowledge of students’ backgrounds and feelings, skill in explaining methods and helping students in forming reflections, thinking critically and analyzing data. Both affirmed their sense of the educational value of the lab, both as a formal module for teaching ritual, as well as a more generalized teaching approach: I think ritual lab is a good pedagogical tool for teaching how the senses are created. I use ritual lab in an informal way as mentioned above. In teaching Georgian folk repertoire, for instance, I incorporate elements of ritual. My

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favourite examples are incorporating the spinning of wool when teaching spinning and other work songs and singing to students who have colds or bad days during the process of teaching healing songs. Two aspects of Grimes’s reflections resonate particularly with my own experience. One has to do with the importance of creating a space “free from administrators and spectators.”13 The director of the Academy once joked with me that after more than a decade of seeing this “ritual lab” showing up at curricular meetings and examination boards, he still had no idea what it was! Without meaning to be secretive, I certainly felt a level of protectiveness toward the module and the vulnerability of students in the space. Getting to know each other in the autumn semester helped me enormously in introducing the module, as I felt some aspect of our common enterprise had already laid its foundation. I never opened the module up to elective participation, and no one was allowed to audit it. We never created a public “performance” or “ritual” out of the lab. The responses to this question were also a surprise for me. A number of them affirmed my sense of the importance of privacy in the lab: Yes, I think that one of the reasons ritual lab was so significant and successful was because we were a “closed” order. It doesn’t work to be an auditor /​spectator at these kinds of processes—​ everyone has to be equal in putting themselves on the line. People who take part in such rituals do so from a very different place than mere spectators and should enjoy privacy. The space would have been altered for sure if others had been involved. I felt free to act, speak, sing etc. with the closed group that we had. However, the majority were open to the possibility of it being a more public space or open to auditors/​audiences. A safe space was important for me. I don’t believe having spectators present would have affected the safety for me however as long as I knew they were coming. Most of the time I would like a private and safe space, but if for some easily understandable and acceptable activities, open is not bad. Others have opportunities to widen themselves. There have been classes that I have taught and turned into “informal” ritual labs, in order to amplify lectures, for example, in which visitors would have been welcome.

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Sometimes an audience might add to a ritual, not take away from it. In real life, many rituals are meant to be done with an audience. One somewhat funny experience was mentioned when a student reminded me of the time she was facilitating a lab in a studio space in the physical education building and word got out that something strange was going on in the gym and a few people dropped in to see what was going on: I remember that my lab was viewed by an unexpected audience at one point and they were informed that someone was doing something strange within the university! These responses made me wonder if my insistence on the privacy and the intimacy of the ritual lab said much more about my own limits and less about the needs of my students. It prompted me to remember an obvious (though overlooked by me) fact: all of my students are performers of some description, and “public” rituals are very likely more normative in their experiences than “private” ones. If issues of privacy and community building/​bonding are important in ritual lab, so are questions of its temporary nature. Grimes noted that he felt “better able to act responsibly across long periods of time than in brief periods,” feeling skeptical about short, sharp exposures; “it’s easy to create deeply moving experiences that can’t be sustained.”14 The single, negative experience I had of teaching ritual lab occurred when I was invited to introduce the concept to a second-​year undergraduate class. At first, I was delighted to see the approach spread beyond the limits of the Master’s Ritual Chant and Song program. But the minute I walked into the class of almost 30 students, I knew that I had made a mistake. The group was too big. I hardly knew any of them and they did not know me. I had to introduce the idea and the experience in one lecture session and then leave. Even though it went well and many of the students told me afterward that it was a very moving experience, I never repeated it again, feeling that the space and format could not allow for anything but the most superficial understanding and experience. For many, ritual lab expanded their sense of what one might think of as a “ritual” (Figure 4.5): Before we began, I only associated the word ritual within a sacred context. I hadn’t thought about the parts of a ritual or the fact that a ritual

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Figure 4.5  Ritual mapping. Photograph, Lucy Ridsdale.

could be created really around anything; to see the potential for a ritual in everything, or even to realize it, is what I learnt from the labs. One noted that ritual lab made them [m]‌ore conscious of the elements, the space, the people involved and the outcome. Aspects of ritualizing were highlighted: What I learned from the lab is that repetition is necessary to inscribe each action into our bodies until we do it automatically. Some noted the importance of the contextual learning that happened around the lab: We certainly discussed them at length, what they meant to each of us, what we thought, what we knew. I learned from the readings, from the lectures and definitely from the experiences.

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For others, while the analysis was important, the lab did not diminish their sense of mystery or of aspects of ritual they felt to be beyond analysis: Those things which I considered to be mysteries remained so; … a constant theme that arose for me in studying ritual was the difference between man-​made rituals, and Divine. The Mass, for example, could never be demystified, because the very act that takes place is supernatural, a mystery that a mere human intellect could not possibly comprehend. Finally, one student wrote about the challenges of realizing an intention in a ritual performance: One big learning for me was in the process of grappling with how to realize my intention for the ritual … the depth of reflection I had to do to come up with a ritual that I felt went some way to realizing that intention taught me so much about ritual symbols, ritual action, ritual efficacy … and like Grimes says, it can so easily become “heavy handed” … too consciously focused on results. It was a very delicate balance.

Ritual Lab and Singing In their reflective journals for the module, the primary area of exploration for students concerned what ritual lab offered them in terms of their understanding of ritual, sonority, and the relationship between ritual and singing. The various roles played by sonority in ritual contexts were highlighted in several responses: I learned that sound can be manipulated in different ways from background music to front and center singing, to chanting quietly together. Engaging in deep listening springs to mind, when recollecting sound during ritual lab. Listening intently to the dialogue, timbre, calmness in the atmosphere and following the leader cues. Sensitivity to sonic elements in the ritual were highlighted by some participants as important to them as singers: I was amazed at how people decided to incorporate sound … the use of sound was of great importance to my lab experience … this might be more significant due to the fact that I am a singer.

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For others, the sonic dimension was no more important than any other: I was more concerned with overarching questions of participation, efficacy, and belief and experience, though sound and silence were studied within these. While most experienced sung sound as a medium of integration and inclusion, one respondent also pointed out its ability to be the opposite: Sound can be a very powerful tool, both for setting the tone, inviting or including a person, or, in some cases, excluding a person from the ritual. The relationship between singing and ritualizing yielded some of the most complex and richest responses. On the one hand, several respondents noted that all singing (indeed, all performing) is ritualistic: This question is slightly backward as I consider all singing activity, especially when thinking in inclusive performance terms, to be ritualistic. However, for some, a distinction was made between “performing” and “ritualizing”: Interestingly, I  find that a non-​ritual based event (a concert /​singing exam) is focused more heavily on technique. For a secular ritual I would have less focus on technique. For example, during our class rituals, I wasn’t worried about singing with technique because it didn’t seem important. A similar point is taken up by another respondent in describing the difference between “performing” repertoire and “sharing” it in a ritual context: In my experience of walking and singing on the Camino the ritual context made an enormous difference; it subtly, yet completely changed the dynamic between singer and listener. … In my experience there was less distance between singer and listener and the singing itself functioned to further lessen that distance. It was really about being connected and coming together rather than showing one’s prowess. It is interesting to see how singers sometimes differentiate between the values of stage-​based performance and those of what they describe as

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ritually based performances. Even though both can be understood within the frame of ritual, the demands and value systems seem to alter. For many, the overt framing of a performance as a “ritual” appeared to imbue it with deeper meaning: Ritual gives meaning to the music and the experience. The texts can be underlined by the context in which they are heard and read. This includes the music … I remember singing a piece that I wrote after the Omagh bombing which was performed in the ritual space in UL. There was a beautiful marriage of acoustic, voices, context and ritual. In terms of repertoire, the location of that repertoire in a ritual frame (either the one from which it emerged or a new one) was viewed as changing the experience of the repertoire: I know I  struggled with creating a meaningful space for chant in my head during vocal performance exams. Chanting an Alleluia or an offertory in a performance was the wrong context for the experience … singing chant outside of context didn’t connect for me. Many of these comments make me wonder if they do not contain an implicit critique of the kinds of performances (primarily stage-​based with performer/​audience divides) often experienced by contemporary singers. While the comments critique these experiences as the “opposite” of ritual, perhaps there is not, as yet, a fully articulated rejection of the kind of ritual experience these performances afford.

Ritual Criticism, Memory, and Ethical Soundings In addition to these comments on ritual, sonority, and the experience of singing in ritual, three other key issues often emerged in the reflexive journals over the years, and I decided to pursue these further in my questions. These included reflections on ritual criticism, memory, and ethics in the context of ritual lab. In his own reflections on facilitating ritual lab, Grimes notes that “ritual requires time to be ingrained. Even more time to be constructed and critiqued.”15

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Many students noted that while the process of journaling and discussing the rituals facilitated an immediate sense of a particular ritual, it often took time and the experience of several rituals before more overarching insights emerged: Some insights were formed through the experience of several rituals. It was after all six rituals that I was able to identity aspects of ritual common throughout, such as the theme of giving. The facilitator would first give of him/​herself and then allow the opportunity for participants to give back. Fragments of rituals often emerged years later, or an insight into the “symbolic” meaning of an action: I sometimes sing melodies from some of the songs learnt and used in the lab, even several years later. This seems to be a subconscious process that happens transcendentally over a period of time. My sense is that the longer the process of “chewing over” the experience, the more the insights are of a higher, symbolic order. For instance, my first set of notes were mainly a concrete description of what happened, what the different elements and actions and processes were, then as I  engaged again and thought more about it, what came out more were insights into the symbolic order of things and understanding better the deeper dynamics, or dynamics across rituals, such as the function of space in ritual. Interestingly, one student also observed that, over time, he became more aware of the different ways in which people process, experience, and respond to rituals: What I came to realize with time through the process of doing ritual labs is the way different members of the group tended to behave before, during or after a ritual. Sometimes the ritual is different but the response is very similar. Repetition was noted as an important aspect of memory: As the semester unfolded, and with the regularity of the ritual labs, our group progressed in the technique of recall and grew in confidence. The frequency of practicing the rituals was definitely an aid.

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The issue of ritual critique also raised interesting insights. For several contributors, the smallness and intimacy of the group, while valuable in creating a safe space, made it more difficult to be honest or critical: I think we hesitated to make any real criticisms about the quality of the ritual (though we might disagree on their interpretations or meanings). I think I was more honest with my feelings about each lab through my writing and journaling. I believe it is difficult to criticize in a helpful way with peers, especially if they appear highly sensitive. Again, these comments made me reflect on my own style of leading ritual lab and my tendency to encourage consensus and positive experiences over robust debate. Students commented on the importance of the role of the facilitator: I especially became aware of what the ritual leader “holds” and needs to hold, as the one who is creating and guiding the dynamics of the ritual space. There was an interesting division in the responses concerning the importance of preparation. Some felt that we learn most from well-​prepared rituals: I am also a firm believer that good, well prepared and executed music can enhance a ritual and the opposite is also true. … I believe that if we bring people into a ritual space, it is incumbent on us to offer an informed and well prepared ritual. Others felt that badly prepared rituals can also teach us something about ritual … to discuss about or learn from a poorly constructed ritual will be very interesting too, and it will reveal just as much about the ritual person or the ritual community. Still others felt it was very difficult to adjudicate one way or the other: A “badly performed” ritual, while something to be avoided, especially from a performer’s point of view, can have interesting if not positive

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outcomes. Also, there may be reasons why a ritual that seems well-​ executed on the surface fails to work. Finally, there is the question of how one knows if a ritual has “worked” and what the desired outcome is. Certainly, many respondents talked about a growing awareness or sensibility to the more subtle, nuanced dimensions of ritual efficacy: Repetition might make ritual an empty shell—​so that it becomes “just repetition.” However, I  do not think we need to feel something special during the ritual all the time. Ritual lab gave me—​or at least helped me become more conscious of—​“a ritual sensibility” in which I now simply feel when things are “on” or “off” in ritual. The importance of balancing critique with ritual process was commented on by one respondent: Ritual criticism is like the footbrakes of a moving vehicle, applied from time to time. The benefits of such breaking are incalculable. In her dialogue with Ronald Grimes, Susan Scott notes, “[T]‌he question of how to work in community raises not only research and pedagogical questions but also ethical questions.”16 This was one of the areas which most often recurred in student journals over the years with surprising convergence on the issues. These also recurred across most of the responses received. The areas of concern most often included the importance of a safe space, what it means to foster respectful relationships between participants, and the question of appropriating aspects of other rituals and whether it was possible to do this in a respectful yet  also creative way. It is interesting to me that most students felt that the lab was successful in addressing these issues head on, but some of the comments made me wonder if this “success” was also a limitation, where safety always trumped discovery: I think it is absolutely necessary to create an environment of respect. This does not mean an environment where everyone is walking around on eggshells. It would have been interesting to see the reactions of the group if a lab was presented which really rocked the boat.

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I also asked students to try to articulate their overriding sense of the lab. For some, it is very much about providing a useful tool for studying ritual: Ritual lab is truly a lab for study, observation, and reflection. It offers real data. It is important to stress this as I have encountered students who immediately think of religion or the new age movement or what have you and do not realize the point of the lab at first. For some, it is a space that allows for transformation: So many times, students leave a class feeling as though it has been a waste of time … or frustrated … or disheartened. The ritual lab class was a course where I left feeling changed… . Some were just labs. Some were real rituals that transformed us. Some commented on how much good humor the lab generated, especially when there were funny ritual incidents like having to throw a flaming bowl out the window, or the growing number of people looking in a window at the “strange” happenings inside! But the overwhelming response concerns the sense of belonging and acceptance created by the experience: Wow, that is hard. I guess the thing that stays with me most strongly is the fact that we had the opportunity to be ourselves and break down in front of the others; some cried, some sang from their soul, some shared parts of their past, some imparted wisdom, some listened. This was invaluable. My own sense of the value of ritual lab is twofold. First, the Chant and Ritual Song Lab is a space within which I have found it possible to create moments of sung hospitality. The hospitality of the lab is, in the Derridean sense, not a space of “clubiness,” but of welcome to the other. It is intimate, not exclusive. It espouses openness to experience beyond language and beyond our ability to regulate or control it. In my lifelong attempt to grasp something of why we sing and why we sing ritually, nothing has provided a space like the lab where, to paraphrase Schechner,17 we are simultaneously being, doing, and showing-​doing—​a perichoresis of ritual phenomenology, sonority, and scholarship. Second, it has been by far the most fruitful space in my ongoing exploration of the ways in which ritual and singing can work together to create a sense of belonging. There is no escaping the physicality of singing, or

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the performativity of ritual. These “givens” locate such experiences in a distinctive, experiential, temporal, and spatial dance. It is the temporality of these experiences that has emerged for me as the most significant way in which singing and ritual resonate. Many experiences can foster a sense of belonging in groups. But both singing and ritual play with time in a similar way. Both use their temporal character to creatively collapse and subvert the distance we normally try to achieve between notions of time and space. By bending, expanding, collapsing, and merging these, we are forced into a kind of intimacy of experience. In order to explore this more fully, a further digging into theories of time and sonority is necessary. The remainder of the chapter will attempt to draw parallels between sonority’s play with temporality and the temporal character of ritual performance.

Temporality as a Key Element of Sung Belonging Chapter 1 explored the intimate relationship between singing and space, with particular reference to resonance. An equally important and inseparable relationship exists between singing and time. All sound depends on medium and movement, on wave motion through time and space. Unlike gravity or light waves, sound waves require a medium through which they can pass. Fish, dolphins, and whales sing and communicate through the medium of water, and woodpeckers and percussionists alike transmit sound through banging on wood and other hard surfaces. The deaf Beethoven held a stick between his teeth to conduct the sounds of the piano to him, and Thomas Edison bit into the wood of a gramophone in order to hear overtones.18 While water and wood conduct sound, the primary medium through which most sound travels is air: “regarded as a passive or neutral component of sound communication, air nevertheless holds the key to many fundamental properties of sound and music.”19 Air and breath are of particular importance to humanly produced sound, which itself emerged as an evolutionary side effect of our breathing mechanism. When we sing, we manipulate our breathing and the muscles associated with breathing to elongate, enunciate, and create sonorities with the wide palette of sonic possibilities available to the human body. Because of its dependence on air, sung sound has an intimate relationship with atmosphere, climate, weather, and environment. In a dry or still environment, sound will carry a long distance. Storms, or sudden gusts of wind, can literally blow sound away. Changes in humidity or temperature

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will affect the tuning of an instrument and the quality of the air as it hits the vocal cords. This relationship with atmosphere is a relationship with both time and space. The quality of the atmospheric space will affect the movement and speed of the sound. The speed of the sound also influences its pitch and intensity. Many of us have experienced the drop in pitch we hear when a vehicle, such as a police car, ambulance, or fire engine with a siren blaring, passes us at a high speed. This phenomenon, known as the Doppler effect, happens because there is a change in wave frequency for the sound receptor, relative to the movement of the sound source. As the sound waves move toward the receptor, each wave crest is successfully closer to the receptor and takes less time to arrive, causing an increase in frequency. As the source moves away from the receptor and the waves spread out, the time of arrival increases and there is a decrease in wave frequency, causing the pitch to sound lower to the receptor. For waves (such as sound waves) that require a physical medium, the speed of the receptor and of the source will be affected by the nature of the medium. This leads to an intimate, symbiotic relationship between time, space, movement, and sound. A sounding body is always in motion. As it moves through time, it inevitably changes its shape and reorganizes the space around itself. A fundamental characteristic of sonority is therefore its necessary, simultaneous relationship with time and space. Sound cannot resound or resonate without moving through time or without moving through a physical medium in space. Moreover, its relationship with both time and space is always transient. As sound moves through air, it loses its sharpness and its power. As it moves through time, it changes in intensity. Sonority exists in a constant state of change, the nature of which is directly related to time and space. In this sense, sound is always a disturbance: Unlike the other senses, which have been conceived in terms of the neutral or contingent commingling of traces, sound can come about only as a result of some more or less violent disturbance; the collision of objects with each other (we never hear the sound of one thing alone, any more than we can hear the sound of one hand clapping) and the transmission of this agitation through the air to the ears or skin of another. Sound beats, stretches, compresses, contorts. Sound always brings a difference into the world.20 This is what Johnson refers to as a “gestalt of force.”21 This gestalt is characterized as interactive and directional, with changing degrees of power

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and intensity. The ability of sound to disturb is the inverse characteristic of its ability to affect equilibrium, through the dual role of the inner ear in its contribution to both balance and hearing. The vestibular system in mammals contributes to a sense of spatial orientation, as well as kinematics or our sense of motion in time. This unique blending of spatial and temporal relationships in sonority has led many scholars and musicians to suggest that our conceptual understandings of time and space merge or collapse in our experience of sound. The poem “Music as Mastery” by the Irish poet Seán Lucy is prefaced with a quote attributed to the Irish composer Seán Ó Riada: “[M]‌usic masters time, that’s obvious; but what isn’t always recognized is that through volume, pitch, tone and texture it also masters space.”22 In the poem, Lucy creates an image of time and space in a conjoined dance out of which song emerges: Space-​time in families of differences is recreated, a recreation of that passionate dance when shape and spirit holding hands advance into the full blaze of the morning sun. And suddenly, floating above that concord, a human voice begins to sing the theme.23 This “collapsed” relationship between time and space is particularly evident in oral tradition musics. There is no sensible distinction between the time it takes to sing a song and the space needed to sing it. If time and space blend experientially through sound, they do so through a constant experience of the impermanence of both, making sonority one of our primary means of experiencing the transience of life and our own mortality. The principles of sonority and the transmission of sound as pressurized waves moving through time and space were first properly understood toward the beginning of the nineteenth century, but earlier understandings of the nature of sound and its temporaral/​spatial impermanence reflected (and some scientists would suggest led to) complex cosmological configurations of “natural” and “supernatural” worlds.24 The Greco-​Roman concept of musica universalis, or the “harmony of the spheres,” draws an analogy between the vibrations of a plucked string and the cycles of the natural world, especially the celestial bodies such as the sun, the moon, and the planets.25 Pythagorean theory understood

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that for any natural system to avoid decay and sustain itself indefinitely, its vibrations had to be in simple, harmonic relationship. An idealized musica had to exist outside the effervescence of time and so came to be understood as a mathematical or religious concept, rather than a performative one. The harmony of the spheres provided a perfect analogy for the Platonic world of ideas, of which the “lived” world was but a shadow. The earliest Christian assimilations of Pythagorean symbolism by Augustine and Boethius saw musical modes, harmonics, tones, and moods as cosmic metaphors for the perfection of God’s creation.26 There is strong evidence that Boethius’s views on music and mathematics were prevalent in Ireland from at least the twelfth century, and possibly as early as the ninth. The “St. Gall Priscian” manuscript, for example, has a gloss in Latin noting that motion is a prerequisite to sound, a clear reference to Boethius’s main work on music, De Institutione musica. The scribe who entered this ninth-​century gloss was Irish.27 Music provided an important metaphor for Christian theology because of its “distinctive capacity to elicit something of the nature of temporality and our involvement with it.”28 But the rediscovery, copying, and translating of Aristotelian sources from Greek and Arabic into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked a changing understanding of time and space, linking these less with an idealized, unchanging view of the cosmos and more with the observable, changeable world of nature. This coincided with one of the great musical evolutions in Western classical music, often referred to as the transition from ars antiqua to ars nova, or from the ancient way to the new way. This transition is characterized by, among other things, a marked interest in the notation of rhythm or of musical time. If sonority is characterized by the intimacy of its relationship with time and space, our attempts to capture sound visibly through the development of music notation has had a significant impact on our perception of this relationship:  “[N]‌otation is a means of holding onto the past, an instrument of memory; equally, by representing time as a co-​ordinate of a two-​ dimensional space, the musical stave allows the composer to reclaim the future, unconstrained by the arrow of time.”29 One of the great debates in medieval music concerned the ability to graphically represent musical time and movement in space, and musicologists, such as Dorit Tanay,30 propose that changing forms of musical notation were both influenced by and influential in this debate, which was itself part of a wider discourse concerning changing cosmological perceptions. Medieval scholars increasingly questioned the inherited Platonic

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view of the things of this world existing in imitation or reflection of an ideal world, and advanced a more Aristotelian worldview, arguing for the autonomy of the natural world: Neoplatonic thinking continued to influence theologians into the medieval period … though the availability of and interest in the translations of Aristotle’s corpus from the Greek into Latin led to a Christianized, Aristotelian view of the world that dominated the intellectual landscape of the Scholastics, as epitomized in the work of Albertus Magnus, and his exemplary student, Thomas Aquinas.31 Musical theory reflected this debate in its engagement with semiotic systems that challenged Pythagorean mathematics, based on a view of the world governed by a static mathematical system and the harmony of the spheres. The old metaphysics were bound by the divine perfection of the world “beyond” this world. Changes in musical theory resonated with a growing Aristotelian worldview that did not reject universalism, but sought its truth in particularism rather than in prototypes. The Aristotelian method, which had such an influence on medieval thought, sought to reach the essence of something through a study of the particular. The empirical study of the natural world was at the heart of this approach. Musical theorists, such as Johannes de Garlandia in the ars antiqua and later Johannes de Muris in the ars nova style, begin to conceive of time, not as it relates to the celestial realm, but rather through a number of self-​referential, temporal “packages,” which manipulate and divide time within the context of a growing mathematical language that was at least partially stripped of a Platonic aesthetic ideal related to a divine, “supernatural” sense of timelessness, and more representative of the earthly experience of the continuities and disruptions that characterize our “natural” perception of time as it exists in physical space. This changing understanding is also reflected in musical notation and composition from this period. Compositional approaches included the conductus, a form of sacred, non-​liturgical song for one or more voices and with organum, which was one of the principal forms of vocal composition of the ars antiqua period of musical composition, associated with the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century, reaching a highpoint with the Notre Dame School of polyphony. The conductus is thought to have originated in the south of France and corresponds with innovations in notation and rhythmic composition. It is characterized by note-​against-​note part writing and was usually rhythmic. This period of musical composition saw

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radical changes in the conceptualization and notation of rhythm articulated in theoretical writings of the time, including Franco of Cologne’s Ars Cantus Mensurabilis, describing a system of notation that used different note shapes for different rhythmic values. Written around 1280, it is one of the watershed treatises in Western musical composition: The central innovation of his treatise, and one of the most fundamentally important in the history of Western notation, is the movement away from defining the rhythmic value of musical notes by their context—​as in earlier modal notation—​toward assigning fixed values to individual notes32 The music of medieval Europe, from the early to the late Middle Ages, hovers between cosmologies, with one foot in Platonic and one in Aristotelian worldviews—​one in the celestial spheres and one in the natural, empirical world. A singer feels this somatically, visualizes it through notation, and hears it in the sonic reproduction of these dissonant and consonant worldviews. I  sing with an all-​female early music ensemble called Cantoral. Singing music from this period involves singing a changing perception of time and space, moving from the continuous stream of sound which is Western plainchant, to the so-​called rhythmic modes of the ars antiqua style, in which the length of a note exists within the context of its rhythmic mode, to the eventual emancipation of rhythm from a modal context in ars nova, where every note had its own distinctive rhythmic shape and rhythm becomes emancipated from context. Medieval music provides an interesting case study of how changing perceptions of time and space can be experienced somatically through singing and represented visually in notation. Our contemporary, scientific understanding of the time/​space continuum is one we articulate as sound waves moving through time and space. Somatically, especially in singing, the experience of this time/​space continuum is of a blending and merging of the time and space necessary for sound to be produced and for it to resonate in the spaces inside and around the body. Experientially speaking, the two become inseparable.

Ritual, Time, and Space While there is wide agreement that music plays a significant, affective role in human experience, there is equal agreement concerning the intangible,

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inconsistent, and variable nature of this affect. Two people listening to or performing the same piece of music may have vastly different responses to it. Equally, the same person may respond differently at different times. Culturally, the different elements of music (timbre, pitch, melody, rhythmic, harmony, polyphony) may be put to opposing uses, for example, rhythmic intensity may be used to incite violent or celebratory affects. DeNora notes that “music seems imbued with affect while, at the level of analysis, it seems perpetually capable of eluding attempts to specify just what kind of meaning music holds.”33 If it is difficult to say exactly what music means; scholars do, however, seem to be in agreement that generating a sense of meaning is one of the things music does very well. How it does this would again seem to be linked to its characteristic temporal and spatial impermanence. Our ability to create meaning and coherence in our world is dependent on how we navigate our way through a stream of experience. Gallagher and Zahavi remind us that the capabilities involved in the negotiation of space and of social relations “fully depend on our temporal navigations.”34 If, for example, we were unable to recognize an experience as previous to the next one, or to anticipate what the next experience might be, there would be a profound disruption in our sense of coherence and our ability to give meaning to and locate experience. In the ritual lab, many students felt that these characteristics of sound were enhanced when applied to a ritual context: Sound can be helpful in creating an atmosphere, in transitioning from one emotional /​psychological space to another; in creating a safe /​non-​ threatening space; in transcending (raising our hearts and minds above the natural to the supernatural for the purposes of prayer; in replacing the “noise” from our ever present day-​to-​day thoughts; in providing a sense of kinship and camaraderie between those participating in creating music. As with music, the ability of ritual to contribute to meaning is a highly contested question. If rituals “mean” something, who decides what that meaning is? Must it mean the same thing for all participants? Can the meaning change across time? Can it change as it is performed in different parts of the work? If rituals have meaning, how is that meaning created? How do rituals “work”? In his essay on ritual efficacy, Sax notes that one of the challenges of ritual scholarship has been a tendency to emphasize the

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expressive over the instrumental nature of ritual, focusing more on what rituals mean and less on how they might contribute to meaning: To analyze rituals as “expressing” inner states of feeling and emotion, or “symbolizing” theological ideas or social relations, or “representing” psychophysical states of the human organism, is to neglect the question of how they might be instrumental, how they might actually do things.35 As a scholar who came to ritual through the practice of music, I  have always been interested in the extent to which the ways rituals work might or might not be similar to the ways in which music seems to work. For example, are there resonances between the nature of time and space as they relate to sonority and as they are manipulated and played with in ritual practices? As a singer, I have long understood the challenge of trying to “fix” the experience of singing, either for myself or for those with whom I try to communicate through song, as well as the challenge of trying to “explain” what that experience is. The experience is so variable, literally changing from second to second, that attempting to put it into words is like trying to stop time and paint it. In his essay entitled “The Butterfly Unpinned,” dance scholar Christopher Bannerman likens the attempt to articulate or fix performance to trying to study a butterfly in flight.36 As a teacher and practitioner of ritual, I have been struck by what seems to be a similar struggle in the world of ritual studies, both in terms of attempts to “stabilize” the experience of ritual, as well as to articulate what it is. Over time, I have become less interested in trying to explain what ritual or music means and more interested in exploring how it contributes to meaning. The relationship between time and space in terms of sonority and ritual is a key area of exploration. Any kind of broad comparison of this nature must commence with a recognition of the impossibility of pinning down either “music” or “ritual” as conceptual categories of behavior. Musicologist Philip Bohlman puts it bluntly and boldly when he notes that “what music is remains open to question at all times and in all places,”37 while anthropologists Hughes-​ Freeland and Crain concur that “ritual is an increasingly contested and expanding arena.”38 For the purposes of this exploration, it is of less use to think in terms of definitions and more helpful to consider “music” and “ritual” within the framework of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance theory. This approach proposes that activities or phenomena that demonstrate

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enough shared features to render them recognizable as related may be usefully explored with reference to those shared characteristics.39 A  key shared characteristic of music and ritual is their performativity. Both necessarily exist within the ephemerality of performed events and therefore within temporal and spatial boundaries. Ritual scholarship is characterized by trajectories of thought emphasizing one or more of these conditions. There is a strong tradition of scholarship concerning ritual time and space, extending back to the preoccupations of Mircea Eliade, Emile Durkheim, and Claude Lévi-​Strauss, among others. For Eliade, myths and rites have emerged from “boundary situations,” linking historical time and physical space with our escape from the limits imposed by these realities—​an escape prompted by our recognition of and struggle with the limits of our human existence. As with the idealization of time and space through the Greco-​Roman theories of musica universalis, Eliade suggests that traditional societies viewed myth as the perpetrator of primordial time and the creation of space. Myth described both temporal and spatial “beginnings” and, in this sense, myth functioned primarily as a creation account of the sacred, primordial time, and cosmological origins. If the “Sacred” emerges in primordial time with the concurrent establishment of the world’s structures, it locates itself spatially at the axis mundi, or the “Center.” In dividing space into the profane and the sacred, Eliade also proposed the importance of these worlds “breaking in” on one another, on a point of interface between the natural and the supernatural, the center and the periphery.40 It is interesting to note that, as late as the medieval period, there was no clear demarcation between natural and supernatural space. As scholars such as Stefan Halikowski Smith remind us, the medieval view of the supernatural world was not necessarily a place other than the physical world. Heavenly paradise, according to many medieval writers, coalesced and interfaced with an earthly reality: The majority opinion since Isidore of Seville was that the terrestrial paradise constituted a place of enduring fact, and this subsequently was upheld throughout the Middle Ages, just as Ireland and Sicily were taken to be the sites of Purgatory. The location of paradise remained however something of an ongoing controversy among medieval authors, and most particularly map-​makers; notwithstanding Mosaic instruction that Eden was “towards the rising sun” (Gen 2:8) utopia was variously projected on to the islands of

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the mid-​Atlantic, which around the mid-​fourteenth century were slowly emerging from hazy associations with Atlantis, the Isles of the Blessed and the Hesperides, to a Columbian discovery somewhere in the New World, to a number of possible moorings somewhere in the Orient or Southern ocean.41 The physical position of paradise was an ongoing concern in medieval literature, with a growing conviction of its location in the East, emerging from the coalescence of Garden of Eden mythology with an increased commercial relationship with the East, primarily through the spice trade. In this mythology, Eden is a place that is always warm, where trees flower and bear fruit continuously. Smith argues that these characteristics of abundance, exuberance, and luxury associated with the Garden of Paradise were also associated with the East in the mind of the Western medieval person. Isidore of Seville translated “Eden,” a Hebraic word, into Latin as hortus deliciarum, or “garden of delights.” This garden, he suggests, is a conflation of the Garden of Eden, the heavenly afterlife, and the hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden of the Song of Songs: “your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes, and all the finest spices” (4:12–​14).42 Such a garden conjures up an image of the East, replete with the literalism of the spice trade, but also cloaked in a sense of the marvelous, the mirabilia, or marvels of the otherworldly. Moreover, the notion of paradise in the East originally referred to a garden or an orchard. In Avestan, the language of Zoroastrian scripture, “paradise” is the wall enclosing a garden or an orchard. The Zoroastrian religion encouraged the building of arbors, orchards, and gardens, and the word came to refer to the huge gardens and parks of Persian nobility. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Jewish scripture, uses the word to refer to the Garden of Eden. The Koran similarly talks of Paradise as a Garden of Delights: “These are they who are drawn nigh (to Allah) in the Garden of Delights” (56:11–​12).43 The conflation of paradise with the East is an example of both the commercial and material value of the East in the medieval mindset, but also of the “spiritual excitement induced by the spice trade,”44 and a view of the East as a place of literal wonder and supernatural marvels. While the primordial and the center were core concerns at the heart of Eliade’s expositions on ritual, Durkheim’s engagement with temporality and spatiality had more to do with what he viewed as the collective,

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repeated behaviors of social groups, used to generate symbols and shared value systems. The power of ritual resided in repeated, shared performances. Temporal repetition was an important aspect of ritual’s efficacy as a vehicle of group solidarity and coherence and an effective means of transmission. Ritual action in structured space allowed for the “misrecognition” of emotional experience and collective, ritual effervescence as being supernatural in origin.45 While Eliade’s notion of the sacred and the profane clearly allowed for hierophanic interruptions, from sacred time/​ space to the profane, Durkheim’s sense of this relationship is complex. On the one hand, he insists on the necessary separation of time and space in the sacred and the profane. Specific times and specific spaces need to be set aside for the sacred and cannot be contaminated by relationship with the profane. On the other hand, Durkheim’s notion of society overlapped the temporal and the spatial. Recognizing William James’s assertion that all sensation has a spatial orientation,46 he nevertheless insisted that this must be understood less as individualistic and more as social experience. Social experience has not only a strong spatial orientation, dividing into groups that occupy distinctive spaces, but also a distinctive temporal character, moving periodically through rhythms of concentration and dispersal: “[B]‌oth of these latter ideas (really a single, dynamic process) play a vital role … [A]s a result, it is difficult to entirely separate the categories of time and space.”47 Lévi-​Strauss’s work on dual organizations may also serve to illustrate the often less than boundaried explanation and experience of the time/​ space continuum in ritual theory. He draws on Radin’s monograph of the Great Lakes tribe, the Winnebago, as an example of the role of perception in our understanding of space and time, with reference to the two moieties of the tribe, the wangeregi (“those who are above”) and the manegi (“those who are on earth/​below”). Each moiety had distinctive yet symbiotic roles and responsibilities toward the other moiety, which had been developed over time, particularly with reference to deceased members of the opposite moiety. Lévi-​Strauss noted an interesting discrepancy in the description of the village structure reported to Radin by village elders. Several described a circular village plan in which the two moieties were separated by an imaginary diameter running through the village. However, others declared this incorrect and described a spatial arrangement whereby the chiefs of both moieties were in the center of the village, with the other lodges peripheral to these. The former pattern was described by the wangeregi and the latter

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by the manegi. Rabin expresses his regret that he did not have sufficient information to discern which was correct, but Lévi-​Strauss suggests that it may not be a question of either/​or, but rather of a social structure too complex to describe with a single model, as the spatial model varies—​both in reality and in perception—​depending on the social position and activity of a given member, which itself is not stable but variable through time.48 What is of interest in this brief trajectory of ritual theory is the consistent insistence on the complexity of the time-​space continuum. As discussed in the theoretical interlude, this complexity is a physical reality for singers. As one student noted in the lab, a singer is sensitive to space, movement, and time, as all of these will affect the sound produced. Our awareness of this does not always occur at a conscious level, but is always there at a physical level as we adjust the sound to respond to these aspects: The ritual context can absolutely affect the experience of singing and making music. For example, when we sang the Irish song early in the morning processing across the bridge—​it would have been a very different experience if it had been on a stage or sitting in a circle. Ritual laboratory has heightened my awareness of the intrinsic connection between time, space, and movement for the singer, as well as the ability of the singer to use this awareness to affect ritual experiences.

Conclusion These few examples highlight an interesting separation and merging of the temporal and spatial realms in ritual scholarship, as well as those of the sacred and the profane, the natural and supernatural. While spatiality and temporality are important experiential dimensions of ritual, they also serve as key ritual (and musical) metaphors, and as Grimes reminds us, “the study and construction of theories requires careful attention to the metaphors that ground those theories.”49 In their groundbreaking text, Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson note that a common view of metaphor is that of a poetic device, adding color and flourish to meaning. Moreover, metaphor is viewed “as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought and action.”50 The greater the metaphoric character of a text, the less rooted in reality it appears to be. Lakoff and Johnson suggest that the opposite is in fact the case. Metaphoric language is deeply rooted in the natural world. In

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fact, our conceptual system can only create meaning with reference to the physical world. Language, far from articulating a cognitive world divorced from physical experience, depends on this experience for its form and content. Metaphors provide us with an excellent example of how language depends on humankind’s physical, temporal, and spatial relationship to the world. Conceptual or cognitive metaphors, for example, allow us to understand one domain in terms of another. Lakoff and Johnson refer to these as “target” and “source” domains. When we say, for example, that love is a journey or knowledge is a river, “love” and “knowledge” are the target domains that we attempt to articulate with reference to the “source” domains of the journey and the river. Source domains are very frequently rooted in human experience of time, space, movement, verticality, or horizontalism. In other words, we try to explain concepts by referring to our experience of the physical world. Our spatial experience of gravity and of living on the surface of the earth, for example, has led to our experience of “up” and “down.” We use this experience to describe our moods (“I feel high as a kite”; “I am down in the dumps”), commercial exchange (“the markets were up today”; “there was an all-​time slump in the market”), music (“the music soared and plunged”), religion (“he ascended into heaven and descended into hell”), and any number of experiences, totally unrelated to physical height or depth. We use our experience of the physical world to articulate our sense of reality; “the question of what we take to be real and the question of how we reason are inextricably linked.”51 Our use of metaphor, therefore, reveals something of our perception and experience of the world in which we live and our attempts to understand it. Grimes points this out in his exploration of Jonathan Z. Smith’s writings on ritual space. Noting Smith’s preoccupation with space as a historical, experiential, and metaphoric category, he suggests that it is “treated not simply as one dimension of ritual but as the fundamental one.”52 Smith’s concern, he proposes, is with ritual as emplacement, rather than with ritual as a form of action. The turn toward ritual action, so present in Grimes’s own work, owes much to the tradition of ritual scholarship found in Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep, with its emphasis on the agency of ritual through the processual and the transformative.53 For ritual scholar Tom Driver, this is a reaction against an emphasis on being (such as that found in the theological proposals of, for instance, Paul Tillich and Karl Barth54) and a move toward doing, which has profoundly influenced a more performative view of ritual as found in the works of Grimes, Bell, and Schechner, among others.55 An emphasis on the “doing”

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of ritual can also be located in the emergence of practice theory. Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice, for example, challenged the dominance of the structural/​agency opposition through his theory of habitus, suggesting that individual agency is in constant negotiation with collective environments.56 Sherry Ortner reminds us that “in the founding works of practice theory, Bourdieu had insisted on the importance of time, not only in the unfolding of interactive practices and their outcomes, but in giving meaning to those interactions.”57 For Ortner and Bourdieu, time and historicity are defining characteristics of actions and essential if performances are to have agency. Nor is this agency confined to the boundaried world of the ritual experience. In their work on ritual and negotiation, Ute Huesken and Frank Neubert argue that negotiation processes, which take place within ritual experiences, often spill beyond the temporal and spatial frame of the ritual itself, with consequences for “life beyond the ritual frame.”58 Perspective and performativity play key roles in our experience of ritual, and our articulation of this experience may draw on different metaphors to emphasize varying aspects of the ritual. In a discussion on rites-​of-​passage theory, for example, Grimes notes that “if one attends to the boundary itself, the emphasis becomes spatial, but if one attends to the person making the crossing, the emphasis becomes temporal and processual.”59 Our understanding of ritual, in this sense, is dependent on both our experience and the metaphors we use in our attempts to articulate that experience. The temporal characteristics of music resonate both literally and metaphorically with similar understandings of ritual. Ritual laboratory, with its commitment to experience and analysis in the intellectual, somatic, and affective domains, provides a powerful pedagogical tool to explore the ways in which singing works in ritual contexts.

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Introduction My interest in the ritual dimensions of singing has led me into close dialogue with my colleagues in community music.1 Community music is a practical and theoretical way of making and reflecting on music, with an emphasis on its role in group or ensemble settings. The discipline has strong roots in the participatory arts movement and an ethos of inclusivity through music-​making.2 In exploring aspects of ritual singing, which make it a potent medium of hospitality, I  have been struck by some of the similarities it shares with community music-​making. One of the more explicit commonalities is that both ritual studies and community music describe themselves as interdisciplinary and interpraxial and resist simple or clear-​cut definitions. Ronald Grimes writes that ritual studies has been … repeatedly plagued by the definition question. Some assumed narrow definitions of ritual, some preferred broad ones. The narrower definitions are easier to put into action … [T]‌he broader definitions, on the other hand, are harder to put into operation, resist concise summary, and risk diffusing energies into a kind of fuzzy excitement. This difference in definitional strategy will probably continue to be debated as long as there is such a thing as ritual studies … [M]ost generative ideas resist consensual definitions.3 Community music shares a tradition of robust resistance to categorization or definition. In her article on the Community Music Activity Commission

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of the International Society for Music Education, one of the most influential energies in the development of community music over the last two decades, Marie McCarthy notes the extent to which issues of definition informed many of the commission’s seminars. Speaking of the 1996 seminar in Liverpool, she notes that [t]‌he issue of self-​definition, which was an integral part of discussions in the early seminars, continued to be part of the discourse at seminar meetings. Chair David Price (1994–​96) concluded that CMA was still in its infancy and “has not the luxury of self-​definition which is evident in other spheres of ISME interests.” Price (1996) argued that commissioners had spent the previous decade trying to identify the distinctive, yet common, features of community music activity across the globe.4 If McCarthy’s article charts the historical ambiguity around the question of self-​definition, it is equally striking that the very first sentence in the first article, in the most recent journal dedicated to community music, is “What is community music (or CM for short)?”5 In Chapter 4, the usefulness of Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblance in conceptualizing music and ritual was discussed. The question of definition warrants further exploration here, as this resistance to abstract categorization is one of the key indicators of a vital experiential and phenomenological dimension to these practices. Catherine Bell suggests that there may be good reason for this apparent resistance to the definitional impulse. Most attempts at definition “proceed by formulating the universal qualities of an autonomous phenomenon,”6 maintaining that there is something which can generally be described as, for example, “ritual” or “community music,” and which has certain distinctive features through which it can be recognized as such. The problem with such definitions, and perhaps the reason that community musicians and ritual practitioners alike have an intuitive suspicion of this exercise, is that definitions usually become a set of criteria for judging whether an activity is “in” or “out,” based on its ability to conform to these characteristics. If we lean toward definition, it is because a single, general construct can seem useful as an organizing principle, but this very usefulness may be undermined by the problems it creates. One of the most compelling problems suggested by Bell is that the sheer weight of the criteria established by the definition may “override and undermine the significance of indigenous distinctions

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among ways of acting.”7 In other words, what if activities recognized by a group of musicians as “community music” do not fit into the criteria set forth? Conversely, what if community musicians (or rituals singers) cannot recognize themselves or their activities in what is described or defined? What if they cannot find a way into the discourse created by the definition? A second compelling problem with definitions is that they must, by their nature, deal with abstractions and generalizations. This can be particularly problematic for performance-​based activities, because the nature of performance is that it exists in particular manifestations, and “the universal always impoverishes the particular.”8 The danger of definition is that it diminishes the particularity of event-​based activities, and strips them of the specificity of cultural, political, or social context. While attempts may be made to articulate general features of sonority, ritual, or music, these features are always culturally framed. Indeed, an important critique of musicology and traditional musical analysis is that it “held out the false promise of an unmediated, unproblematic familiarity with the music of other times and places.”9 A final problematic of definitional approaches is a tendency to move from one extreme of the discourse to another—​to propose an understanding that emphasizes the complete uniqueness of a phenomenon or that sees it as ubiquitous. In other words, some approaches to defining community music or ritual may emphasize its uniqueness, and those characteristics that set it apart from other forms of music-​making or human behavior, while others may view all music-​making as community music and all human behavior as ritualistic. These two extremes are noted by Lee Higgins in his doctoral study on community music. In the historical development of community music in the United Kingdom, he highlights the impulse of community music to distinguish itself from “music in the community” or “communal music-​making” through a self-​understanding as “a conscious phenomenon that promotes the creation of access,”10 thus emphasizing its uniqueness as a phenomenon. On the other hand, Higgins himself proposes that “community music is a pre-​condition of any consideration of MUSIC,”11 more suggestive of its ubiquity than its uniqueness. It is this shared uneasiness with the conceptualization of its own identity that first made me wonder whether it was possible to “unpack” some of the sonic aspects of music (examined through the lens of community music) with reference to ritual theory. I  was also interested in trying to explore ritual singing in a way that was less elemental (exploring, for

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example, temporality, spactiality, pitch, rhythm, etc.) and more grounded in the experience of cultural groups of music-​makers. In Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, Bell suggests that one way to do this is to change the question. Is it possible, she asks, to dispense with the impulse to define altogether, and find other ways of creating shared discourses? Could this shared discourse be created, not so much about community music or ritual singing, but through its practice? In other words, by attending to the practice of ritual singing in this case, what, if anything, can we learn about its potential to act as a space of belonging? Most of the work I  do involves religious or educationally based rituals. However, singing occurs in a wide variety of ritual contexts. In this chapter, I will examine two festivals and an annual song-​based celebration called World Carnival, which celebrates the children of the most culturally diverse school in Limerick. The first festival is a sacred music festival I  ran in Limerick city from 2000 to 2007. The second was part of a European-​wide community music festival event, which took place in Limerick in 2002.

Anáil Dé/​The Breath of God As noted in Chapter  1, the first asylum seekers dispersed to Limerick arrived in May 2000. That same year, I was appointed course director of the Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song at the Academy and became a member of Doras Luimní, the Limerick support group for new migrant communities. These two events combined to bring to fruition a festival I had been thinking about for many years. At that time, Ireland had no festival devoted to world sacred music. Inspired by the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco,12 and supported by the Irish World Academy, Doras Luimní, and the Sanctuary initiative, the Anáil Dé/​Breath of God Festival of World Sacred Music was inaugurated. The festival ran for eight years before being absorbed into the wider performance agenda of the Academy. The format developed in the first year was used in all eight festivals. A  three-​day event, it commenced with a series of workshops and seminars at the Academy, followed by a public concert in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and a closing ritual in the city. The workshops and seminars were built around the Master’s program but were open and free to the public. Each year, the festival invited one or two key international guests. They offered song-​based workshops and seminars and participated in

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the performances and rituals. The guests were usually identified through consultation with the incoming student groups and members of new migrant communities interested in ritual singing. Because of the demographics of the new communities, the majority of the guests came from Eastern Europe or Africa. Examples of guests invited to the festival starting in 2000 include Zimbabwean mbira player Chartwell Dutiro; Greek Orthodox chanter Ioannis Arvanitis; Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita; traditional English singers Graham and Eileen Pratt; Norwegian early music ensemble Trio Medieval; Yoruba dancer, drummer, and singer Peter Badejo; Tibetan chanter Yungchen Llamo (Figure 5.1); Swedish kulning expert Susanne Rosenberg; South African percussionist and dancer Risenga Makondo (Figure  5.2); English traditional fiddler and singer Chris Wood; Vietnamese musician and overtone singer Tran Quang Hei; American choral ensemble Northern Harmony; medieval chant ensemble Dialogos; Syrian chanter Marie Keyrouz; as well as a host of Irish singers and musicians. Concerts, workshops, and rituals were recorded every year and a special documentary of the festival was commissioned in 2002. A  number of key themes emerged from artists, students, and new migrants in their

Figure 5.1 Yungchen Lhamo. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

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Figure 5.2  Risenga Makondo. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

reflections on the festival. For many, the festival provided an opportunity to meet and share music with people from different cultures: I’ve always enjoyed coming to Ireland, especially to Limerick since I  started working with the Department here, the World Academy of Music and especially coming to this festival. I’ve been looking forward to it and that there are lots of other international artists and that’s the best way for people like us to learn, you mix with other artists, you learn from them and you share experiences… . I think it’s fantastic that you have this festival here in Limerick and it’s been wonderful to be here. Now I’ve been here a few days working with the students and it has been really lovely and I  think it’s a great thing to put people together from different cultural environments and have a festival like this and lovely people to meet and I have been feeling really warmly welcomed… . Elikya is a group formed by people from the Congo … Elikya is in Lingala which is one of the four main languages of the Congo—​“Hope”—​we

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see that Ireland is becoming a multicultural country and hope is what can be, what can be driven, and one of the most valuable things with this aim. . . . To have met  all these different people … to understand how they view their rituals, their spirituality and also just how their outlook on life affects everything and to have learned how to take things in different ways, to understand everything around you through the eyes of someone from another culture has been an incredibly beneficial experience, not just the music but sometimes the ways of learning and the ways of doing are what I am going to bring home. . . . This encounter with other cultures was also an encounter with the music of different spiritual and religious traditions. It is interesting to note that, for many of the participants, the “spirituality” of the music did not reside so much in a spiritual or religious tradition but in the physical act of singing itself: Spirituality and music is the same thing, because music is spiritual, even if it is not typically religious or spiritual but any music in this sense is not material, it is spiritual—​a spirit that comes from the mind…. I think you can have very spiritual moments performing music and I don’t know what to call it but sometimes you get really elevated when you are singing something. . . . Affinities between different cultural and religious traditions were highlighted through music: There is a relationship between Nigeria, my country, and the Irish people. You can see the way they picked up the sound, the vowels, the words, which I have found a bit difficult to teach in other places, and they are very rhythmic you know, with the dancing and the music here. Musical participation was also described as therapeutic by some participants: There is something therapeutic about drumming I think, and that kind of singing as well when you just do it over and over and just kind of forget about counting it and you just get into the rhythm of it like you’re in a trance or something—​it’s just deadly.

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The “spirituality” of singing was described again and again as a very physical, visceral sensation:  the sense of being connected with the people you were singing with, the space in which you were singing, and the people listening to you. This sense was not primarily emotional or religious (although these kinesthetic sensations often gave rise to emotions and religious feelings) but rather was rooted in the physical sensations of the body: The music that we sing is very physical because we perform with our voices and sometimes we sing harmonies that are very close, you know, you can hear almost a physical effect between notes and that can be a very strong experience and also when you are in a room where the sound really surrounds you and you can see that it is touching people I think that in a way is a spiritual moment. The sense of belonging and connectivity described here gives an interesting insight into why singing induces such feelings. As discussed in earlier chapters, resonance, temporality, and somatics (the movement of sound, the impermanence of sound, and the embodiment of sound) are all core characteristics of singing. These characteristics literally help us feel connected to each other. When performed in the context of a festival or ritual that celebrates multicultural faith traditions, it invites a sensation of belonging, even to traditions with which we are not familiar. This gives rise to the final characteristic of sung belonging I  would like to explore. Tacitness is often described as that which cannot be easily put into words but is nonetheless understood. It is a somatic “know-​how” deeper than language. It’s the kind of learning that occurs by paying attention to how our bodies feel when we do something. It is also helped by repetition, as our muscles “remember” the tasks we ask of them. It can be facilitated through watching. Looking at how another instrumentalist moves her fingers, for example, and imitating can help most of us learn better. There is an intimacy to tacit knowledge. When a musician tunes an instrument, for example, the decision-​making process leading to an “in-​ tune” sonority involves touch, listening, and a felt sense of material, both in the instrument and the surrounding space. This relational sense of music is particularly strong in singing because the primary instrument is our body. It is also important for migrants who bring their cultural “know-​ how” in their bodies. Along with discussions on resonance, somatics,

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performance, and temporality, this discussion of tacitness highlights a core characteristic of singing and how it might contribute to a sense of belonging. The importance of tacit learning in the context of migration will be a key focus. Changing understandings of community in light of migration leads to a final discussion on the concept of hospitality and its role in the ritualization of belonging.

Tacitness as a Key Element of Sung Belonging It may seem paradoxical to propose “tacitness” (from the Latin word for “silence”) as a core characteristic of singing. We often use the word “tacitness” or “tacit” to refer to something that can be understood without being said. It is this aspect of singing—​its ability to communicate in ways we cannot put into words—​that seems to me to be one of its fundamental strengths as an agent of belonging. Polanyi was the first to propose the use of the term “tacit” to refer to forms of learning that do not translate easily into formal, disembodied structures and the first to connect this way of learning to the subconscious relationship between bodies. He distinguishes between explicit and tacit forms of knowledge transfer.13 Explicit knowledge is that which can be transmitted in formal, structured modes (through systems capable of transcending embodied transfer, such as literacy and numeracy) while tacit knowledge is person and context specific. It includes the “touch and feel” dimension of human knowledge, the embodied, the “know-​how” we possess but cannot always articulate verbally. It is dependent on human-​to-​ human contact for transmission: “tacit knowledge sticks to the individual and is difficult to transfer other than via personal contact. Tacit knowledge, usually, is shared through highly interactive conversation, storytelling, observation and/​or some form of shared experience.”14 Musicians, for example, are increasingly aware that the learning of repertoire is much more successful when acquired from a culture-​bearer. Repertoire transmitted through printed notation or even audiovisual documentation cannot convey the performative dimension of, for example, singing, nor can it adequately portray the subtleties of breath, expressive body movement, and the communicative dimensions of performance. There is a growing recognition among music educators, within both formal and informal contexts, that a key aspect of multicultural education involves the inclusion of tacit forms of knowledge. O’Flynn argues that multicultural education has too often focused on repertoire (a “world music”

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approach that includes a selection of repertoire from around the world) without adequately recognizing that the transmission of this repertoire must also involve embracing other “world” models of musicality and pedagogy. This will almost always necessitate an engagement with performers/​pedagogues from other musical practices.15 Shehan Campbell notes that “a growing recognition of the value of culture-​bearers has led teachers to invite musicians from the community into school classrooms.”16 Likewise, with reference to the teaching and learning of Irish traditional and Balinese music, Downey17 and Dunbar-​Hall18 (2009) propose an “ethnopedagogical” approach which recognizes that teaching different musical traditions involves a holistic embrace of music’s cultural context (including contexts of transmission) and not just its cultural outputs (repertoire). This same point is made by Elliott when he argues against an understanding of culture as product oriented, proposing instead, that we think of culture, not as something we have, but as something we do with others: “an interplay among a group’s beliefs, informed actions (or action systems) and the outcomes of those informed actions.”19 Walker20 and Vaugeois21 note that, in a postcolonial context, not doing so is simply another act of colonization, whereby repertoires are appropriated as commodities, rather than engaged in as shared experiences. As singing is a body-​based activity, it is best learned through interaction with another singing body. Another aspect of tacit learning is its multisensory character. Even while learning a singular skill (for example, singing), the tacit learner is picking up gestural, olfactory, and visual cues, all of which contribute to a more holistic reproduction of the sonic learning. This multisensory dimension is especially important for hearing, which itself develops as a multisensory experience in the unborn child. The sense of touch, smell, and taste develop in relationship with hearing.22 For the infant, the ability to produce sounds is linked to breathing, itself connected to the organs of smell and taste. These develop in intimate relationship in the growing child.23 This suggests another characteristic of music, which Nicholas Cook describes as one of its most potent: its ability to imagine itself. Music imagines itself into being in a very distinctive way. Part of this imagining is scaffolded by conventions of structure, form, and other cultural frameworks, but the foundation of musical composition is musical imagination, and musical imagination is characterized as extremely multisensory. When describing their compositional process, musicians often speak of a state close to synesthesia—​of not only “hearing” music in their minds, but also of “seeing” it and “feeling” it in their bodies. One well-​known account,

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quoted by Cook, is Schlösser’s rendition of Beethoven’s description concerning his own compositional process: I see and hear the picture in all its extent and dimensions stand before my mind like a cast and there remains for me nothing but the labour of writing it down which is quickly accomplished.24 Many musicians can “feel” new compositions emerging. Instrumentalists, for example, often feel them in their fingers, or compose by playing with motifs on their fingers, out of which new musical ideas emerge. Most performers describe musical memory as a combination of mental and physical memory, with sound literally embedded in their fingers. The rhythmic aspect of music is also often imagined across the whole body and is most difficult to articulate in any way other than through physical demonstration. Because singers cannot physically manipulate their instrument in the same direct way as an instrumentalist, many singers use visualization as a means of manipulating their vocal cords to produce desired sounds. Because of its tacit and multisensory character, the way in which music communicates differs from other forms of communication. While music is not primarily propositional or interrogative in the linguistic sense, its ability to communicate is powerful. Sloboda relates the common experience of going to a concert or musical event and, even if the music performed cannot be recalled (or paraphrased, as a play or poetry reading might be), the emotion that was communicated is remembered and valued by the listener: “[F]‌or a great number of us, then, music has extra-​musical meaning, however intangible.”25 What is being communicated may not be semantically clear or logical—​indeed, it may differ quite significantly for different people experiencing the performance. But the depth and significance of the communication would seem to be evidenced in the metaphorical attempts that most musical communities make to express their sense of music: an experience which can conjure up feelings of euphoria, catharsis, humor, or an existential, omnipotent sense of the world’s suffering or mystery.26 Emotional communication is increasingly understood at the physiological level, whereby we not only see and hear the emotional experiences of others, but through the activities of mirror neurons and body-​mapping, we can literally embody the emotions of others. Emotional arousal through, for example, a shared experience of music can be so powerful that it can

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override other more cerebral functions. This renders emotional communication a powerful tool of shared musical experiences.27 Music’s capability to communicate “below” the level of the rational also makes it a powerful ritual tool. Recent research has also demonstrated that musical expression in the form of singing is particularly potent for a number of reasons. One, as has already been discussed, is because of its intimate connection with the human body and its development, as well as its contribution to emotional communication. A second reason has to do with its ability to promote a sense of self-​esteem and inclusion, especially when singing occurs with others. There is a growing body of neurological, cognitive, and social psychological research suggesting that singing contributes to our sense of self-​identity, social integration, and belonging, especially when it is contextualized in an event (or ritual) that promotes these values. As part of a comprehensive evaluation of the national singing program “Sing Up!” for primary school children, introduced by the government of England in 2007, a study was carried out to investigate the possible impact of the singing program on social integration. The study reviewed three years of data collection from 2008 to 2011 and concluded that, irrespective of age, sex, or ethnicity, the higher the singing development rating, the more positive the child’s sense of self and of social inclusion.28 Studies also point to the success of such programs, not only in increasing a sense of social inclusion, but also in developing respect for diversity. In a study on a similar project in Northern Ireland, Oscar Odena noted the deep roots of segregation in Northern Ireland, even after the Peace Process; 13 of 26 local government districts, for example, are overwhelmingly Protestant, while 11 are strongly Catholic. Odena notes that segregation remains most acute in those areas of the North identified as “hot spots” during the Troubles.29 One of the findings of his study was the importance of introducing such projects at a young age. Inter-​group anxiety increases when early encounters are negative, but also increase when there is a lack of interaction, which can increase the anticipation of negative outcomes. Early, positive interactions increase the possibility of both integration and respect for difference. Music-​based projects such as singing and song composition are recommended in this study as sites of interaction, with a high possibility of positive outcome, based on the correlation between singing development and high rates of self-​esteem and social integration.30 The use of singing and song composition will be explored later in this chapter in the context of the World Carnival project.

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If tacitness is a primary characteristic of singing, it also plays a very interesting role in the context of migration. Knowledge transfer is a critical aspect of contemporary knowledge-​based economies. Williams and Baláž argue that this positions the migrant as a key player, particularly in areas where tacit knowledge is important:  “human mobility is a highly effective, and distinctive channel for knowledge transfer. Moreover, for some forms of tacit knowledge, it may be the only means of transfer.”31 Our best chance of positive communication between cultures often depends on human-​to-​human contact and, for this reason, the mobile human is an important mediating figure in communicating at the edges and boundaries between cultural groups. As the “world” is increasingly present in all its diversity in a greater number of villages, towns, and cities across the globe, migrants are uniquely positioned to act as knowledge-​brokers: “migrants frequently develop a consciousness of their transcultural position, which is reflected not only in their artistic and cultural work, but also in social and political action.”32 This is a defining reality of our time: while migration has always been a characteristic of human social, cultural, and economic development, but never so much as at the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-​first century. From the earliest migrations of Homo erectus, mobility has been a defining aspect of our human origins and evolution. Unique to our time, however, is the scope, impact and nature of this movement. Castles and Miller note that [w]‌hile movements of people across borders have shaped states and societies since time immemorial, what is distinctive in recent years is their global scope, their centrality to domestic and international politics and their enormous economic and social consequences.33 From the 1980s to the present time, the number of international migrants has doubled to an estimated 200 million people. Before 1990, the majority of international migrants lived in the developing world. Today, most live in the developed world and the proportion of migrants in developed countries is rising.34 Approximately 3 percent of the world’s population are migrants.35 Migration in the modern world is often both a catalyst for and a result of significant economic, social, and cultural change. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the largest wave of migration involved forced labor and indentured servitude. It is estimated that approximately

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15  million people were forcibly taken from West Africa to the Americas as slaves, while indentured labor from Asia (primarily India, China, and Japan) continued to feed the labor needs of New World plantations after the collapse of slavery. European colonization also led to several waves of migration. Because Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands promoted voluntary migration from Europe to the colonies, soldiers, farmers, entrepreneurs, missionaries, and political administrators settled in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The colonial powers also viewed the colonies as places of settlement for forced migrants such as criminals, orphans, and political dissidents. The next important wave of migration corresponded with the emergence of the United States as a major industrial power in the latter part of the nineteenth century. During this period, migrants from Italy, Spain, Eastern Europe, and post-​famine Ireland came to the United States to escape poverty and persecution. Since this time, the United States has become one of the most significant immigration countries, with almost 20 percent of the world’s migrants living there today. The post–​ World War II boom years brought about the next significant wave of global migration, including, for example, the Turkish Gastarbeiter in Germany, the North African pieds noirs in France, and the growing number of alambristas crossing the Mexican/​US border. Decolonization also led to significant migration of, for example, Hindus and Muslims after the partition of India, and of Jews and Palestinians after the establishment of Israel. These economic boom years, characterized by a shortage of labor to feed growing industrial development, continued in Europe until the post–​Cold War period, and in the United States until the 1990s, and has now shifted to the growing Asian economies of India and China.36 Contemporary migration continues to follow the demands of the economy, but is also unique in a number of ways. Castles and Miller suggest six ways in which contemporary migration is distinctive.37 First, migration has become more global, with the tendency for more countries to be experiencing migration movements at the same time, as well as for migration to any one country coming from an increasing number of countries of origin. In the case of Ireland, for example, in the twentieth century, migration was experienced in significant numbers for the first time from Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, while, at the same time, there was an explosion in returning Irish migrants from North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

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Second, there is an acceleration in the number of global migrants. While migration numbers doubled from 100 to 200  million between the 1980s and 2005, 25 million of these people migrated in the five-​year period of 2000–​2005. Third, there is greater differentiation in the reasons for migration, with more countries experiencing several forms of migration at the same time. In the case of Ireland, the migration explosion of the twentieth century combined economic migrants (both legal and irregular), refugees and asylum seekers, highly skilled migrants, non-​permanent and permanent migrants, as well as returning migrants and their families. Fourth, there is an increased feminization of migration. In the modern period, economic migrants and refugees were predominantly male. Since the 1960s, due to the changing nature of employment opportunities, particularly in the service and health-​care sectors, a growing number of women migrated. In Ireland, many pregnant women came to Ireland as asylum seekers, hoping to gain citizenship rights through their Irish-​born child, before changes in citizenship laws in 2004. The sex industry also accounts for growing levels of female trafficking. Fifth, migration has become increasingly politicized. The relationship between migration and security has become more acute since the attacks of 9/​11 and there is a growing demand for some level of global governance in monitoring human movement. Sixth, there is a proliferation of migration transitions. Migration patterns are less stable, and there are a growing number of so-​called circular migrants who move back and forth between their country of origin and their new host country. An interesting result of one of the most widespread surveys of Irish migrants in the twenty-​first century was the proposal that Ireland had a culture of migration, independent of economic need. In a survey of over 1,500 Irish living abroad, as well as in-​depth interviews with 22 households, the research noted that the long tradition of migration in Ireland has led to a culture whereby migration is associated not only with necessity, but also with adventure, experience, and opportunity, sometimes all at the same time.38 All these characteristics make migration one of the more formative issues of our contemporary world, whether we are ourselves migrants, or are living in a country that is experiencing the “drain” or “gain” of peoples through migration. As Kurien reminds us in her work on international migration and community identity in India, our senses of identity, community, and belonging are all threatened, reinforced, or reimagined in the

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face of migration. Her ethnographic study focused on three communities: Ezhava Hindus, Mappila Muslims, and Syrian Christians from Kerala, India, all of whom were involved in short-​term economic migration in the Middle East. She demonstrates how religion, gender, and status contributed to the identities of these communities, and how each of these were transformed through the process of migration and in turn transformed the communities to which the migrants returned.39 Economist Sergio Vergalli notes the paradoxical impact of migration, with experiences of community becoming more fluid, dynamic, and transient, and at the same time more inflexible, dogmatic, and nostalgic.40 Our ability to negotiate identity/​community/​belonging through cultural practices such as music and/​or ritual are also inevitably influenced. John Blacking’s famous definition of music as “humanly organized sound” which is “a product of the behavior of human groups”41 also becomes more complex as those same human groups become less permanent and more diverse, and as humans move across and between various sound communities or networks. Thomas Turino’s work on Andean panpipe and flute music, for example, demonstrates the role of music in creating and sustaining community in the face of wide-​scale rural to urban migration.42 Similarly, Keila Diehl explores the complex, global, and indigenous musical influences on young Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala and the role of music in negotiating an identity in exile.43 Migration calls into question long-​held beliefs concerning the nature and role of music, ritual, and community in a world characterized less by bounded, spatially localized cultures and more by fluid, overlapping, and splintering transnational cultural experiences. Migration theory suggests that it is no longer plausible to maintain static conceptualizations of community or of cultural experiences such as ritual or music. In this more mobile context, tacitness and human-​to-​ human cultural exchange becomes an important site of cultural formation and negotiation. The widespread movement of people has resulted in new ways of looking at or valuing these experiences. Olwig and Hastrup note that “the loss of place as a dominant metaphor for culture” is accepted by anthropologists in their engagement with the fragmented, dislocated, and destabilized aspects of postmodern culture.44 Similarly, the construct of “community” is questioned as an adequate term for the social and cultural networks, which characterize so much of contemporary life. Our attachment to terms such as “community” or “nation” can have more to do with the emotion they evoke than their existence in

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reality; thus they are often utilized in public rhetoric:  “In Northern Ireland, the ‘Catholic community’ and the ‘Protestant community’ are exhorted to make peace for the sake of the community.”45 While such rhetoric would seem to throw into relief the lack of community, it simultaneously reaffirms the desirability of the collective. Communities (like nations) are something we often imagine into existence out of a desire for a shared identity, as much as from the actuality of shared experience.46 Migration simultaneously contributes to the disintegration of community, the nostalgia for community, and the reimagining of community as less rooted in any one place, ethnicity, or culture, and more likely to be built out of intersecting, transient, and overlapping social, cultural, and personal networks: Our personal networks are often cumulatively developed over the course of multiple opportunities for consociation, in the process transforming collective experiences into personal intimacies. It is this process that probably most ensures some sense of personal continuity in circumstances of spatial and social mobility, even though it is the least institutionalized and hence structurally the least enduring. Indeed one has to wonder whether what anthropologists have identified as transnational fields or communities are not more often instances of personal networks of family and friendship. Are people forming transnational communities or transnational personal networks?47 This reconceptualization of community and identity suggests that, in an age of movement, these are less dependent on spatial proximity and more dependent on shared, tacit experiences. The nature of this experience renders it more or less capable of contributing to a sense of belonging. One way of conceptualizing this more tacit, experiential form of belonging is through the reformulation of community, with reference to the growing discourse around hospitality. As mentioned in the Introduction, scholars such as Elizabeth Newman have rehabilitated the construct of hospitality, insisting that it is far more than the “cozy” image it has received in our time. In Untamed Hospitality, she explores the dangerous dimensions of hospitality: the risk of engaging with the other; the risk of discovering the other within.48 Also working within the framework of Christian theology, Marianne Moyaert writes about a potential theology of interreligious hospitality. Noting the dialogical tension between identity and openness as

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one of the challenges of dialogue, she proposes a more encounter-​based, hermeneutic approach to a theology of hospitality.49 A central figure in this discourse is Jacques Derrida. Many of his writings address issues of hospitality and belonging, but the topic is specifically addressed in the publications On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness,50 and Of Hospitality,51 which specifically address the issue of refugees within a European context. Some of the key ideas were initially presented in a number of lectures given by Derrida in the late 1990s, including a series of talks in Paris in January 1996 and an address to the International Parliament of Writers in Strasbourg during the same year. Key to an understanding of Derrida’s construct of hospitality is his proposal that hospitality is double-​ stranded, including two, symbiotic approaches: the conditional and the unconditional. In order to fully understand the nature of the relationship between these two, it is useful to look briefly at his writings on forgiveness, where the double-​stranded helix metaphor is also introduced. Derrida suggests that conditional forgiveness is an act of the law, while unconditional forgiveness is the forgiveness of the unforgivable; “it is only possible in doing the impossible.”52 In other words, conditional forgiveness forgives the forgivable, while unconditional forgiveness forgives the unforgivable. It is the relationship between the two that is central; one should not exist without the other. Limiting forgiveness to the law allows for the possibility of justice, but justice is too limited a construct to house the unforgivable. Forgiving the unforgivable requires the unconditionality of love; . . . on the one side, the idea which is also a demand for the unconditional, gracious, infinite, an economic, forgiveness granted to the guilty as guilty, without counterpart, even to those who do not repent or ask forgiveness, and on the other side, as a great number of texts testify through many semantics refinements and difficulties, a conditional forgiveness proportionate to the recognition of the fault, to repentance, to the transformation of the sinner who then explicitly asks forgiveness. And who from that point is no longer guilty through and through, but already another, and better than the guilty one.53 Similarly, Derrida’s use of the construct of hospitality depends on this double-​stranded helix: the strand of relative, political, law-​based hospitality

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and that more aspirational “absolute” hospitality, on which he claims real hospitality must rest. Derrida’s interest in the construct of hospitality is related to his deconstruction of notions of “community.” Community, he suggests, emphasizes that which we hold in common. It is based as often on a shared sense of who does not belong as on who does. Indeed, the defining of “the other” as outside of the community can be one of the primary aspects that bind members of a community together. In his exposition of the religious dimensions of Derrida’s writings, John Caputo notes that Derrida’s use of the word “guard” converges with the meaning of “community,” which means of course a military formation, the wall of protection that the same builds against the other, the way a “people” (the “same”) builds a common fortification (com, munire) around itself against the other.54 Hospitality invites a more complex sense of relationship—​an engagement not only with those with whom we have something in common, but also with those to whom we might feel a sense of hostility or even fear. Etymologically speaking, hospitality is linked not only to the host, the hospital, the hostel, and the hospice, but also to hostility and the hostile. Hospitality depends on a tacit, experiential engagement with the other. The stranger or the foreigner is a familiar figure in Western literature, philosophy, and theology. Plato’s interrogative xenos, Paul’s Hellenistic cosmopolitanism, medieval peregrini and advenae, Marco Polo’s accounts of the marvels of the East, and the noble savage of Romanticism are all aspects of a complex, inherited projection of the other.55 Derrida suggests that, at the turn of the millennium from the twentieth to the twenty-​ first century, the stranger has been recast against a backdrop of global migration, unprecedented in its scope and character. The lecture entitled “Foreigner Question” (Question d’étranger) admits that the “question” of the foreigner preoccupies contemporary Europe, but equally reminds the listener/​reader that the foreigner him-​or herself is a question posed at the host society: … before being a question to be dealt with, before designating a concept, a theme, a problem, a programme, the question of the foreigner is a question of the foreigner, addressed to the foreigner… .

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But also the one who, putting the first question, puts me in question.56 The concept of hospitality, derived from the double meaning of hostis—​ both host and enemy—​implies both a patron or patriarch who welcomes, and a stranger (enemy?) to whom the invitation is addressed. The invitation is issued in the language and the culture of the host and it is this which first reveals the intrinsic inequality of the relationship. The foreigner must … ask for hospitality in a language which by definition is not his own, the one imposed on him by the master of the house, the host, the king, the lord, the authorities, the nation, the State, the father etc. This personage imposes on him translation into their own language and that’s the first act of violence.57 The necessity of language is imposed by the conditional invitation, through which the terms and conditions of hospitality are extended. One must understand the question in order to provide an adequate answer—​ an answer that indicates one’s status as a guest and not a parasite. The first aspect of this question is the ability to provide one’s own identity: “to receive him, you begin by asking his name.”58 The ability to identify the stranger is inextricably linked with the ability of the host society to define its own identity. Thus, asylum laws begin with documentation: accountability of the asylum seeker as both individual and type (name, label). Among the first questions asked of any asylum seeker is:  What is your name? The most frequently asked question of all foreigners is: Where do you come from? These are forms of hospitality. They are what Derrida calls “conditional” forms of hospitality. They offer hospitality within the conceptually driven limits of language and the law. They reveal interest, curiosity, a desire to understand the other. But they are also characterized by a desire to categorize, identify, and ghettoize. By forcing the other to define him-​ or herself according to the questions of the host, they often reinforce the intrinsic power of the host, by allowing him-​or herself to be defined differently/​better. “Does hospitality consist in interrogating the new arrival?”59 Certainly, at one level, it does. Without the conditional laws of hospitality, upon which most nation-​states rely, “the unconditional Law of hospitality would be in danger of remaining a pious and irresponsible desire, without form and without potency.”60

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The greater danger pointed up by Derrida’s work, however, is the tendency for the conditional to operate without regard for the unconditional. With regard to the question of refugees in Europe, Derrida suggests that asylum laws most often stop at the conditional, being more concerned with the categorization and identification of migrants than with any form of welcome beyond the realm of the political. This is evidenced by the fact that “the right to political asylum is less and less respected … in Europe.”61 The language of conditional laws does not allow for that which resides beyond its power to interrogate. It is at this point that Derrida suggests one must depart from the media of conditionality and move toward the search for the unconditional. Unconditional hospitality, like unconditional forgiveness, exists in the realm of the impossible, the imagined. It is of a different dimension, a placeless utopia beyond the necessity of law, politics, and language. It does not reject these realities, but must always strive beyond them: “it is between these two poles, irreconcilable and indissociable, that decisions and responsibilities are to be taken.”62 What is the nature of unconditional hospitality? Questioning the claim of Levinas that language is hospitality, Derrida notes that “… we have come to wonder whether absolute, hyperbolical, unconditional hospitality doesn’t consist in suspending language.”63 One proposition is that if conditional hospitality resides in the realm of language, unconditional hospitality resides in the realm of music. Both Derrida and Kristeva suggest that the first result of the suspension of language is silence: Derrida notes that “keeping silent is already a modality of possible speaking.”64 Kristeva suggests that “… between two languages, your realm is silence.”65 But what emerges after silence? Kristeva relates the story of a famous Russian linguist who claimed ironically to speak Russian in 15 different languages:  “As for me I  had the feeling that he rejected speech and his slack silence led him, at times, to sing and give rhythm to chanted poems.”66 In a chapter significantly entitled “Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner,” Kristeva makes claims for the emergence of music out of the suspension of language and the space of silence. Music is a doing and expressing beyond language: “stuck with that polymorphic mutism, the foreigner can, instead of saying, attempt doing.”67 This diving into the unconditional is characterized by the primordial (something that exists before language and consciousness) and the imagined. Compelling arguments have suggested music as the prime medium of both.

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In the first instance, the Derridean thrust toward this deeper kind of hospitality would seem to propose a delving down and back into some primordial way of being human—​one that is more essential than our increasingly cognitive and political modes. This kind of hospitality pushes beyond the realms of the logical and the linguistic and recognizes that the possibility of the unconditional depends on our ability to access the imagination, intuition, and the communication of emotion and feeling. An important insight shared across disciplinary approaches concerns the primal/​primary nature of human sound experiences. Human sound has a very intimate relationship with human hearing. The ability to hear is one of the first senses to develop in the unborn child. Prenatal auditory functioning continues to develop to the eighth month, but the unborn child is able to hear at approximately 18 weeks. Moreover, the first sounds the developing child usually hears are the sounds produced by its mother’s body.68 These sounds range from the sound of its mother’s voice to the sound of her heart. A newborn child can only see about 15 inches away in monochrome, but its sense of hearing is fully developed. What it experiences through this sonic ability is, of course, not primarily semantic, but highly affective and emotive. Studies indicate that the ability to hear in a newborn infant is intimately connected with the sounds its mother produces or enjoys hearing. Not only do babies respond to music they have heard in the womb, but they respond more emphatically to music that is favored by their mother. Babies have demonstrated the ability to change their sucking patterns to re-​enforce the humming of a well-​known lullaby.69 Moreover, the ability in the young child to produce sonority precedes its ability to produce language. Vocal development in the child consists of a number of stages. The first phase emerges when the physiological production of sound, superimposed on the infant’s breathing, develops into a euphonic cooing at about eight weeks of age. This represents the first controlled and modulated production of melodic sound. By two months, the infant has developed a range of vocalizations based on these early modulations/​melodies. Parents and caregivers intuitively guide these melodic vocalizations toward verbal communication and the later development of language, but these melodic modulations are also early forms of play, and theorists propose that this is one of the reasons that such modulations remain in the child’s repertoire of sound as a form of singing, even after the acquisition of words and language.70 Singing, therefore, is the foundation for language, as well as a form of ongoing play. These studies suggest that sonority is primal in the sense that its

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development is primary (first) and closely linked to the ability of humans to respond emotionally and intuitively to the world around them. The fundamental and foundational nature of its development in the human may be seen to resonate with Derrida’s description of the unconditional. Whether writing of hospitality, forgiveness, or cosmopolitanism, the absolute or the unconditional is presented as primary or foundational to the conditional: “This is why the distinction Derrida sets out at the start between the unconditional Law of hospitality and (in the plural) laws of hospitality is primordial.”71 Also supporting the proposal that music may function as a form of unconditional hospitality is its ability to imagine itself. As already discussed, musicologists such as Nicholas Cook have described music as an “imagined” form of human expression (its genesis being primarily of the imaginative rather than the rational mode), and have argued that the nature of this imagining is intrinsically multisensory. Does this reach back to its primal/​primary development in the “utopia” of the womb, the alien/​ other habitat of the “not-​yet” realized? Has the nature of this imagining emerged from the necessary otherness of its original development, preceding linguistic and rational thought and articulation? In other words, does the emergence of singing as a prerequisite of verbalizing render it more amenable to the unconditional? These questions do not suppose that musical expression is not open to analysis, or that music’s contribution to meaning does not include negotiation with the rational. Music resides in the liminality between analysis and intuition, and any attempt to understand it must move itself methodologically into this space: “[P]‌ut bluntly, it is the dialectic of intuitive and analytical ways of making sense of the world.”72 This resonates with Derrida’s postulation of the Kantian “intermediate schemas”:  a space “between an unconditional law or an absolute desire for hospitality on the one hand and, on the other, a law, a politics, a conditional ethics.”73 Musical experiences dialogue with the conditional but always, simultaneously, remain in the realm of the unconditional: “there are layers of musical meaning, some beyond the reach of other forms of discourse.”74 Just as music does not exist exclusively in the realm of the imagined, neither does it exist exclusively in the tacit realm. Many forms of music exist and are shared beyond human exchange. Musical notation and musical recordings have long been used as forms of musical interaction and capture. However, as Turino suggests, these generate different kinds of social experience and exchange that cannot fully “embody”

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shared person-​to-​person music-​making. Nor can they replicate the somatic dimensions of music-​making and singing.75 The hospitality of singing, in the Derridean sense, is ultimately an ethical experience: “… inasmuch as it is a manner of being there, the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our own or as foreigners, ethics is hospitality.”76 Derrida cites Jankélévitch’s call for the “imperative of love and a ‘hyperbolic ethics’: an ethics, therefore, that carries itself beyond laws, norms, or any obligation.” 77 Using the language of hospitality, it is suggested here that experiences which lean into the “unconditional” (such as singing) are more likely to contribute to a sense of belonging. In his description of a community music gathering, Lee Higgins describes how the ritual of the community music workshop is both an example of conditional (in its structure) and unconditional (through its music) hospitality. He describes the entrance of a new arrival to a workshop in terms of conditional hospitality: “a new arrival does not simply cross a threshold to enter a community: s/​he is always also a direct challenge to the community at hand,”78 but he also describes the unconditional nature of the aspired-​for space: “the unconditional welcome prevents the closure characteristic of a determinate community.”79 Significantly, the medium of this unconditional welcome is music: “creative music-​making experiences are movements toward rapport with “the other,” instances of encounters with the unexpected and the unpredictable. The creative music-​making journey invites an experience of the unforeseeable, a venture toward the unconditional.”80 The movement between conditional and unconditional hospitality is the movement of music. It is tacit, person-​to-​person; it challenges set notions of who belongs and who doesn’t, and provides multisensory experiences of physical, emotional, and musical invitation.

Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir Tacitness encourages us to think of belonging as shared human experiences, rather than as set communities or cultures. This more fluid sense of belonging is thrown into relief when viewed through the lens of migration. It also heightens the focus on the strategies used to generate these experiences. Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir is an interesting example of the strategic development of belonging through song, which in many ways could be viewed as a “failed” example of conditional hospitality,

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but which achieved a form of unconditional hospitality through the subversion of the project’s initial strategic goals. In 1996, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland introduced a “targeted initiative programme” (renamed the “strategic innovation scheme” in 2004) with a view to widening access to higher education. A number of key groups were targeted, including people with disabilities, mature students, young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, and members of the travelling and refugee communities.81 The travelling community in Ireland has played a very important role in the preservation and transmission of Irish music and, with the introduction of the targeted initiative scheme, the Irish World Academy applied for and developed a project called “Nomad,” specializing in the development of cultural programs between the travelling community and the university.82 As mentioned in Chapter 1, although asylum seekers had been coming to Ireland in increasing numbers since the mid-​1990s, the first to come to Limerick as part of the national dispersal scheme came in 2000. Using Nomad as a model, we developed a sister scheme called “Sanctuary,” with a remit to support cultural projects bridging the university and new migrants. Contemporaneous with these developments, the Master’s in Community Music program at the Academy had become involved in a European-​wide, SOCRATES-​funded scheme called “Sound Links,” a project on cultural diversity in music education.83 As part of this initiative, the program agreed to coordinate a community music festival, and in 2002 Nomad and Sanctuary were invited to participate in the Limerick-​based festival. After a brainstorming session, we made two decisions that would influence the direction of the project. The first decision was to invite a third partner, the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO), to work with us. The Irish Chamber Orchestra has been one of the most important artistic ensembles in residence at the Academy and shares many of its core values. The establishment of a Chair of Music at the University of Limerick in 1994 coincided with an impulse to professionalize the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Ireland’s premier chamber string orchestra. An invitation from the newly appointed Chair, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, to the orchestra’s chief executive, John Kelly, resulted in a decision by Michael D. Higgins (at that time the minister for Arts, Culture, and the Gaeltacht; Higgins was elected president of Ireland in 2011), on the recommendation of the Arts Council, to relocate the orchestra to the University of Limerick campus. This decision birthed a relationship between the orchestra and the Academy, which has spanned two decades.

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Like the Academy, the ICO has a commitment to community outreach built into its ethos and coordinates one of the most successful outreach programs in Limerick city, “Sing Out With Strings.” Their education officer is a graduate of the Master’s in Community Music program and also coordinates the World Carnival project, a second community-​based event that will be discussed later in this chapter.84 The second decision was to focus our project on the needs of women. This emerged from a recognition of the particular obstacles that faced women from both the travelling and refugee and asylum-​seeking communities in accessing higher education. Child care was one of the most significant. Many educational and cultural projects happened during evening hours, inadvertently precluding women who had no child care during that time. In addition, several women in the asylum-​seeking process were either single parents or had spouses or partners in their country or origin, making attendance at regular classes or rehearsals very difficult. It was decided that children and babies would be welcome to attend the rehearsals, as well as the final performance. An ongoing program for women in the travelling community was identified, and it was decided to combine this group of women, who were coming to the campus a number of days each week, with a group from the asylum-​seeking community, and to form a community-​based women’s choir. The goals of the choir, from the perspective of the coordinators, included exposure to university life through participation in a cultural activity; cultural exchange of repertoire from the travelling community and the cultures represented within the asylum-​ seeking community; and the provision of a creative space for women to explore creative music-​making. The choir that emerged was called “Comhcheol” (the Gaelic word for “harmony”). All the women who signed up for the project committed to several weeks of rehearsal at the university, as well as a final performance at the Community Music festival. Comhcheol provides an interesting example of how a tacit, musical experience was able to generate its own identity and its own terms of belonging through its practice. In presenting this experience, I am drawn to framing it with Bell’s suggested characteristics of ritual practice. These include its ability to be strategic, situational, embedded in misrecognition of what it is actually doing, and engaged in what she refers to as “redemptive hegemony.”85 In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu argues that practice is not a matter of following rules, which can be easily articulated and

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conceptualized by theorists. The “logic” of practice is not primarily intellectualist but, as a phenomenon that unfolds in real time, consists of a series of “moves” that involve ad hoc, planned, improvised, conscious, and unconscious decisions, choices, and creative expressions, which articulate “plans,” which may be limited to a single action, or may be part of a long-​term program. As such, these activities are strategic, not because they enact pre-​conceptualized ideas, but because the very act of acting involves decision-​making toward a finite, expressed reality, what Bourdieu calls “the intentionless invention of regulated improvisation … it is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know.”86 Ortner, in her classic article on “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties,” argues that most actions are only intelligible when understood within the wider social program, and that they both consciously and unconsciously enact the strategies of that program.87 In terms of ritual singing, behaviors can be strategized in a number of ways. Some forms of ritual singing may do this through repertoire (as discussed in Chapter 2, repertoire can “flip” in terms of what it signifies, depending on the motivation of the singers); others through modes of performance (e.g., singing from hymnals, singing from memory, or improvising songs can all contribute to different behavioral strategies related, for example, to body presentation88); still others through participative choices related to gender, age, race, or ability. The performative choices become strategies toward the realization of values, not primarily by embracing these values conceptually, but by embodying them musically. In her study of Our Lady of Lourdes parish in San Francisco, an African-​American Catholic parish with a strong tradition of Gospel song, Mary McGann offers an interesting ethnographic account of how music-​making allows a community to experience itself as a social body and to actualize the diverse and complex nature of interpersonal relationship within the community. The unison singing of the whole community, for example, in repeated choruses, was a feature of most ritual services, with repeated phrases (“He is Lord! He is Lord!”; “Praise Jesus”; “Alleluia”) punctuating the ritual action and generating communal clapping, swaying, singing, and stamping: an articulation of the community as harmonious whole. Conversely, many Gospel songs in the ritual alternated in delivery between verses sung by a lead singer and chorused refrains, embodying personal, creative expressions, supported and surrounded—​but also, at times, in creative tension with—​communal, unified action. Finally, the climax of many pieces was

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expressed in the creative “breakdown” of structure and role, with soloist and chorus “interrupting” each other with increased abandon, and improvised phrases and movements shouted and sung in an ever-​increasing polyphony of sound, embodying the diversity and uniqueness of every voice and every experience.89 What is of interest is McGann’s contention that these musical experiences were not “enacting” community values of harmony, personal creativity, and respect for diversity, but rather that these values were generated through the ritual act of singing and were embodied through practice. The strategic generation of the community’s values took place primarily through the tacit knowledge of their ritual performance, rather than the conceptual knowledge of ideology. In the case of Comhcheol, one of the strategic practices I  observed concerned issues of musical leadership. The choir was established by Sanctuary and Nomad, and a facilitator from each project (myself, in the case of Sanctuary) “led” the rehearsals. We began each session with a number of “circle” songs (designed as ice-​breakers to get everyone singing), after which we invited members of the choir to introduce or suggest songs we might learn. While the ice-​breaker songs worked very well, there was always an awkward silence after the verbal invitation to share was given. Sometimes this was broken by a suggested song, but more often, one of the facilitators ended up stepping in with a proposal. However, one week, in a pause between verses in the circle song, one of the women simply intervened sonically and burst forth with her own song. The circle song died away, and those women who knew the song joined in. Eventually, this became the pattern, with women simply beginning a song at will and others joining in song or clapping or listening. Igbo, Yoruba, and Romanian songs mixed with songs in Cant, the traditional language of the travellers, as well as songs from “Sister Act” and Irish ballads. Our facilitated, organized leadership faded away as women asserted their own form of musical leadership, which did not follow our invitation but asserted itself through song. The selection of repertoire did not happen, as we had imagined it, through proposed songs and discussion, but instead through the emergence of the songs, which became most popular over the course of the weeks. Practice theory and contemporary cultural theory argue strongly for the situational nature of knowledge. Reacting against universalist, atemporal, and systemic understandings of knowledge, practice theory is girded in the specific, particular, and contextual manifestation of experience. The situationality of language, for example, has been one of the primary concerns

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of recent literary criticism; in The Pursuit of Signs, Jonathan Culler makes one of the most influential claims for intertextuality in the understanding of language and literature: In saying that my discourse is intelligible only in terms of a prior body of discourse—​other projects or thoughts which it implicitly or explicitly takes up, prolongs, cites, refutes, transforms—​I have posed the problem of intertextuality and asserted the intertextual nature of any verbal construct.90 Similarly, practice theory argues that practice (in this case, ritual singing) can only be understood in the interpraxial web of social activity, which includes the wider surround of previous and other musical acts, as well as other social behaviors related to music-​making, all of which contribute to the understanding of a particular act. The definitional enterprise must, according to this understanding of practice, fail from the outset, in that ritual or sonority can only be understood in its specific relational situation and not as an isolated abstraction. It is possible, however, for specific ritual singing practices to generate a sense of self-​identity and to thus share aspects of this identity with other practices that self-​identify in similar ways. Again, an example might be useful here. As described in Chapter 2, the struggle for independence that has marked so much of Ireland’s history and culture was both a political and religious affair, with nationalism and Catholicism becoming inextricably linked. Musically and ritually speaking, one of the interesting manifestations of Irish Catholic culture consisted of the plainchant festivals and competitions, which, though part of the nineteenth-​century legacy of the Cecilian movement, re-​emerged in the early twentieth century as a popular movement under the patronage of the bishops. These festivals often featured massed choirs, consisting of thousands of children: For example, at the 31st International Eucharist Congress held in Dublin in June, 1932, a children’s High Mass choir consisting of 2,700 boys and girls who sang not only the mass, Ecce Sacerdos, but also hymns in Irish.91 Practice theory argues that this ritual singing, as well as the values it performed, cannot be understood outside the context of its specific socio­political

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situationality. The inclusion of Irish-​ language hymns, alongside chant, played its part in creating a voice for the newly emergent Irish state at the beginning of the twentieth century, where Irish-​language song and Catholic Church music formed the core canon of musical education so that “the musical traditions that were excluded from the official canon of the previous century found an honored place in the schools of the young nation state.”92 Comhcheol itself is an interesting example of a form of cultural engineering, bringing together diverse groups that might not otherwise find a context within which to perform together. The motivations of Sanctuary and Nomad resulted in the formation of the choir, but it was not the university context that formed the tentative bonds of togetherness in the group, but rather shared experiences that emerged, for example, from their individual experiences of discrimination as members of minority groups. In one of the few comments to camera given by a member of the travelling community in the film documentary commissioned around the work of the choir, the issue of discrimination was raised as one shared by both groups: … there is a lot of discrimination against travellers as well and there is a lot of discrimination against the refugee people, like, which it’s wrong, between the both sides, it’s wrong.93 As mentioned in Chapter 1, one of the significant challenges to minority groups is the challenge of visibility and access to public space. For asylum seekers, direct provision, prohibitions on work, limited access to education, and lack of money all contribute to this reality. For travellers, discrimination on a personal and collective level also limits public access. According to a 2010 report by Micheál Mac Gréil, an Irish sociologist and Jesuit, 79.4% of the non-​traveller population would be reluctant to live next door to a traveller, while 18.2% would deny travellers the right to citizenship if given the choice.94 The public performance at the Community Music Festival offered most of the women from new migrant communities a first opportunity to represent themselves in the public domain since coming to Ireland. For many of the women in the travelling community, it was the first time they had ever performed publicly with people who were not travellers. In a documentary film made about the choir, Joe McGlynn, a founding member of Doras Luimní, reflected on the particular way in which singing in the

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festival context brought people together, acting as an agent of support in the face of isolation: I think there will be a lot more of this kind of bringing together of these minority groups and again highlighting the situations in the alienation sometimes of minority groups in Limerick and in Ireland.95 One of the more intriguing dimensions of practice explored by Bell is what she claims is its necessary misrecognition of its own action. Drawing on Derrida’s notion of aporia, as well as the Marxist claim that society could not exist unless it deceived itself about the real nature of that existence, Bell claims that practice is most effective when it maintains the ability to transcend its articulated sense of its own agenda. Bell uses Bourdieu’s theory of gift exchange to exemplify this point. For Bourdieu, the apparent altruism of gift-​giving conceals a complex reality of necessary reciprocity, power, and obligation, and that the apparently clear-​cut activity is full of ambiguities and equivocations. Bourdieu relates this to practice, wherein, as quoted earlier, he claims that the lack of conscious knowledge renders the activity all the more meaningful. Put another way, activity that entirely knows its own mind is always in danger of dogmatism and ultimately is at the mercy of conceptual persuasion. Practice must maintain the ability to “subvert” its own goals, in order for the community to achieve its actual goal. One need only think of the ideological appropriation of music-​ making activities by ideologies as diverse as Nazism, communism, and capitalism to understand that music called upon to completely embody a known, conceptual ideology is necessarily constrained in its ability to generate meaning. A ritual or performance-​based activity may embrace and articulate a coherent set of values around inclusivity, access, and participation, for example, but its musical practice may embody these—​or contest them—​in ways that may surpass the intentions of its participants. As mentioned earlier, one of the goals of Comhcheol was to support the exchange and transmission of musical repertoire unique to each of the cultural groups involved in the choir. The project facilitators were anxious to support the transmission of traditional Yoruba, Igbo, and traveller musical repertoires, being aware that there were important tradition-​bearers within the choir. This process was also viewed as a means of opening each community to the music of the other, and promoting respect and integration. Almost immediately, however, the choir began to subvert these goals through their musical choices and practices. Instead of singing songs that

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might be viewed as embodying their own identities, they chose instead to select repertoires that reflected their sense of the other community. The women from the traveller community kept asking the African women to sing “Sister Act” songs, identifying these as “African” songs. The African women, on the other hand, identified these as “American” songs but, as all things American seemed to be popular in Ireland, they sang the songs, not because they felt them as their own, but because they sensed that the other women would like them. Similarly, at one of the rehearsals, a woman from the travelling community started to sing “Limerick, You’re a Lady.” This song was written by Limerick singer-​songwriter Denis Allen in 1979 for “The Limerick Lady Festival.” The song became a number one hit, staying in the Irish charts for over a year, and was subsequently recorded by over 40 different artists.96 It was not a song from traveller culture but was much beloved by all the traveller women in the group, who all joined in the singing. This became the most popular song at each of the weekly rehearsal musical “interventions,” and soon the women from the asylum-​ seeking community suggested that this was the song they wished to “learn” from the others. It became a kind of anthem for the group, being sung at every rehearsal, as well as at the final performance. In the film documentary, the women are shown arriving to the festival in a mini-​bus singing “Limerick, You’re a Lady.” While the expressed goals of the project were to value the indigenous music traditions of the two groups, what actually emerged was a shared repertoire selected by the group with no reference to the initial goals. For the final concert, the choir sang “O Happy Day” from Sister Act, “Lean on Me,” and “Limerick, You’re a Lady.” While each group was asked to “contribute” songs, at the end it was not easy to decipher which songs came from which community, and all sang them with equal ownership. The point is that the musical practice did facilitate a kind of integration—​ perhaps at a much deeper level than initially envisaged—​but not at all in the way that the group had originally planned or thought that it would. The final aspect of tacit experience explored by Bell is what she calls “redemptive hegemony.” In this, she combines the notion of “hegemony,” as developed by Antonio Gramsci,97 with Kenelm Burridge’s postulation of the “redemptive process.”98 Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is a particular way of understanding power, which recognizes the existence of domination and subordination in the unconscious reality of everyday life. In her use of the term “redemptive hegemony,” Bell is interested in not only the way practices are enacted within the constraints of their social reality, but

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also how they can be instrumental in the reordering and redistribution of power. Bell’s engagement with this particular way of understanding power constructs has had a wide interdisciplinary influence, with writers seeing in it a potent tool for interrogating both ritual and musical practices. These include ritual practices as diverse as Christianity in contemporary India,99 popular culture in medieval Cairo,100 Catholicism and the Mi’kmaq101 and the relationship between women and spirit possession.102 The use of music-​making to contest power structures is discussed by Higgins in his account of the origins of community music in the United Kingdom: “[A]‌s a form of activism located within the politics of socialism, Community Music initially resisted formalized music education and was a protest against perceived misunderstandings of music’s nature and purpose.”103 I find myself drawn to Bell’s particular exposition of practice and tacit experience for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, it situates activity (of music-​or ritual-​making, for example) at the heart of the enterprise, rather than abstracted discourse. Such discourse is, of course, important, but perhaps less valuable than we think in its ability to conserve, contest, or influence human society, which, Bell contends (with Bourdieu, Giddens, et al.), takes place primarily through embodied behavior, not conceptualized thought. Second, in its engagement with constructs of power and hegemony, it takes its place among those postmodern disciplines (feminism, postcolonial studies, gender studies), birthed through a critique of our inherited, biased constructs of knowledge. As such, she suggests that practice is immensely political and has within its expressive form the ability to influence and contest sociocultural realities. The ability of practice to subvert or change its intended goals through its own actions, as well as its ability to define itself through that same practice, is very resonant with the experiences of Comhcheol, a striking example of a practice setting out with a clear agenda, ethos, and set of goals, only to have those subverted through its own actions and for a different set of values to be performed by its participants. Singing, particularly singing within the regularized ritual of weekly rehearsals and performances, emerges as a practice capable of facilitating this process. This understanding of the practice of ritualized singing is a good example of how sonic hospitality works as a form of unconditional hospitality. When I reflect on the experience of Comhcheol, it seems to me to be an interesting example of “failed” conditional hospitality. Derrida’s description of conditional hospitality reminds us that this form of hospitality

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needs a host (who sets the terms of the hospitality), as well as a recipient. It is often defined by political, cultural, and economic constraints, including the demand that both the host and the recipient are identifiable by group, status, or name. At several levels, Comhcheol failed to do what it set out to do. The two groups of women never really mixed socially. At tea break, they sat at two different tables. They often spoke different languages (mostly English and Yoruba, but also Romanian, Igbo, French, and Cant). There was tremendous shyness between the groups. Although we began each session with an introductory song, including the names of all the participants, I know that very few of the women actually knew the names of women from the other community by the end of the year. On the level of cultural exchange, the choir also failed to reach the initial goals of the coordinators. Part of our remit as educators and musicians involves the support and celebration of unique cultural traditions. We were anxious to facilitate the transmission of traditional Yoruba, Igbo, and travelling musical repertoires, and we were aware that there were important tradition bearers within the choir. We also viewed this learning process as a way of opening up each community to the music of the other, and of promoting respect and integration. This did not happen. Instead, the choir elected to sing well-​known Irish, country and western–​style songs, as well as some American-​style Gospel music. On the conditional level of hospitality, then, this musical event might be seen to have failed to reach even the most basic levels of welcome. After all, no one seemed to even remember each other’s name when the event was over. But I have come to wonder whether a deeper kind of hospitality did in fact occur—​one that had nothing to do with our overt, political goals of integration or cultural respect, but one that resided in the musical experience itself—​because, even if the tea breaks happened separately, the music-​making did not. The group self-​divided into high voices and low voices, which did not correspond with ethnic or community difference. One of the reasons “conditional” hospitality was not possible between the groups is that neither group could call themselves the “host.” In many ways, all were outsiders. It was unclear who was to welcome whom. The traditional dynamic of host and guest did not exist between them. If it existed anywhere, it was between both communities and the host university programs that issued the invitation to them as travellers and asylum seekers (label), asked them their names at every session, and issued the invitation to their home (university) on the condition that they participate in this choral program. Under these conditions, they were welcome. But

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the limits of this conditional hospitality were subverted by singing. What happened between the two communities happened at the musical level. In the environment of socializing (tea breaks) and learning (new songs with lyrics), very little hospitality was extended on any side. But, as mentioned earlier, the women broke through the limits of the structure imposed on them, often after being frustrated by a lack of linguistic communication, and would simply start singing. In this improvised space, an entire spectrum of repertoire emerged:  songs we were teaching each other, tribal songs that perhaps only one or two women could sing, Irish-​language songs sung only by the older members of the travelling community. If the women did not share a common language or heritage, most of them shared the common experience of motherhood. While the women sat in separate groups for tea break, children wandered between them. Once, a woman from the travelling community sang a song in memory of a child of hers who had died. I am sure that many of the African mothers did not understand all the words, but afterward, at least two of them found a way to get her to interact with their babies. What was communicated? How was it intuited? I don’t know, but I wrote in my journal that day that something came right out of the womb in the singing between the women at that session. Performance often brings its own kind of euphoria. In the video documentary, we see the women getting ready for the stage. We had shopped for a wide-​sweeping, floral neck scarf for everyone in the group and there are shots of women doing their hair, putting on makeup, and helping each other to pin on their scarves. There are shots of the performance, with heads tossed back, eyes closed, hands beating rhythms on hips, holding hands, mother holding babies, singing, and afterward, much hugging and jubilation between women who hardly knew each other and would not necessarily ever meet again. Was this hospitality? Can the question be answered outside of the tacit experience? Does the answer need to be articulated in words? Or can it only be located in the space between breath and the sonority of song?

World Carnival Like Comhcheol, World Carnival is another Sanctuary initiative that combines singing, multiculturalism, education, and performance. Also, like Comhcheol, it does not describe itself as a “ritual” but shares many of the characteristics of practice discussed earlier in this chapter. As

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with the festival context within which Comhcheol developed, its self-​ styled description as a “carnival” locates it in a spectrum of ritual performances. Its educational character, requiring weekly classes, has also resulted in certain ritualized activities that take place each year, including the use of recognized body signals to communicate with the children, the dressing of the performance space through the development of a parallel visual arts program, an encouragement to wear national dress, and the inclusion of parents and the wider community. The primary expressive dimension of the Carnival, however, is singing. For this reason, it provides a useful example of some of the characteristics of song sound that resonate with the earlier discussion on emergent or moving communities, while furthering ways in which singing may be hospitable. World Carnival emerged through the vision of Pat Lyons, principal of Maria King Presentation Primary School, one of the most multicultural schools in Limerick city, with over students of over 25 different nationalities. Most of these children are first-​generation migrants or children born of recent migrants to Ireland. While the school has several projects to promote language skills, literacy, integration, and intercultural awareness, Lyons believed that music had a unique role to play in creating a sense of belonging and hospitality at the school. The World Carnival project is facilitated by Kathleen Turner, a graduate of the Master’s in Community Music, and education officer for the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Kathleen meets with students from Junior Infants to Second Class (between the ages of approximately five and eight years) and teachers every week for a period of 24 weeks each year. In the first year of the program, she was accompanied by a student musician from Singapore with a background in music education and Asian children’s songs and a student percussionist from the United States with a specialist interest in salsa. In the second year, musicians from the Irish Chamber Orchestra joined the program, as well as a variety of well-​known Irish and international musicians. The program culminates in a Carnival performance each year, featuring all the children who have participated in the project, as well as musicians, teachers, parents, and members of the local community. In 2012, the performance moved from the school to the university for a gala lunch-​time event, featuring over 120 children, members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and guest artists from the Latin American group Lunfardia (Figure 5.3). The program consisted of songs from South Africa, North America, Mexico, Poland, and Ireland.

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Figure 5.3  World Carnival. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

It is not difficult to demonstrate the positive reaction of participants to this shared experience. As principal of the school, Lyons is convinced that this music program has created a visible change in his students: “Absolutely. You can see it, they are enjoying themselves so much and are so full of enthusiasm—​their confidence has improved noticeably.”104 Turner notes the importance of connecting the musical activity with the wider community and of extending the sense of welcome and hospitality created in the school through the music program to include parents, extended families, neighbors, teachers, and friends: “Working with the kids has been fantastic. They love music and it is great for them to have their community come along to support their performance.”105 While it is experientially easy to demonstrate the sense of community and welcome creating by singing together, it is more difficult to explain exactly how singing does this. Musicologist Nicholas Cook writes that … in the case of music the problem of experience and its representation is so pressing and so specific that some theorists, like ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger, have questioned the degree to which words can be regarded as capable of expressing musical experience at all. They have done so on the grounds that there is a basic

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incompatibility between words and rational reflection on the one hand, and the experiencing of music on the other—​an incompatibility whose source lies in the quite distinct logical structures of verbal and musical consciousness.106 Nevertheless, the desire to understand and articulate musical experience has led to attempts from several disciplinary perspectives, from cognitive psychology to ethnomusicology. All the preceding examples explore ways in which tacitness or the person-​to-​person shared experiences of singing in rituals designed to “welcome the other” facilitate experiences of belonging and hospitality.

Conclusion Contemporary experiences of migration challenge us to new ways of understanding community, ritual, hospitality, and belonging. These experiences bring us beyond social, cultural or ethnic commonality to embrace the difficulty of difference: both our own and others. It is an understanding that “resists any interpretation of community that privileges ‘gathering’ over ‘dislocation.’ ”107 Three festival and carnival events were explored, each with an emphasis on singing and each designed with the express agenda of facilitating cultural integration. The Anáil Dé/​Breath of God Festival of World Sacred Music emphasized religious vocal repertoire. The Community Music Festival in which the Comhcheol Women’s Choir took part opened up an invitation to two groups of women to meet each other, on their own terms, through singing. Finally, World Carnival provided an opportunity for children as young as five years old, as well as their parents, families, friends, and teachers, to express themselves through a variety of songs from over 25 different cultural traditions. One of the key arguments presented in this chapter is that these experiences of belonging are carried, not primarily through ideological conviction (indeed, as seen in the experiences of Comhcheol, these can often get in the way), but rather through the experiential dimensions of singing in ritual contexts or environments disposed toward belonging. This disposition occurs through practice (for example, singing together), as well as through the attitudes and values that “pass” through tacitness. For migrant communities, tacitness is particularly important because of the knowledge

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that the body carries and transfers. The form of belonging achieved aligns itself with Derrida’s proposal concerning unconditional hospitality: a form of welcome that goes beyond the limits of language or the law. While song does not bypass language, its embrace of sound goes beyond its “conditional” limits. The ability of the human body to both generate and perceive sound renders it particularly mobile. The migrating human body is capable of transferring and brokering a great deal of cultural information through the sounds it embodies. The sonority of singing, with its unique relationship to temporality, spatiality, human development, and our inter-​ sensory way of experiencing the world, is a potent medium of expressive selfhood, belonging, and difference. Bell’s exploration of aspects of practice, including its strategic and situational character and the value of its own “misrecognition,” as well as what she calls “redemptive hegemony,” involving a negotiation of power, provides a useful frame for understanding the agency of ritualized practices such as singing. A final note on my engagement with these three communities: in the Anáil Dé festival, I was primarily the artistic director and researcher. With World Carnival, I coordinated the funding and set up the project. But, with Comhcheol, I was a singer with the choir. While I conducted traditional ethnographic work with the former two communities, my attempts to do so with Comhcheol also “failed.” The women did not wish to be interviewed, and one asked me why I needed to talk to them if I was writing about singing? Wasn’t the singing enough? In many senses, that question goes to the heart of the matter, resonating with questions being asked by many disciplines involved in researching ritual and performance events. Is talking to people the best way to understand these events, or does it provide, at best, a supplemental insight into the experience, better understood through direct recourse to the event? In their landmark collection of essays on fieldwork and the documentation of musical experience, Barz and Cooley write: As we approach the twenty-​first century, ethnomusicology is in a unique position to reflect on our rich heritage as a field … [T]‌he fieldwork methodology of collecting data to support goals external to the field experience is no longer considered adequate. This model has not been replaced by a single new model or single methodology, but we have entered an experimental moment when new perspectives are needed.108

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This approach, increasingly employed by ethnomusicologists, involves viewing the performance as a “commentary” on itself. In other words, performance is understood as fieldwork: “The young and diverse field of performance studies is providing new perspectives toward performance-​ approach ethnographic methods … [O]‌thers have called for the inclusion of our entire sensory experience in ethnographic representation.”109 In the video documentary of the Comhcheol choir, there is a moment right before the choir starts to sing when you can hear a baby crying in the audience. The hall is in darkness but one of the mothers recognizes the sound of her crying child. She breaks away from the choir, walks down the front of the stage into the audience, gathers up her child, and comes back on stage. In this moment, the illusion of separateness is ruptured, and the audience, as well as the child, is gathered up into the experience. The choir starts singing “Limerick, You’re a Lady.” This song, like so many of Ireland’s songs, is one of migration. The singer is imagining the home he has left so far behind: While waking in the arms of distant waters, a new day finds me far away from home; And Limerick, you’re a lady: the one true love that I have ever known. In Comhcheol, many singing this song have left their own homes to come to Limerick, have travelled their own distant waters, and find themselves far from home. Others have lived all their lives in Limerick but have often been forced to live on its periphery. In the video, everyone starts singing: mother and child, asylum seeker, traveller, audience member: Your Shannon waters, tears of joy that flow. Words cannot capture the experience sufficiently, but in the much-​quoted theatrical expression, these wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

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Singing the Rite to Belong Baptismal Rituals and the Irish Citizenship Referendum

Introduction The Irish citizenship referendum of 2004 was a watershed moment in the history of the state in defining who was allowed to call themselves Irish, who might live in Ireland, and what it means to “belong” in Ireland. By 2004, the Sanctuary initiative was deeply embedded in the cultural life of new migrant communities in Limerick. In 2005, I gave birth to my son, Luke. In the five years before Luke was born, I had been an activist in the cultural and ritual integration of new migrant communities in Ireland. I was part of two African-​led choirs, as well as my own, very international university choir. Most of my publications at that time concerned the potential of ritual to provide an inclusive space of belonging for refugees and asylum seekers. I was an advocate of hospitality but never felt in need of it. I was part of the “host” institutions offering welcome, not seeking it. Luke’s birth gave me a new insight into ritual belonging. I was no longer able to actively participate in choirs. I still attended religious rituals as much as I could, but found myself sitting at the back and always trying to be near an exit so that I could slip out quietly if Luke started to cry. Instead of being an oasis of prayerful reflection and sung celebration, I began to find my ritual participation stressful. I found myself apologizing a lot—​ apologizing for Luke’s crying, apologizing if he threw something on the floor or put a sticky hand on someone’s purse, apologizing when he threw up on the person in front of us. I received strange looks and even some

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grumbled comments if I felt I needed to breastfeed him. I began to look for other places to ritualize—​places where I wouldn’t feel so self-​conscious. For the first time, I began to feel the lack of ritual inclusiveness I had been writing about. In this case, it was not an exclusion based on race or culture, but on age. I was no longer able to participate in the same way because I had a child. I began to take more notice of how we treat children. A few years later, I documented an incident that happened to my son when we were on sabbatical in the United States and attending Mass: The back of the church was full, so an usher was trying to direct people to available places. She looked at Luke and tapped his shoulder. At first, I thought she was trying to direct him to a seat. But I soon realized that she was gesturing for him to take off his hat. I felt a rush of surprising anger. With all the problems the Catholic church was experiencing—​its indefensible handling of the child sexual abuse scandals, its falling numbers and aging clergy—​was admonishing a child about wearing a hat in church really a priority? I saw the same look of bewilderment on his face as I obediently took the hat off his head. Then my anger turned inwards. Why was I kowtowing to this?1 Of course, wearing or not wearing a hat seems like a small thing, but these are often the kinds of markers we use to identify who “belongs” and who doesn’t. More recently, I was in Dublin attending a conference and had pulled onto the side of the road, as my partner was making a phone call. I was looking out the window and was struck by a large poster for the “One City, One People” campaign. Run by Dublin City Council’s Office for Integration, the campaign promotes Dublin as an open, accessible, safe, and equal place, which respects and embraces difference and does not accept racism or discrimination.2 The poster featured pictures of a number of people from different ethnic origins and different ages. One of the images was of a young girl wearing a headscarf. As I sat in the car looking at it, a young man walked up to the poster, pulled a marker out of his pocket, wrote “cunt” across her headscarf, and walked away. What struck me most was the ordinariness of his action. It was the middle of a sunny afternoon. He didn’t try to hide or sneak up to the poster. Nobody, including me, stopped or challenged him. These small anecdotes and hundreds more like them (someone throwing a shoe at one of our African-​American students; a young Polish child telling a young Nigerian child to “go back where you came from” in an

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Irish schoolyard) illustrate how easy it is—​by a word, a gesture, a look, a comment—​to exclude others. There are myriad ways in which we can communicate belonging or the opposite—​hospitality or hostility. My experience of the exclusion of children became personal when I had a child, but the situation that politicized this awareness in me occurred the year before, in 2004, when Ireland held a referendum on June 11 to amend the constitution and change what it meant to be a citizen of Ireland. In this chapter3, I will explore the impact of this referendum on a group of women I  was working with at that time. Most of these women were asylum seekers. Many of them were pregnant or had Irish-​born children. All of us sang together in a choir called “Trinity Choir” at the Augustinian Church in Limerick. Through an exploration of the ritual of baptism, I would like to suggest ways in which I believe a group of women used ritual singing to achieve a sense of “belonging” in a country about to deny the right to belong to their children.

Backdrop to the Citizenship Referendum Depending on one’s perspective, there may be a certain irony in noting that the origins of the citizenship referendum (a referendum to exclude certain people from the right to citizenship) emerged in part as a result of one of Ireland’s great political acts of inclusion, the so-​called Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This agreement marks one of the most significant moments in the recent peace process in Northern Ireland. Among other things, the agreement created a system of power sharing between institutions in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It also dealt with issues concerning the decommissioning of weapons, as well as civil rights. One such issue concerned the right to citizenship. Before signing the Good Friday agreement, the government of Ireland had to hold a referendum to amend two articles (Articles 2 and 3) in its constitution (the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland). Prior to this, Articles 2 and 3 made explicit irredentist claims on Northern Ireland and the changed text was to reflect the commitment toward creating a united Ireland through peaceful and democratic processes.4 The changes made to Article 2 are pertinent to the question of citizenship. The previous wording of the article claimed the whole island as “national territory”: “[T]‌he national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas”.5 The new wording, passed

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as part of the Nineteenth referendum, changed this claim of territorial ownership to a practical right to citizenship for every person born on the island of Ireland: It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish nation. That is also the entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law to be citizens of Ireland. Furthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.6 This change in the constitution meant that every person born on the island of Ireland (irrespective of whether they were born in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland) had an automatic right to Irish citizenship. There is no question that this change in the constitution represented one of the most radical and creative responses to the question of citizenship and its relationship to national belonging or identity existing in Europe at the time it was passed. The Good Friday agreement was contemporaneous with the beginnings of the Celtic Tiger and the first waves of new migrants coming to Ireland. Its focus, however, was on neither of these issues, but was firmly embedded in over two years of negotiations around peace in Northern Ireland. If the constitutional changes were not directly linked to net migration, they very quickly became an issue, both for the government of Ireland and for a Europe engaged in increasingly tighter immigration laws. Anthropologist Andrew Finlay notes that, [u]‌ nnerved perhaps by the implications of its own daring, the Government moved quickly to further changes to the constitution, which required another referendum. The excuse for the second referendum was the need for Ireland to protect itself from so-​called citizenship tourists from beyond the EU who were taking advantage of liberal citizenship policies.7 The years immediately preceding the Good Friday agreement marked what Lentin and McVeigh called a “high watermark” for refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland and Europe.8 The Irish Refugee Act of 1996 broadened the legal definition of a refugee to include persecution on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, or membership in a particular social group,

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including membership in a trade union. The year 1997 was declared the European Year Against Racism. But 1996 also marked the migration “turning point” for Ireland, as it became the last European Union state to become a country of net immigration. Until 1994, Ireland was the only member state with a negative net migration rate. By 2007, it had the third highest migration rate across the then 27 member states. In reaction to this rapidly changing environment, the Refugee Act of 1996 was almost immediately followed by a raft of more restrictive legislation, including the Immigration Bill of 1999, the Illegal Immigration (Trafficking) Act of 2000, and the amended Refugee Act of 2003. In this quickly changing legal environment, the rights of the so-​called non-​national parent of an Irish-​born child were also shrinking. Fajujonu v. Minister of Justice (1990) was an important benchmark in the treatment of third-​country national parents with Irish-​born children. The Fajujonu case involved two parents of Nigerian and Moroccan nationality, residing in Ireland without documentation. They had been living in Ireland for eight years when their case came before the Supreme Court. The plaintiff was their oldest daughter, an Irish citizen (they also had two other Irish-​ born children). The Supreme Court ruled that a child had a constitutional right to the “company, care and parentage of their parents within a family unit” 9 and granted the parents leave to remain in the country to care for their Irish-​born children. Following the Fajujona case, parents of Irish-​born children were routinely granted leave to remain by the Irish state. However, as numbers continued to rise over the next decade, pressure came on the political establishment, both from within Ireland and from the wider European community, to restrict such applications. In 1999, the year after the Good Friday agreement, there were 1,500 applications for leave to remain from the parents of Irish-​born children. By 2003, there were more than 11,500 pending. The Minister for Justice, Quality and Law Reform began refusing leaves in 2002 and a Supreme Court ruling in 2003 effectively overturned the Fajujona case. The L. and O. case of 2003 involved a Nigerian and a Czech Roma family. Having failed in their applications for asylum, deportation orders had commenced against them. Both families involved an Irish-​born child. In this case, the Supreme Court concluded that neither family had been in Ireland long enough (distinguishing them from the Fajujonas, who had been in Ireland for eight years) to make a case for the right to residence. Furthermore, it stated that the right to reside by a minor could not be exercised unless the minor was in a position to do so

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independently. Furthermore, the right to reside had to meet the expectations of “the common good,” which included the need to control immigration. The rights of the family, often seen as a marker of Ireland’s national identity, no longer trumped the state’s desire to control immigration. On February 19, 2003, the minister for Justice removed the process through which a parent could apply for leave to remain on the basis of an Irish-​ born child.10 Just as the right to apply for leave to remain was removed, the right of a child to citizenship, simply for being born in Ireland, was also increasingly questioned. In a front page article in the New York Times, the Irish situation was characterized as an invitation to citizenship abuse: Ireland not only offered citizenship to children born upon arrival; until 2003, it also allowed their illegal immigrant parents to stay. A short cut many asylum seekers used to win residency. Word got out: with a visa to Britain, a pregnant woman could reach Northern Ireland, take a cab across the border and gain residency by giving birth.11 In an article on the citizenship referendum in the Irish Times, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland at the time, Bertie Ahern referred to the “rampant abuse” of the Irish citizenship laws by asylum seekers and the need to close the loop-​hole with the referendum.12 The citizenship referendum of June 11, 2004, proposed an amendment to the constitution which, if passed, would mean that children born to non-​national parents would no longer have an automatic, constitutional right to citizenship. The proposed amendment was approved by 79% of the voters.

The Limerick Story As mentioned in Chapter 1, the first asylum seekers to come to Limerick following the governmental policy of dispersal arrived in 2000. Between then and January 2003, approximately 100 mothers were granted leave-​ to-​remain status in Limerick city on the basis of an Irish-​born child. This status entitled them to establish a residence outside the direct provision system and gave them eventual rights to education and employment. After 2003, mothers with Irish-​born children had to stay in the asylum process and in the direct provision centers, and decisions regarding their applications for leave to remain were made on a case-​by-​case basis. Following

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the citizenship referendum, it was no longer possible to apply for leave to remain on the basis of an Irish-​born child, as these children no longer had the right to Irish citizenship. The full rigor of the new legislation formulated to reflect these changes came into effect on January 1, 2005. Any child born to a parent who had entered the asylum process before January 1, 2005, was afforded a once-​off, final opportunity to apply for citizenship before the end of March 2005. I became pregnant in February 2005. Even though I had not been born in Ireland myself, I enjoyed the privilege of dual citizenship as an Irish American, as would my son. The unequal access to citizenship for mothers like myself felt very personal to me, not only because of my own pregnancy but because I  also happened to be working with a women’s choir at that time. In 2003, myself and one of my students from Nigeria had set up an African choir in the Augustinian Church in Limerick city. He led the choir during his year of study, and on his completion, we needed to find a new leader and keyboardist. While a leader emerged from within the ranks, we lacked a keyboard player, so I agreed to step in to help consolidate the choir during this time of transition. The membership of the choir, at that point, consisted entirely of women. It had not been designed as a female choir, but for various reasons, at the point when I became involved, the leader and members were all female. One member commented: Like with everything else, I think that the beginning of the choir brought a lot of excitement to members—​it was a meeting place too. Over time, the interest may have died down and the men became less interested and found the choir to be a “womanly thing” and so had to leave. The beginning also brought a sense of distraction to the isolation and the monotonous living conditions that members were under at the time. Most members were asylum seekers who were living in direct provision accommodation and I believe that they saw the choir as an escape from the routines of Monday to Sunday.13 I have written elsewhere about my first impressions and meeting with the choir in June 2004 in one of the large so-​called “Reception and Integration Centres” outside Limerick city: I had to reach for my sunglasses as I  crossed over the river and drove through my favourite part of Limerick. Whatever you might read about

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Limerick’s dreary cityscape or its “stab city” reputation, something always happens to me as I  drive across the bridge and see the looming stone tower of King John’s Castle in my rear view mirror and the Shannon river unfolding and embracing the cars as we cross over its generous flow. I have the directions propped up in front of me. Turn right at Hassett’s cross and left into Moyross. I have never driven in this part of town before and, for all that I know about Limerick’s troubled areas, I am unprepared for the number of boarded up houses I drive past and the graffiti-​sprayed walls—​“(C)IRA14; Rats Out.” Turn right after two miles. There is a security barrier and guard who stops the car, takes my license number and asks me the purpose of my visit. I sign a visitor’s sheet—​name, arrival time, departure time. The centre is on a hill and the breeze sweeps down the large green areas and across the several prefabricated buildings in the compound. There is another reception desk inside the main door and I am about to ask for directions to the choir practice when I hear voices. I walk around the corner and stand outside the door watching through a glass pane, unwilling to interrupt before the song is finished. I see about eight to ten women, some of whom I recognize, including Miriam15, who is now leading them in song. One of the women is visibly pregnant. There are three toddlers sleeping or sitting in strollers, one infant being breastfed and one small boy of about four swaying and clapping to the singing. The women are all seated, except for Miriam. Some have their eyes closed; some are watching the small children. All seem to be immersed in the experience—​heads back, hands raised, some clapping: “We shall go up into God’s house with songs of joy, We shall go into the house of the Lord. I rejoice when I heard them say, Let us Go to God’s house. And now our feet are standing within your gates O Jerusalem.”

They finish the song with a great laugh. “Yes, yes,” Miriam says. There are shouts of “Amen”; and “Oui, oui.” The breastfeeding mother lifts up her child and kisses her forehead. I knock on the door and go in.16 In the early years of working with Doras and later with Sanctuary, I worked almost exclusively with male asylum seekers. The three hostels that had applied for the government tender to house asylum seekers in Limerick city were all former student hostels, and were therefore built to cater to

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single people, not families. For this reason, the majority of asylum seekers who came to Limerick in the first waves of dispersal were single men. In October 2001, the first custom-​built accommodation center for asylum seekers in Ireland opened its doors outside of Limerick city. For the first time, a significant number of families were sent to Limerick, the majority of which were single-​parent units, headed by women with spouses still in their country of origin. While I knew several of the women from my involvement with Doras, my first in-​depth engagement with these women didn’t occur until I became involved with the choir in 2004. Most of the women in the choir were mothers. Some of them were single parents, and almost all of them were de facto single parents, having come to Ireland ahead of a spouse. Many of them had children they had left behind in Africa. Some arrived in Ireland in advanced stages of pregnancy. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are approximately 50 million displaced and uprooted persons seeking refugee status around the world. Between 75 and 80 percent of these are women and children.17 In many cases, a mother will leave her family in the hope of finding a more secure and safe home.18 Those women who came to Ireland while pregnant did so in the hope that their child would become an Irish citizen and pave the way to the eventual citizenship of the entire family. I have witnessed the anxiety and worry surrounding this fragile hope, as Irish law became increasingly restrictive toward children of asylum seekers. During the period from 2002 to 2005, the system changed from one within which leave to remain was routinely granted to non-​national parents of an Irish-​born child to a system where they had no right to apply, and finally, a scenario within which even their Irish-​born children had no right to citizenship. A choir member commented: One has to remember that most members were seeking residencies, of one kind or another in Ireland. That is why they were here in the first place. The situation of the unknown, the uncertainly, the living conditions, the fear of deportations, the lack of knowledge of what will happen to them or their children—​choir members were having “secondly reminders” of these, just like all other people who were in similar situations. This cornered them into a non-​stop life of stress, anxiety and in some cases depression. I saw choir members crack down under the pressures of these problems—​I talked with a few about these difficulties although I, too, was battling similar problems. But it became spontaneous to console one another, and in one another, we found strength to continue to go through

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each day—​it was like a sisterhood of people plagued by misfortunes. This is what kept the choir members going—​because, of course they were constantly under threats of the unknown. But the choir was a community, with members who were living the same life and had, to a certain extent, an understanding of what others were going through. They were horrible challenging times and there is no doubt then that the members were constantly stressed and anxious. Recognizing the vulnerability of asylum-​seeking mothers and their infants and/​or young children at this time, the music therapy program Suantrí (the Irish word for “lullaby”) was developed at Doras in association with Sanctuary and the music therapy program at the Academy, to identify and address needs related to parenting in the vulnerable refugee and asylum-​ seeking community.19 Suantrí worked with women from all immigration categories, from those who had received leave to remain status before 2003 and were well established in the community, to mothers in the asylum process in direct provision centers. The period of the program, corresponding as it did with the changes in legislation, was a time of uncertainty and anxiety for most of the mothers accessing the music therapy group. The “amnesty” announced at the beginning of 2005 for all children born before January 1st, 2005, created hope for some of the mothers, but also a period of new anxiety as they rushed to fulfill all legal requirements of application before the March deadline.20 One significant challenge for many of the women in this period of limbo was depression. The women repeatedly reported the psychological stress of living in direct provision units, loss of family and friends, loss of freedom, and the uncertainty of their future. One vignette from the group reports on a mother from one of the hostels, who started coming to the group with her baby when he was just 10 days old. Over time, she appeared less and less frequently and, when she did, she was often in her night clothes: … she spoke of the difficulty of leaving her room. She described her experiences of living in the accommodation centre and although she wished to be at the groups she said for her the life-​style was too depressing and stopped her from leaving the room she called

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“home.” This mother demonstrated excellent capability to have playful interactions with her new born however despite her expressed enjoyment of the session the feelings of depression were debilitating and prohibited her regular attendance at the sessions. Sessions continued to be offered to this mother however it is concerning that she almost never leaves her room now.21 Edwards notes that studies of depressed mothers have shown that music therapy is effective as a short-​term intervention, reflected in changes in the mother’s right frontal electroencephalograph (EEG) activation.22 As noted in Chapter 4, parents and caregivers intuitively guide and respond to infant vocalizations. Singing, cooing, and the use of “motherese” (the articulation of nonsense syllables) are all part of this early fabric of communication. If this communication is lacking because a parent is unable to interact due to stress, pressure, or other vulnerabilities, this affects not only language development, but parent-​ infant bonding, an important developmental aspect of human social interaction. Alongside the trauma of those seeking citizenship was a lack of psychological preparedness for the changes happening in Ireland at the turn of the century among Irish people. Writers such as MacLachlan and O’Connell23 noted how underprepared Ireland was for the economic, cultural, psychological, and social changes it encountered during the years of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath. The surge of unprecedented wealth, followed by the collapse of authority of long-​standing institutions such as the church and the banks, as well as new experiences of cultural “others,” often resulted in a level of irrational fear. At the time of the referendum, much of this was directed toward those women perceived as “over-​running” the country with their Irish-​born children.24 The legal limbo of this period, as well as the widespread rejection (manifesting at times in the media and society as outright hostility) of their right to build a life in Ireland, increased the distress experienced by many women. I know dozens of stories of young mothers who had not seen the children they left behind in several years, or of mothers who sent their Irish-​born children into hiding so that the children would not be deported with their parents, or of families separated through deportation. Here is one sample from an Irish Times article: Some 50 to 70 Nigerian failed asylum seekers were being detained last night in Dublin in advance of imminent deportation according to refugee support groups. Young people and a heavily pregnant

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woman were among those held at the centres…. The family of at least one Irish born child was also due for deportation.25 After the referendum, many of these Irish-​born children were in a political no-​man’s land. Some of them literally belonged nowhere, having no right to citizenship anywhere. Several were unable to access it from the country of their parent’s origin, and were now also denied it by the country of their own birth. In every political sense, they belonged nowhere.

Baptizing, Singing, and Belonging How does one find community when one belongs nowhere, when one has no clear knowledge of where home is? Derrida evokes Sophocles’ image of Oedipus arriving in Colonus—​the foreigner, the outsider, “without the knowledge, the knowledge of the place, and the knowledge of the name of the place, where he is, where he is going.”26 Likewise, Kristeva describes this same sense of being lost and adrift in the world: “not belonging to any place, any time, any love. A lost origin, the impossibility to take root, a rummaging memory, the present in abeyance. The space of the foreigner is a moving train, a plane in flight, the very transition that precludes stopping.”27 Where was the community to which these mothers and babies might belong? In a political sense, they were “non-​nationals,” for they had no community, no political or civic home to which they could claim belonging. They had no certainty and little control over their destiny. In many instances, these young women turned to the churches. This happened for two reasons. As already mentioned, the churches in Ireland were among the first organizations to offer public support to asylum seekers. Many churches and religious groups, across all denominations, were founding members of the support groups, which sprang up around the country as asylum seekers began to arrive. Office space, teaching rooms, and community halls were made available to cash-​starved voluntary groups. In addition, there was an extremely high level of religious practice common among the asylum seekers who came to Ireland.28 Practical hospitality came to meet this deep faith, which found expression in ritual practice. In my own work with the Augustinian Church, where I sang with the women of the Trinity Choir, I was especially struck by the number of infant baptisms among the asylum-​seeking community. The asylum seekers in this church were primarily of African origin, with the majority originating in Nigeria, but also a sizable community from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, and other English-​and French-​speaking African

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countries. The baptism of a child became one of the most frequent causes of celebration in the asylum hostels. With few opportunities for public celebration, a baptism provided a focus for festivity: traditional dress was taken out, traditional food was cooked, and the child was welcomed with song and prayer and dancing. If this child had no political home, it had a ritual community, one that celebrated its birth and hoped for its future and well-​ being, despite all the hardship and uncertainty facing the life of that child. This hope was expressed through the medium of prayer and song. One choir member noted the importance of the baptismal ritual in African culture, as well as its increased importance in the context of asylum seeking: I would say that in Africa, the baptism of a child is always a joyous occasion. Many parents look forward to it and it is also true to say that although the children know nothing during their baptism, their parents tend to spend a lot of money even at this time. It was and it is still common to find that the baptism of a child brings so much joy and ceremony to an African parent. However, it was significantly important for parents in the asylum process, not just women, that their children received baptism…. At the time, parents believed that the baptism certificates could help them to get residencies in Ireland. I understood that parents believed that the baptism certificates affirmed or solidified or served as a proof to the Government that parents were ready to obey the laws of the land. By so doing, would help give a positive influence to their applications. Denominationally, these rituals were striking. In the Augustinian Church where we sang, children were christened according to the rite of baptism for children of the Roman Catholic faith. But in practice, African Pentecostal, Methodist, Anglican, and Catholic Christians moved fluidly between the different denominations. Many of the women attended both a Roman Catholic Mass and a Pentecostal service every Sunday. Several belonged to more than one church. Others belonged to none, but liked to sing with a choir. The ideological or theological differences between the churches seemed of less importance than the space of welcome and belonging created by the ritual. The soundscape of the ritual was also fluid: Pentecostal praise songs mixed with traditional Catholic hymns, Yoruba and Lingala with English and French. The ritual community, it would seem, welcomed this child, not to a fixed, conceptual world of certainty and belief, but rather to a fluid, performed community, where belonging was an act of embodied faith.29 As discussed in Chapter 5, one of my primary approaches to ritual ethnography includes journaling and filming of ritual activities, rather than

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ethnographic interviews. The fine line between interview and interrogation is one I learned to be sensitive to when working with asylum seekers. A review of psychological services offered to asylum seekers over a two-​year period in a Dublin inner-​city hospital showed a high exposure to trauma and torture in the period before entering the asylum process.30 Therefore, my proposal concerning the “belonging” created by ritual singing is not based on people telling me that this is what they felt. Rather, I  will argue for this position based on two aspects of practice: somatic observation and repertoire analysis. I have a filmed ethnography of a baptismal ritual made on June 20, 2004. This was 10  days after the referendum took place and the overwhelming majority of Irish people voted to refuse the right to citizenship to, among others, children of asylum seekers. I will focus here on an analysis of the communion rite within this ritual. The communion rite is part of the second section of the Roman Catholic Mass called “the Liturgy of the Eucharist.” This part of the Mass commences with the “Preparation of the Gifts.” The bread and wine, which will become the body and blood of Jesus, are brought to the altar. This is followed by the “Eucharistic Prayer,” the “center and summit of the entire celebration,” both a prayer of thanksgiving and of sanctification.31 The communion rite consists of the invitation to the faithful to share the spiritual meal. It includes the common recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, a shared sign of peace, the breaking of the bread and its commingling with the blood, the singing of the Agnus Dei, personal preparation to receive the body and blood of Christ, and the reception of the sacrament of communion. The reception of communion is usually accompanied by singing. In the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the purpose of this singing is explained as follows: It’s function is to express outwardly the communicant’s union in spirit by means of the unity of their voices, to give evidence of joy of heart, and to make the procession to receive Christ’s body more fully an act of community. The song begins when the priest takes communion and continues for as long as seems appropriate, while the faithful receive Christ’s body.32 At this ritual, two communion songs were sung by two combined African choirs: Trinity choir (which would become the female choir; Figure 6.1), and Elikya (Figure 6.2), a choir started by Sanctuary and singers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The first song was “What Manner of Man Is Jesus?”33 and the second, “Nzambe, Ozali Nzambe”.34

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Figure 6.1  Trinity choir, 2004. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

Figure 6.2  Elikya choir, 2016. Photograph, Maurice Gunning.

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Somatic Community Despite the explanation given by the General Instruction of the Roman Missal concerning the role of singing for the communion rite (to give voice to one’s unity with the spirit, to express joy of heart, and to make the procession more fully an expression of community), many communion rites in Ireland take place with no music at all. The history of persecution in the Irish Catholic Church and the role of this “silencing” in explaining the lack of music in many contemporary Catholic rituals was discussed in the Introduction. In contrast, I  have never yet been involved in a liturgy with the African community that was not sung throughout. The somatic dimension of singing is also very explicit. In my observation of this ritual, for example, the choir never sat while singing. They always stood, moved, clapped, raised their hands in supplication, swayed, and stepped. Singing was always accompanied by movement. The choir leader either sang from the keyboard or in front of the choir. The djembe player stood and moved with the singers as well. The lead singer raised his hand, exhorting the singers on to their next line and adding declamations on top of the choir’s line. Songs were all harmonized, and the harmonic rhythm was usually reinforced by bodily movement. If the General Instruction provides a theological explanation for the role of singing during the communion procession, anthropologists such as Talal Asad provide a somatic one. Asad argues against the premise that religion is primarily cognitive, suggesting instead that it is essentially embodied. The deepest “inscriptions” of religion often happen before we understand cognitively what is being inscribed, like the small child learning to make the sign of the Cross before having any idea about the theology of the Trinity: “it is a modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge.”35 This “modern idea” is also explored by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, professor of Comparative History of Religion at Harvard University for much of his academic career. As a young man, he spent seven years as a missionary in India, where he experienced the partition of India and Pakistan; this period strongly informed his lifelong interest in Islam. In 1952, he established the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, the first such institute in North America. His background as a Christian

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missionary and ordained minister, as well as his deep knowledge of Asian languages and of the Islamic tradition, led to his growing conviction that our understanding of religion as based on belief—​that is, something we know or can be certain about—​is a modern construct:  “those who make belief central to religious life have taken a wrong turn”.36 Smith distinguished between the cognition of belief and the embodiment of faith. Tracing understandings of religion from ancient Rome to Renaissance Europe, he argued that the meaning of religion was the opposite of what modernity has made of it. For the ancients, religion functioned within the realm of the unknown—​the inexplicable, the mysterious, the impossible. Religious practice (for example, religious sacrifice, which formed the central ritual practice in ancient religions from Mesopotamia to Egypt) was about supplicating and offering thanksgiving for things that were beyond our control (e.g., a good harvest, good health, life after death), a way of negotiating what we could not comprehend or master. Similarly, for early Christians, practice and doctrine were built around the central mysteries of the church (How could God be both human and divine? How could God be one person, and yet also be the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? How could a virgin conceive a child?). The medieval Christian lived in a world dominated by saints, miracles, and mysticism. Smith calls this approach to religion “faith-​based” to distinguish it from the later emergence of what he calls “belief-​based” religion. This latter approach formulated its “Credo”—​“I believe”—​as a statement of certainty. Because “faith” cannot be expressed according to a set of principles, it relies more on action to embody it. We speak, for example, of a “leap” of faith, a metaphor based on a physical activity that hurls us forward. We also “leap into the unknown.” If embodied practices often allow us to express faith and hope rather than certainty, what did the embodied practices of the ritual singing at the baptismal ritual suggest? The “body language” of the singing, moving body was the language of communication and community. The complex rhythmic sonorities and movements cannot be maintained unless bodies and ears are “attuned” to each other. Harmonies go out of tune if there is not a feedback loop between listening and singing. The gestures of clapping and hand-​raising, as well as the spontaneous ululations of the women, are cross-​cultural sounds and gestures of strong emotion. Ululations have a long association with the ritual celebration of auspicious events. In Africa, it is also a

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form of participation, along with clapping and call-​and-​response singing. It is most often a sound associated with women. In his study of ululation, Kuipers suggests that musical activities such as these are performed models of cooperation.37 Kuiper’s proposal is that the embodied, musical expression of choirs such as the one described here can be understood as one of community, communication, joy of heart, and perhaps also of suffering. It is a sonic, somatic expression of belonging through doing. Asad objects to what he views as the Western imposition of cognitive notions of belief onto global religious experience. In most global traditions, religion is something that we do, more than something that we know. The five central pillars of Islam, for example, are primarily about doing (praying, giving to the needy, fasting, making pilgrimage), not doctrine. Even the shahada, the first pillar, called the “testimony of faith,” is about reciting the testimony—​doing faith—​rather than just believing it. Within Buddhism and Hinduism, the emphasis is much more on ritual practice (such as meditation, praying before domestic altars, or participating in public festivals) than on a set of agreed-​upon doctrines. Even within Christianity, theology, or God-​knowing, had its original source in the performance of the ritual of the Eucharist. This approach to religion argues that while belief may be based on reason, faith is not. Faith is not primarily a cognitive experience, it is an embodied one. Faith cannot articulate itself because it is dealing with exactly that for which we have no words—​the impossible, the unknowable. But faith can and does engage the unknown through ritual. According to this view, ritual is the performance of faith. Through ritual, we embody our relationship with the unknowable and uncontrollable in human existence. In this case, it can be proposed that the embodied, ritual singing of these choirs may be performing a number of things at the same time: faith in the face of the unknowable, joy in the sense of community and belonging, and sorrow in the memory of past losses and future uncertainties. The ubiquity of music in religious ritual also makes a case for its efficacy as performed “faith.” In his survey of music in world religions, musician and religious scholar Guy Beck writes of attending services in Christian churches, Jewish temples and synagogues, Islamic mosques, Sufi centers, meeting places of new religious movements, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh gatherings, and noting that “in all cases there were

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tonal recitations, chants, hymns, sacred songs and other musical numbers.” In his experience, “there were almost no communities or groups within the major world religions in which chant and music did not play a vital role.”38 The stylized performance of sound acted as one of the most potent media of religious expression across all the major world religions. Performance theorists such as Richard Schechner have noted that performance is central to ritual expression and may even be its most salient characteristic.39 This understanding of performance suggests that it provides us with the essential and existential opportunity to display and have witnessed aspects of our being-​in-​the-​world. If ritual provides us with the opportunity to perform aspects of the mystery of our existence, then music would seem to be one of the key media to which we turn to give this performance voice. In the absence of any legal ritual paving the way to belonging, a song-​based ritual emerged.40 In the case of the singing at this baptismal ritual, it is proposed that it embodied a sense of belonging not available to its participants in the legal or political sense, as well as embodying both faith and fear in an uncertain future.

Sonic Community The embodied performance of belonging, it is argued here, took the form of ritual singing. The style of this singing, as well as the selection of repertoire, is also of interest. The first song sung for the communion rite is a Praise and Worship song called “What Manner of Man Is Jesus?” This is a popular song with African communities, as can be seen by its appearance on, for example, online churches such as “Nigerian Church On Line” and several YouTube versions by African artists. The lyrics of the song refer to the miracles and cures of Jesus, recounted in Matthew’s Gospel, including the cure of the man with skin disease, the centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-​in-​law, and several others. Following these miracles, Jesus gets into a boat with some of his disciplines and a violent storm comes up and pitches the boat around the lake. The frightened disciplines wake Jesus from his oblivious sleep and beg him for help. He calls on them to have more faith, and then rebukes the wind and the water until they are calm. It is at this point that his astonished disciplines say, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27).

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The version sung by the choir emphasizes Jesus’ miraculous powers, with each line followed by an “Alleluia”: What manner of man is Jesus? Alleluia! He made the blind to see! Alleluia! He made the deaf to hear! Alleluia! He made the lame to walk! Alleluia! What manner of man is Jesus? Alleluia! The second song is a Congolese song, sung in Lingala, called “Nzambe, Ozali Nzambe.” In the CD recording made by the Elikya choir, this was translated as “God, is God forever.” This line functions as a recurrent refrain, following a number of improvised lines such as: Nzambe na Israel ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of Israel, you’re our God) … Nzambe na Moise ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of Moses …) Nzambe na Congo ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of the Congo …) Nzambe na Ireland ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of Ireland …) Nzambe na Jean-​Pierre ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of John-​Pierre …) Nzambe na Helen ozali nzambe ya tango inso … (God of Helen …) The God of the whole world is evoked, with reference to places of the Bible and then places relevant to the participants (Israel, the Congo, Ireland, etc.), as well as with reference to people in the Bible, and those participating in the ritual (Moses, Jean-​Pierre, Helen, etc.). The lyrics of these two songs speak of the miraculous powers of God and our need to have faith, even in times of danger. They also depict an inclusive God, embracing all people, all places, and all times. If the song lyrics resonate with the performance of belonging, the musical style is also an interesting example of how this sense is created. Musicologist and sacred music specialist Michael Hawn has written extensively about two contrasting congregational song structures, which he calls “sequential” and “cyclic” (“refrain” forms straddle both of these). In his discussion on the respective characteristics of each structure, he suggests that

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cyclic structures are especially community-​oriented and encourage participation and integration. It is interesting to note that both “What Manner of Man Is Jesus?” and “Nzambe, Ozali Nzambe” could be described as cyclic/​ refrain songs. In contrasting this style with sequential structures, Hawn notes that cyclic structures tend toward a theme-​and-​variation form (as opposed to strophic) and are more movement oriented, rather than textually oriented. Cyclic forms tend to be very concise in their use of language (in contrast to the verbosity of sequential structures) and are often oral (not needing the use of a hymn book, for instance, to remember words) and ear oriented. Their performance time is open-​ended and therefore very suitable to processional or movement-​based ritual activities, as their length can be tailored to the movement. While sequential structures “comment” on the ritual activity, “cyclic” ones participate in it. Most important, the style of the music (community-​based but often inclusive of a cantor or soloists to sing over the cycle; encouraging of improvisation; often accompanied by a physical response and designed to integrate many vocal lines) encourages participation and a sense of community.41 An analysis, therefore, of the two songs sung for the communion rite would suggest that, somatically, lyrically, and structurally, the songs are conducive to communal participation and invite an experience of belonging and integration. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, it would seem to be the experience of belonging created by the ritual, rather than the theology of baptism, that is the primary draw toward this performed space. There are metaphors associated with the theology of baptism, however, which may also be helpful in understanding the role played by this ritual for the asylum-​seeking community at the time of the referendum. An important set of metaphors, historically speaking, were the metaphors of listening and hearing. Tertullian referred to catechumenates (those preparing for baptism) as Auditorum Tirocinia, or “the apprenticeship of hearers” ’—​a group being initiated into the art and heart of listening and hearing.42 Entrance into the Christian community depended on an ability to learn to listen and to hear the Logos, or the Word of God. Origen noted that this was no ordinary hearing. One did not listen for God’s word, he said, as one might listen to the philosophers. Christians must seek out those who want to hear them.43 In the earliest rites of initiation, following the final Lenten preparations, the priest touched the ears of the candidate, as well as the mouth or nostrils, and said Effeta (Hebrew for “be opened”). In his commentary on this rite, Ambrose explains that, like the deaf mute of the Gospel, the candidates’ ears become open (He made the deaf to hear! Alleluia!).

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If the practice of ritual singing provides a “rites-​based” rather than a “rights-​based” space of belonging, the metaphor of listening well might also be useful in understanding how this rite functions as a space of welcome or hospitality. If we open our ears to what is being sung, what do we hear? The lyrics of “What Manner of Man Is Jesus?”, for example, sing of a miraculous Jesus who can protect even against stormy winds and waters. “Nzambe, Ozali Nzambe” reminds us that this God includes everyone, everywhere. There is an interesting historical association between Christian initiation rites in Ireland and a cultural preoccupation with a need for protection. In early medieval Irish Christianity, baptism was viewed not only as protection against the evils of this world, but also as providing safe passage to the next. In St. Patrick’s Letter to Coroticus, for example, he describes the journey of the baptized into the afterlife: “thanks be to God you baptized believers departed from this world to paradise. I  observe you:  you are beginning the journey to where there will be no night nor mourning, nor death anymore, but you will rejoice like calves loosed from their tethers.”44 The sense of protection described by Patrick was not only against the terrors of the natural world, but passed into Irish folk ritual as protection against evil supernatural forces and the power of the devil. Cited in Gillespie, John Dunton, an English bookseller, described his experience of visiting Dublin in the seventeenth century. He narrates the story of a dinner party at which a woman told of visitations she had received from a series of ghosts, urging her to baptize her child. She eventually acquiesced to their demands and, soon after the child was baptized, it was killed in an accident. The rituals of initiation were seen as potent tools in the fight for souls; “Catholic baptism was one of the ways of accessing the power of God. The exorcism performed by the holy man, which preceded the rite of baptism cleansed the child from evil and baptism conveyed a grace. It therefore offered a supernatural protection for the newborn child.”45 One might speculate on the connection between the real social danger that has characterized so much of the experience of being Catholic in Ireland historically and the emphasis placed on protection in initiation rites. Thomas Finn has argued a similar connection is his description of second-​century Christians in Rome and the development of highly elaborate rites of initiation, which he describes as a series of survival and protection rites. Drawing on descriptions of rituals such as the scrutinies and exorcism in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Finn notes that, while these may be directed toward the dangers of the supernatural world, they

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also reflect the very real presence of physical danger or death, which was a constant reality for the Christian community at that time. Finn explains the paradox of an elaborate ritual life in the face of imminent death through Turner’s discourse on ritual and liminality: … the condition of liminality is the fertile source of rituals and symbols, not to mention myths, philosophical systems and works of art. Given Christian liminality, one should find a flourishing ritual life among early Christians … [A]‌t the heart of this ritual life lies an extended rite of survival in the form of a richly articulated rite of passage from Roman society to Christian community—​a journey from the centre of the city, so to speak, to its fringes, where the Roman Christians dwelled both literally and figuratively.46 Just as the early Christian community existed in a consciousness of its own danger, so too did the Irish penal community. If one listened to the baptismal rites of the asylum-​seeking community at that time, perhaps one would also have heard the sounds of a similar danger. This danger may not have been of imminent death, but of the possibility of deportation, separation from one’s Irish-​born children, or the inability to reunite with children and spouses left behind in countries of origin. It included the daily danger of living in a country without citizenship, without rights. In all these cases, rites of baptism come to the fore, perhaps in response to these realities. In the latter case, the nature of these rituals was almost always celebratory and sung. The ritual was more performative than theological. The space created by these sonically driven rituals was about the performance of the unknown—​the witnessing to that which we cannot control. In doing so, it forms not a community bound by belief or certainty, but an experiential community, formed by a shared participation in uncertainty, uncontrollability, and incomprehensibility. The ritual experience becomes an experience of solidarity. The American pragmatist philosopher Phillip Hallie wrote that there is but a single letter in the difference between the French words solidaire and solitaire—​between solidarity and solitude.47 If ritual is birthed in the space between these two states, then ritual music often acts as the expressive voice of this performance. Beck suggests that there would seem to be an intrinsic connection between religious ritual and musical activity, de­spite often radical differences in theological orientation—​monotheism,

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polytheism, … atheism, animism, spiritualism, and others all have this connection … group performances of sacred songs or hymns consolidate various human communities into a religious world of their own.48 Ritual and ritual music remind us, experientially, that we are not alone.

Conclusion As mentioned in the Introduction to this book, the monastic foundation at Agaunum, in the canton of Valais, in Switzerland, is credited with the introduction of laus perennis into the Western world in the sixth century. Unknown in the West until this time, this perpetual singing of the Psalms was maintained by relays of choirs who chanted the Psalms day and night. The foundation at Agaunum is also the sight of an earlier edifice dedicated to Mercury, the Roman God of, among other things, travel and journeying.49 As Bohlman reminds us in his discourse on pilgrimage, music narrates movement.50 The stories of migrant peoples are told as much in their songs as in the political narratives of their movements. In this chapter, the potential of sung sound, in the ritual context of baptism, to act as an agent of hospitality—​as a perpetual sounding of belonging in the face of explicit political rejection—​has been explored against the backdrop of the Irish citizenship referendum of 2004 and the fate of Irish-​born children and their asylum-​seeking parents at that time. In Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley speak of the need for humans to take rituals seriously, as they are at the heart of our survival and our ability to live with each other: “rituals are essential and powerful means for making the world a habitable and hospitable place.”51 Rituals form expressive communities, which allow us to negotiate life’s uncertainties, acknowledge our fears, and celebrate our existence. Speaking of baptism, for example, they note that “baptism is a parabolic moment, because it does not resolve the mysteries of uncertainty, identity, and death for the life journey ahead.”52 The ritual performance of baptism may not eliminate the dangers or the precariousness of the realities of asylum seeking, but it creates a space to recognize them, as well as an alternative experience of belonging through ritualized singing.

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The Power of Singing With this book, I have set out to explore a question that has dominated my work as a singer and ritual scholar: What are the characteristics of ritual singing that facilitate a sense of belonging? As with many ritual scholars and ethnomusicologists, I have used ethnographic fieldwork to ground this question in my own experience of singing within ritual contexts. Religious rituals and educationally based rituals, as well as civic and community-​based rituals, form the basis of that experience. As an Irish-​American Catholic, much of my religious ritual experience has been formed in the context of Christianity, and the ritual communities discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 include a spectrum of ritual and singing styles from Gregorian chant to African Christian music and Russian Orthodox chant. As a teacher and scholar of ritual song, I have also discussed educationally based rituals in the Irish World Academy at the University of Limerick, where I have studied and worked since 1994 (Figure 7.1). Finally, civic and community-​based rituals, including festivals and carnivals, were discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. Five key qualities of singing have emerged from these ritually based explorations. These include singing’s resonant, somatic, performative, temporal, and tacit character. Chapter  1 noted the intimate relationship between all sound and the spaces within which it resonates. Our attention to the resonant spaces in our bodies happens in dialogue with the resonant spaces outside of our bodies. Singing has the ability to use this relationship to manipulate affect and experience for both the singer and the listener. Singers modify their bodies to affect mood and sound color. They can use their relationship

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Figure 7.1  Members of the Academy and Sanctuary participants. Photograph, Maurice Gunning, 2016.

with space, as well as the relationship between singers’ bodies, to create different emotional and physiological conditions. As resonance is one of the most controllable tools at the disposal of the singer, it forms a powerful aspect of singing’s agency. Chapter 2 explored the essential, embodied nature of singing. It is a human expressive practice entirely dependent on our respiratory system, as well as our bone, nerve, and muscular structures. Somatic practices have reminded us of the importance of bodily awareness. This awareness not only enhances our ability to sing, but can also increase the feeling of well-​being associated with singing. Focusing on the body as the instrument of the singer was seen to be a useful and inclusive counter to the appropriation of sung repertoire for ideological positioning. The work of Richard Shusterman was a key anchor point in the exploration of the body and aesthetics. “Somaesthetics” reminds us that our bodies are primary sites of performances, experiences, thoughts, and actions, and that the art of living is an embodied one. The body is an active agent in our formulations of style, taste, culture, ethics, and society.

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With our renewed appreciation of the agency of the body comes a rehabilitated recognition of the importance of practice. Chapter 3 examined the impact of practice theory on understandings of performance. Practice theory has argued for the epistemic character of artistic practice, characterized by creativity, intuition, and invention. Practice theory and performance studies have helped singers recast their activities, not as passive “inscriptions” onto their bodies in socially structured rituals, but as active, intelligent practices, influencing social and cultural space through performance. If the resonant nature of singing brings it into contact with physical space, its transient character brings it into intimate dialogue with time. Chapter 4 explored the ability of singing to “collapse” our experience of time and space. Because singing travels on sound waves, it is constantly changing the space around it in response to movement. This movement occurs within a specific, unrepeatable temporal frame. As a result, singing also affects our sense of being in the world in a teleological manner. This has led world cultures to use singing as a metaphor, as well as a scientific or theological explanation, for our relationship with the natural and supernatural worlds. The essentially relational and communicative nature of singing (relating to the body, the physical and the temporal world) was highlighted in Chapter 5 in terms of tacitness. Person-​to-​person transmission is one of the most effective and holistic ways to pass on the cultural information embodied in singing. A  whole array of cultural values and beliefs may be transmitted in this kinesthetic experience. Emotional communication also occurs at this subconscious level. The tacit character of singing has been shown to increase opportunities for self-​definition, as well as social integration. These five characteristics point toward three important ways in which ritually framed singing is well positioned to promote a sense of belonging (see Table 7.1). Singing, like many musical activities, plays an important role in helping us structure experience. Because of its embodied nature, it is particularly good at structuring and bringing coherence to feelings and emotions. It also helps us structure, construct, and assimilate social and personal experiences. Singing also has an essentially relational character. It cannot exist outside of its relationship with time, space, the human body, and social

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Structures and shapes mood, color, and emotion Somatics Structures and supports awareness of sensation and the physiological body Performance Structures everyday experience and performs personal and social identity Temporality Structures experience through movement and transience Tacitness Structures person-​to-​person communi­cation

Relationship Relates the singing body to space

Agency Activates and modifies space through singing

Relates the singing Activates and conscious and modifies the body unconscious body through singing

Relates the singing, Activates the singer performing body and sociocultural with the receptive, experience through social body singing Relates the singing body to time

Activates and modifies time through singing

Relates the singing body to other singing and/​or listening bodies

Activates person-​ to-​person communication and transmission through singing

bodies of practice. In almost all cases, it has an important relationship with listening. Its relational character enhances its ability to act as an important tool of communication. The nature of its communication is usually “beneath” the level of the rational, making it a potent tool for emotional communication. Its somatic qualities also make it a strong kinaesthetic communicator. Finally, as a performed activity, singing has agency. Singing activates the space around itself. It activates the body that performs it. It activates a sense of time and transience. It is best transmitted through person-​to-​ person activity. Its agency is harnessed to multiple intelligences, drawing on tacit, emotional, kinesthetic, cognitive, and gestural sources of knowledge.

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Each of these characteristics is reinforced by the complex intra and inter relationship that singing has with time, space, and the body. And each of these characteristics suggests that singing is a highly effective medium for experiencing and expressing belonging. This belonging may be within our own bodies, the space around us, the people singing with us or listening to us. Rituals such as those described make very effective use of this ability. Many of the religious and community-​based rituals were designed with the intention of promoting a sense of belonging for new migrant communities. The educationally based rituals were designed to transmit core values of inclusivity or to provide a space to explore them. In a cultural context, all of these were engaged to some degree with the question of what it means to be Irish and who is allowed to belong in the new Ireland.

Singing the Rite to Belong One of the characteristics of this new Ireland is a degree of uncertainty. The institutional control of the Catholic church, which has characterized so much of Ireland’s social and cultural landscape since the foundation of the state, is crumbling. Irish culture and its concomitant values have become more diverse and are ritualized across a broader spectrum of practices. In a Derridean sense, values and beliefs may be proposed as increasingly residing in a post-​religious space of ritual performance. In The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, John Caputo asks the question that sets the tone for the rest of his book: Was Jacques Derrida religious? “What is this link that does not quite hold, yet does not break between ‘my religion’ and this leftist, secularist, sometimes scandalous, post-​Marxist Parisian intellectual?”1 Derrida, as he suggests, was Jewish without Judaism, marrying outside Judaism, not circumcising his sons, publicly stating his atheism and yet noting that “the constancy of God in my life is called by other names.”2 Caputo describes Derrida as hoping for, dreaming of, sighing over, and waiting for the tout autre, the wholly other. This wholly other is not the possible or the natural; nor is it the supernatural or the eternal. It is the impossible, the never-​can-​be. And yet, Caputo says, Derrida spent his whole life preparing for its coming—​setting a place for Elijah. This religion without religion, this searching for the impossible within the limits of the possible, is what we most often call deconstruction. Deconstruction, in this sense, is religion without the actual, historical

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details of religion; it is the non-​dogmatic experience of the “category” of religion. It is what Caputo calls “the movement of faith,” not the forms of belief. It is the climb of Abraham to Moriah to make a gift of Issac—​it is the impossible offering of one’s own child. For Caputo, Derrida’s religion without religion begins with the apophatic and moves to the messianic. The apophatic nature of deconstruction deals with the unnamable, the impossible. It is in this sense that he argues for the impossibility of unconditional forgiveness or hospitality—​the unnamable, the mysterious, the unknown and unknowing. But his religion without religion is also messianic: [H]‌ere we touch upon the heart of Derrida’s religion, of the call for a justice, a democracy, a just one to come, a call for peace among the concrete messianisms, issuing from a neo-​Aufklarer looking for a (post-​secular) religion within the limits of (a certain) reason alone (almost). This messianicity means to bring, if not eternal peace, at least a lull in the fighting in the wards among the concrete messianisms.3 Recently, my son made his first Holy Communion. I decided to keep a “ritual journal” of the year leading up to it, as a way of trying to make sense of the experience for myself, and perhaps for him in the future. Like so many Irish Catholics, I am ambivalent about what it means today to say I am “Catholic,” but equally ambivalent about what it would mean to say that I am not. In reading over this entry, I was struck by how much the children rose to the ritual experience and how it saddened me to feel that we were, to a large extent, ritually “homeless,” with only the occasional liturgy, such as this one, to remind us of what we were missing: This is the second Mass for the preparation for Communion. It is the Feast of Christ the King. The final Sunday in the church’s calendar. Next Sunday will be the beginning of Advent—​the beginning of a new year. The day is autumnal, full of a sense of “endings,” dying, settling down for the Winter. Struck by how beautiful all this dying is at this time of year. When we get to the church, Luke is excited to see the other children. How they love doing things like this together—​I feel so keenly the lack of this ritual space in their lives. Most of these children will rarely go to Mass again once their communion preparation is finished. I know why people leave—​I know why so much of myself has “left” over the years—​but on

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days like today, I feel the loss for all of us (November 24, 2013—​Feast of Christ the King). If the “concrete messianisms” no longer seem capable of communicating with ‘the other” or the unknowable, what might another form of messianism look like or sound like? If it is to manifest as a call of justice, how might it be experienced or rendered? The first clue Derrida gives us is that it might not have a name. In fact, it probably doesn’t have a language. If we are to find it, we must look or listen for it elsewhere. The second clue is that it is a movement, an experience, a desire embodied in a gesture. For Derrida, experience is always a combination of what is happening now (conditioned by time), folded into our memory of what happened in the past (retention) and our projections of what might happen in the future (protention). As such, the now-​ness of experience is not static, but a constant movement between what is, what was, and what is to come. For several reasons—​and herein lay the motivation behind this book—​ I was drawn to wonder whether these clues might point toward ritual song as a potential “voicing” of this impossible, yet to come, aspirational way of belonging. I have long been interested in the sonority of song; in its ability, not to abandon language, but to “put it in its place.” Almost more than any other form of human vocal expression, it appears to be capable of opening up possibilities of communication beyond the semantic or the linguistic. It exists in the temporality of the moment, but also contains within it our first soundings as infants, and our inevitable movement toward our next breath and the sound or silence it will express. In this sense, sung sound can be described as apophatic—​of being capable of reaching into the unknown and the unknowable through the experience of sounding. If this is the case, what makes it possible for this apophatic rendering to become messianic? What allows it to act on a desire for justice? It is this question that made me consider the ritual predispositions, which might encourage song toward this gesture. Of course, not all songs resound in this way, and not all rituals facilitate such a gesture. In order to propose ways in which ritual singing might be capable of this, I  decided to focus on one aspect of Derrida’s aspirational longing:  the longing toward belonging or hospitality. That this emerged from Derrida’s own preoccupations with his Algerian roots and the Algerian migrant in France, as well as my own work at that time with

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new migrant communities in Ireland, is hardly coincidental. Derrida’s notion of auto-​affection recognizes that the “other” always resides in the “I” and that auto-​affection must, inevitably, include an element of “hetero-​ affection.” But if this is the case, Irish literary critic Declan Kiberd notes that the opposite can also be true: we can hate the other because of what we hate in ourselves: “if you are cruel to another, it must be because you are taking revenge on some hated aspect of yourself.”4 The “inhospitality” or, some might suggest, the hostility of the law in Ireland toward asylum-​seekers, for example, even in its earlier, less restrictive manifestations, threw into sharp relief the hospitality and sense of belonging I had experienced in the context of sung rituals. As discussed in the preceding chapters, these rituals provided public space, community, the performance of lost and imagined spaces, as well as rituals in the face of danger or uncertainty. The lack of ritual space and ritual artifacts meant that much of the ritual experience was carried by embodied sound. I have tried to point to a number of reasons why singing in particular ritual contexts might be disposed to this kind of impossible hospitality. Grimes summarizes two of these reasons in his essay/​oral performance, “[P]‌erformance is currency.” First, singing is performing. Singing in rituals that have emerged out of a deep need for belonging embodies that desire, sonically and somatically. In this sense, I would align these rituals with what Grimes calls a “deep-​world” performance:  a performance “in which performers are so drastically identified with the objects of their performance that there is no difference.”5 The desires of the ritual participants merge with their expression. The sonic collapse of temporal experience(s) and real/​imagined space, the use of form to facilitate integration, the call and response of individuality/​community and similarity/​diversity—​the ability of song to embody and perform these values constitutes its greatest contribution to rituals of belonging: “If I am what I sing, what will singing this song make of me?”6 The second point Grimes makes is the realization that “more than ethical principles and just laws are needed” to bring about change.7 The kind of transformation needed to even approach unconditional hospitality requires, not just a change of mind, but a change of heart and a change of body. While Grimes is looking at a ritual transformation of our way of being in the world, a similar insistence on the need to live the values of hospitality and belonging, and not just believe them, is possible to make. Whether it is the sung belonging of the Comhcheol women’s choir among traveller and asylum-​seeking women, the hospitality of children in their

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somatic sponging-​up of global repertoire in the World Carnival, the pedagogical hospitality of the ritual lab or the Irish World Academy, or the attempts of Trinity choir to provide a space of belonging for its members despite the prevailing winds of legal rejection, ritual singing provides a way of being, which objects to any saying of “no” to the other. It is difficult to always say exactly how singing embodies this, but many writers have noted the particular value of singing with others to facilitate a sense of saying “yes,” or what theological writers sometimes call “grace”: When we experience consciousness of the unity in which we are embedded, the sacred whole that is in and around us, we exist in a state of grace. At such moments, our consciousness perceives not only our individual self, but also our larger self, the self of the cosmos… . Sometimes the consciousness of grace comes on quite suddenly and so intensely that the moment is never forgotten. More frequently, we experience slight versions of it, as in the act of group singing, when the alignment of vibrations evokes in us awareness of the vibratory ocean of flux and form all around us. Touching the ultimate truth in that way, and many others, brings us joy, release, connection and peace.8 Twenty years of working in the Irish World Academy have convinced me that it is possible to ritualize values (inclusivity, respect for diversity) through music, dance, and performance. Almost 15 years of teaching ritual laboratory has shown me the value of creating spaces in an educational curriculum for ritualizing and encouraging courageous, vulnerable, powerful, and creative emergent ritual experiences. For the same period of time, I  have shared the gift of singing in ritual environments with new migrant communities who have come to build a life in Limerick, as well as with my globally diverse students and colleagues. We have ritualized songs of belonging, and in doing so, we have momentarily become our singing.

The Weakness of Singing the Rite to Belong In these concluding pages, I find myself plagued by questions concerning the robustness of singing. Foucault’s discourse on power reminds us of the strength of power, but Martha Nussbaum’s treatment of Greek philosophical and literary writings reminds us of the precariousness or weakness of

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goodness. Her treatment of Greek tragedy, in particular, explores the vulnerability of goodness in the face of the arbitrariness of good fortune and luck. The Platonic search for the self-​sufficient, good life is motivated by the very fragility of its possibility.9 While framing song experiences within the context of hospitable rituals may provide an important experience of belonging for its participants, the very effervescence of its performance implies its fragility. A historical pitfall in the analysis of music and affect has always been the separation of musical analysis from its human production. The relationship between music-​making and the wider social reality is central to its ability to be affective.10 The wider social contexts within which the ritual music-​making communities of new migrants in Ireland exist are increasingly precarious. The crash of the Celtic Tiger economy, as well as the increase in the number of member states in the European Union from 2004, led to a decreased political will to either facilitate further applications for asylum or to accelerate the cases of those already here. By 2013, the number seeking asylum in Ireland had dropped to only 946; however, 4,360 asylum seekers were still living in the direct provision system. Of these, over 2,000 have been in the system for more than five years. Overcrowding is a challenge, with families of up to six people sharing a room. In some centers, different families share the same room.11 Once a child finishes second-​level education, they have no right to attend Irish higher education unless they apply as an international student, with the corresponding international fees. There are more than 1,600 children in the direct provision system. In the five years since 2009, social services have been alerted to more than 1,500 child protection or welfare concerns related to children or young people in the asylum process. The rate of reported incidences are three to four times higher than for young people in the general community and include incidences of inappropriate sexualized behavior from young children, the inability of parents to cope, unsupervised children, and mental health issues.12 In August 2014, a number of residents at a direct provision center outside Limerick went on a hunger strike to protest the conditions of the hostel. One resident had been in the system for 14  years. At the time of the hunger strike, he shared a room with six other men.13 The more recent European-​wide migration crisis is putting more stress on an already stretched provision. One of the more disturbing consequences of the citizenship referendum was the creation of a state where citizens were treated differently

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under the law than non-​citizens. A  new category of people was created, those who were “part of the Irish state” but had no right to citizenship: “the pathos of this act was only heightened by the fact that most of the people so disenfranchised were children.”14 Kevin Doran, the Catholic bishop of Elphin, spoke of the limbo of the asylum process: “Nor is it fair that men, women and children should be required to live in conditions which prevent them from living a normal family life, developing their skills or earning their own bread. Living such a half-​life would suck the music out of the soul of any human being.”15 Another disturbing example of this inequality concerned a young, pregnant woman in the asylum process who requested an abortion on the grounds of suicidal tendencies. The Protection of Life Pregnancy Act of 2013 (passed after a young mother died of septicemia, having been refused a termination) allowed for terminations if the life of the mother was threatened. In the case of suicidal tendencies, a panel of three doctors must agree to the procedure. No Irish woman has yet presented herself to the expert panel, with most still preferring to go to the United Kingdom, where abortion is legal. However, as a person in the asylum process cannot leave the state, this young woman had to go through the expert panel, where she was refused an abortion. She went on a thirst and hunger strike following this decision and was then delivered of her child at 25 weeks of gestation by Caesarean section. The premature baby was hospitalized and will go into state care. The National Woman’s Council of Ireland has called her treatment “horrific” and both pro-​life and pro-​choice groups have protested the treatment of both the mother and the child, compounded by their vulnerability as asylum seekers.16 None of these examples is a cause for optimism concerning the future of asylum seekers in Ireland. Nor do they seem to indicate a hospitable climate for those seeking a new home in a “new” Ireland. But Kiberd reminds us that to understand the fragility of the vulnerable, we must also have compassion for those who would seem to desire or even be complicit in creating the conditions of this vulnerability. He muses as to whether much of what the media frames as racism is simply fear—​whether “much of what is being expressed by local communities who find the ecology of their street or their village massively disturbed by a bureaucratic central government, which suddenly ‘plants’ refugees in their midst … the government’s failure to brief or persuade communities on the positive potentials of its policy has been at times lamentable.”17 He likens it to the attitude toward the English long observed in the Irish: they

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may dislike them in theory, but often love them as individuals. Similarly, the conceptual dislike of “the other” often breaks down in the face of first-​ hand, tacit relationships. The simple facts of eating together, even if we do not have the same language, or singing together, even if we do not know what we are singing, can go some way to encountering the other as a person, rather than a statistic. One of the more invidious aspects of the direct provision system is the way in which it separates and keeps hidden those in the system from the rest of society. The public, communal space provided by ritual breaks through that shield of invisibility. Singing breaks through the silence. In his afterword to a collection of essays on Ireland and postmodern theory, Edward Said noted the ongoing debate as to whether Ireland’s history was in fact colonial and, subsequently, postcolonial. There is, he suggests, a view that Ireland, as a European nation, can never be compared to India, the Congo, or Algeria in terms of a colonial past. But this would be to suppose that Ireland is best understood within a Eurocentric framework. A  wider framework that includes its relationships with America, Australia, or Africa—​all as important and historically influential—​is more representative of Ireland’s own sense of self: “[O]‌ne of the main strengths of postcolonial analysis is that it widens, instead of narrows, the interpretive perspective, which is another way of saying that it liberates instead of further constricting or colonizing the mind.”18 A postcolonial Ireland recognizes its affinity with the “other,” the migrant, the oppressed, as well as the oppressor in self and others. But in order to do so, it must liberate not only its mind from colonization, but also its body, its flesh and blood, as well as the flesh and blood of the others in our midst. Postcolonial perspectives widen our lens. Other interpretive frameworks may widen our hearts. Principles of ritual espoused by feminist writers such as Mary Collins, for example, subscribe to an understanding of ritual that is fundamentally relational, communal, and subversively critical.19 This critique is not robust. No more than a song, it does not necessarily have the strength to inscribe itself, to insist on itself. It can be understood, as Caputo would describe it, as a “weak force.” Yet, it is this very weakness, this fragility, that Nussbaum insists gives beauty and value to our lives. We are not good because we are powerful enough to be so. We value goodness precisely because it is so difficult to sustain in the changing fortunes of existence. The fragility of goodness, this weakness, Caputo insists, is not a thing or a name; it is an event. And it is this, ultimately, which convinces me

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that ritual song is not robust enough to achieve belonging, but existing as it does on something as insubstantial as breath, it may realize such an event: “the event is not a natural thing, not part of a natural language, it is more like a ghost, the spectre of a possibility. The event belongs to the order of the poor ‘perhaps,’ peut-​être, suggesting and soliciting another possibility in a still-​silent voice.”20 The events described in this book are rites of belonging. Many of these rites were perpetuated by people or for people who, in a legal sense, had very few rights to belong. Civil law may be able to create the frameworks within which people are allowed to belong, but the lived reality of belonging must be constantly performed and ritualized. These rituals are not always strong events; they may not have the conditional power of the law behind them, but they are deep events, within which participants inscribe the values of belonging onto their bodies, through the actions and agencies of those same bodies. This book has explored one of those ritualized activities: singing. On May 22, 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-​sex marriage by a popular vote. “The Big Gay Sing” was one of the many awareness and fundraising events leading up to the referendum. Hosted by drag queen and gay rights activist Rory O’Neill (a.k.a. Panti Bliss), she described the way in which music provided a space of belonging for her in the Ireland of the 1980s when homosexuality was still a criminal activity: Heading home from boarding school, the Christmas of 1984, I took the bus instead of my usual train. I remember I had the back row to myself, and the almost empty bus took hours to make the journey, trundling through the pitch-​black countryside. I was 14. I had my very first Walkman and a cassette full of songs I  had taped from the radio. One of them was Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat. The song was about a young gay boy feeling the need to leave his small town and go to London. There I was, bawling my eyes out in the back row, heading back to the Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, where as a small-​town boy myself I had never felt entirely comfortable. I cried because it spoke to me so well. The song was about me. It was me. Singing is powerful because when we sing, we can own the experience of weakness and fragility. When we listen to singing, we can become the

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song. When we sing with people in a ritual context, that ritual can become a place of belonging. Ephemeral, experiential, and ultimately disappearing, singing can be a momentary home. In her poem entitled “Home,” the Ireland Professor of Poetry (Ireland’s poet laureate) Paula Meehan describes singing as a kind of homing device, or “a map of tune.” The singer is home when she can recognize and ritualize her own song: “When the song that is in me is the song I hear from the world I’ll be home.”21 It is a song simultaneously sung and heard, created and gifted. It offers us, momentarily, the right to belong.

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In t roduc t ion 1. Talal Asad, Geneologies of Religion: Discipline and Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1993). 2. The St. Louis Jesuits are a group of religious composers and Jesuit schol ars, including Bob Dufford, John Foley, Dan Schutte, Tim Mannion, and Roc O’Connor from St. Louis University. Responding to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, they set religious texts to folk-​like melodies and acoustic guitar accompaniment. With early recordings selling over a million albums, their music was featured in most mainstream collections of Catholic music in the English-​speaking world from the 1980s onward. See Mike Gale, The Saint Louis Jesuits: Thirty Years (Portland: Oregon Catholic Press, 2006). 3. “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?” was made popular by Theodora Goldberg, who used the stage name Nora Bayes to fit in with the overwhelmingly Irish character of vaudeville and early Tin Pan Alley. Similarly, “Maggie Murphy’s Home” was written by Jewish composer David Braham (who changed his name from Abraham) and his Irish-​American son-​in-​law Ned Harrigan. See Mick Moloney, If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews [CD], (Compass Records, 2009), COM4525. 4. Throughout this book, “Ireland” is used to denote the Republic of Ireland, consisting of the 26 counties contained in the southern portion of the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland is politically one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. While its socioeconomic and cultural narrative is therefore distinctive from the Republic, there are also areas of shared history, which will be indicated in the text. 5. “Always faithful.” 6. James Donnelly, “The Troubled Contemporary Irish Catholic Church,” in Christianity in Ireland:  Revisiting the Story, eds. Brendan Bradshaw and Daire Keogh (Dublin: Columba Press, 2002), 271.

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7. For a fuller discussion of the connection between Catholicism and the Irish state, see Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950:  The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2002). 8. http://​www.rte (accessed July 9, 2013). RTÉ Player is a digital service provided by Radió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) for programs broadcast on RTÉ television and radio. 9. For a critique of the self-​styled cosmopolitanism of “the new Ireland,” see Steven Loyal, Understanding Irish Immigration: Capital, State and Labour in a Global Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 10. For further information on the use of the term “Celtic Tiger,” see Carmen Kuhling and Kieran Keohane, Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalization and Quality of Life (London and Dublin: Pluto Press, 2007), 1. 11. For a thorough summary of migration figures and policy in Ireland during this period, see the Migration Policy Institute country profile of Ireland, http://​ www.migrationinformation.org/​Feature/​print.cfm?ID=740 (accessed August 5, 2013). 12. See Mary Robinson, Everybody Matters:  A  Memoir (London:  Hodder and Stoughton, 2012). 13. For further discussion on the socioeconomic and cultural changes of the 1990s in Ireland, see Conor O’Callaghan’s introductory essay in The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. 3 (Winston-​Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 2013). 14. Originally named “the Irish World Music Centre,” it commenced as a postgraduate center for the study of Irish music, but quickly developed undergraduate as well as postgraduate programs encompassing a wide spectrum of performance practices, including music, dance, and festive arts. 15. www.mosmusic.ie/​(accessed June 2, 2015). 16. www.irishworldacademy.ie/​(accessed June 2, 2015). 17. A  River of Sound was a series of seven 40-​minute television programs produced in 1995 by Hummingbird Productions in association with RTE (Raidió Teilifís Éireann /​Radio and Television of Ireland) and BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). 18. Tony Mac Mahon, “Music of the Powerful and Majestic Past,” in Crosbhealach an Cheoil /​The Crossroads Conference 1996: Traditional and Change in Irish Traditional Music, eds. Fintan Vallely, Eithne Vallely, and Liz Doherty (Dublin: Whinstone Music, 1999), 112–​120; 113. 19. These albums, published by Gael Linn, included Caoineadh na Maighdine (1980), The Darkest Midnight (1982), and Vox de Nube (1989). Further information on this collaboration is available at www.theosony.com/​music/​ and www.glenstal. org (accessed June 2, 2015). 20. While the original work of Doras focused on the refugee and asylum-​seeking community, it has since broadened its remit to include all new migrants. For further information on the work of Doras, see their website, dorasluimni.org/​  (accessed June 2, 2015).

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21. Ethnomusicologist Timothy Rice proposed the replacing of “roots” (e.g., “Irish roots”) with “routes” to describe the complex and fluid relationship that postmodern culture has with its sense of origin and historical relationship in his article “Time, Place and Metaphor in Musical Experience and Ethnography,” Ethnomusicology, 47(2) (2003): 151–​179. 22. See, for example, Messner et al. (2007) and their analysis of the lyrics and musical themes in 23 country songs from the 1960s. Their research demonstrated how white racial extremists use music to advance their goals and movement objectives through lyrics that dehumanize African‐Americans and create imagery of white unity and solidarity. Beth A. Messner, Art Jipson, Paul J. Becker, and Bryan Byers, “The Hardest Hate: A Sociological Analysis of Country Hate Music,” Popular Music and Society, 30(4) (2007): 513–​531. Similarly, John M. Cotter examined the ritualization of Neo-​Nazi skinhead culture through heavy metal concerts in “Sounds of Hate:  White Power Rock and Roll and the Neo‐Nazi Skinhead Subculture,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 11(2) (1999): 11–​140. 23. Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality:  Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Ada, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2007). 24. For a further discussion of the rituals of Xenia and the hospitality of guest-​ friendship, see David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 25. In his discussion of the role of discipline and humility in medieval Christian monasticism, for example, Asad proposes the importance of somatic experience in the transmission of ideology; see Asad (1993). 26. “Among School Children” from Yeat’s Poems, edited and annotated by A. Norman Jeffares (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989), 325. 27. See, for example, a treatment of this theme in Martin Dowling, Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2014). 28. Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (New York: Grove Press, 1989). 29. The ritual laboratory concept on which this chapter is based is described in Ronald Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, rev. ed. (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1995). 30. As the traveller community is a recognized ethnic group, I will retain this spelling throughout the text. 31. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1992). 32. Ronald Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2014), 334. 33. Ignacio Ramos Gay, for example, explores the role of film music in romanticizing the ritualized violence of football hooliganism in “‘Hate the world, it’s so romantic’:  The Function of Song in Recent British Football Hooligan Film (1995–​2009),” ATLANTIS:  Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-​American Studies, 34(2) (2012): 85–​103. He argues that associations between sports, war,

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masculinity, and nationalism are ritually reinforced through rites of passage like gang activities and are “audibly amplified” by the use of music. 34. Ephesians 6:18. 35. For further development of the practice of laus perennis in Ireland, see Michael Maher, Irish Spirituality (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1981) and Peter O Carm O’Dwyer, Towards a History of Irish Spirituality (Dublin: Columba Press, 1995). 36. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, with Anne Dufourmantelle, trans. Rachel Bowly (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 77.

C h a p t er   1 1. For an early discussion on this ethnographic work, see Helen Phelan, “Borrowed Space, Embodied Sound:  The Sonic Potential of New Ritual Communities in Ireland,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 20(2) (2006): 19–​32. 2. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland 400–​ 1200 (London and New York: Longman, 1995), 196. 3. For further information on the use of the term “Celtic Tiger,” see Carmen Kuhling and Kieran Keohane, Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalisation and Quality of Life (London and Dublin: Pluto Press, 2007), 1. 4. Patrick O’Sullivan, Patterns of Migration (The Irish World Wide Series). (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1997), 46–​87. 5. Piaras Mac Éinrí, “Immigration Policy in Ireland,” in Responding to Racism in Ireland, eds. F. Farrell and P. Watt (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2001), 46–​87. 6. See Bryan Fanning, Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, 2nd ed. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2012). 7. For additional information on the history of refugee and asylum seeker figures and provision in Ireland, see Paul Cullen, Refugees and Asylum-​Seekers in Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000). 8. For further information on the policy of dispersal and direct provision, see Claire Breen, “The Policy of Direct Provision in Ireland: A Violation of Asylum Seekers’ Right to an Adequate Standard of Housing,” International Journal of Refugee Law, 20(4) (2008): 611–​636. 9. See Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation (Dublin: Metro Éireann Publications, 2006), 46. 10. I am indebted to the Doras community for the information I present here on the origins and ethos of the group. In particular, Sr. Ann Scully, Joe McGlynn, Eileen McGlynn, and Fr. Liam Ryan, OSA, gave generously of their time for extended interviews. In response to that central hermeneutic question, d’où parlez vous?—​I write from a place of admiration and respect for the vision and work of these people. I became a member of Doras in the summer of 2000 and a board member in 2003. While I am no longer a member of the board, my work with Sanctuary continues to intersect with the work of Doras.

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11. Helen Phelan and Nyiel Kuol, Integration and Service Provision: Survey of Persons with Refugee and Leave to Remain Status in Limerick City (Limerick: Limerick City Development Board, 2005). 12. Des McCafferty, Limerick:  Profile of a Changing City (Limerick:  Limerick City Development Board, 2005). 13. See Integrating Limerick:  Limerick City and County Integration Plan 2010–​12, Progress Report 2012; and Niamh Hourigan, ed., Understanding Limerick: Social Exclusion and Change (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011). 14. Phelan and Kuol (2005). 15. See Olivia Cosgrove et  al., Ireland’s New Religious Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 28. 16. Cullen (2000), 22. 17. Abel Ugba, “African Pentecostals in Twenty-​first Century Ireland: Identity and Integration,” in Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland, ed. Brian Fanning (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 169. 18. See, for example, Karen Ahlquist, Chorus and Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 19. Fr. George Zavershinsky played a seminal role in the facilitation of this ethnographic research and also assisted one of my students, Chris de Graw, in his field documentation of Vespers. 20. Helen Phelan, Sanctuary:  The World Church in Ireland. Programme 2:  The Russian Orthodox Church in Ireland, Lyric FM, August 17, 2003. 21. For further information on Fr. George Zavershinsky and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ireland, see Russian Orthodox Church in Belfast, www.stfinnian. webs.com/​, and Russian Ireland, www.russianireland.com/​index.php/​en/​news/​ 153-​russians-​in-​ireland/​6458-​rev-​george-​zavershinsky. 22. Lentin and McVeigh, After Optimism? Ireland, Racism and Globalisation, 46. 23. Helen Phelan, Anáil Dé, Breath of God Festival of World Sacred Music. Film documentary commissioned by the Sanctuary initiative at the Irish World Academy, produced by McGlynn Brothers Productions, 2002. 24. Ibid. 25. This is an excerpt from an interview carried out by Helen Phelan as part of the research for the Lyric FM radio programme:  Sanctuary:  The World Church in Ireland, Programme 1:  The Russian Orthodox Church, Lyric FM, August 10, 2003. 26. See, for example, Walter Brueggemann and William H Bellinger, Psalms: New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 27. I will refrain from the identification of individuals in this section as the membership and structure of the church has changed since the time of these interviews. 28. See The Elim Pentecostal Church: www.elimministries.net. 29. Thomas Flynn, The Charismatic Renewal and the Irish Experience (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1974).

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30. Walter J Hollenweger, “The Black Roots of Pentecostalism,” in Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition, eds. Allan Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 31. For further information on Irish African-​led churches, see Abel Ugba, Shades of Belonging:  African Pentecostals in 21st Century Ireland (Trenton, NJ, and Asmara: African World Press, 2009). 32. Abel Ugba, “Pentecostals in 21st Century Ireland,” Irish Quarterly Review, 95 (2006): 378; 163–​173, 166. 33. Joel Robbins, “Introduction: Global Religions, Pacific Island Transformations,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 15(2) (2001): 7–​12. See also Simon Coleman, “Moving towards the Millenium? Ritualized Mobility and the Cultivation of Agency among Charismatic Protestants,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 14(2) (2000): 16–​27. 34. Helen Phelan, Sanctuary:  The World Church in Ireland. Programme 4:  The Nigerian Pentecostal Church in Ireland, Lyric FM, August 31, 2003. 35. Ugba (2006), 169. 36. Phelan (2003), Programme 4. 37. Helen Phelan, Sanctuary:  The World Church in Ireland. Programme 3:  The Congolese Catholic Church in Ireland, Lyric FM, August 24, 2003. 38. Robert Caldwell and Joan Wall, Excellence in Singing:  Multilevel Learning and Multilevel Teaching, Vols.1 and 2 (Redmond, WA: Caldwell, 2001). 39. For a further discussion of the mechanics of resonance, see Marshall Long, Architectural Acoustics, 2nd ed. (Boston: Academic Press, 2014). 40. Lesley Mathieson, The Voice and Its Disorders, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Blackwell, 2001). 41. Barry Parker, Good Vibrations: The Singing Voice (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2009). 42. See Catherine Y. Wan, Theodor Rüber, Anya Hohmann, and Gottfried Schlaug, “The Therapeutic Effects of Singing in Neurological Disorders,” Music Perception, 27(4) (2010): 287–​295. 43. See, for example, Steven M.  Freidson’s work with the Tumbuka healers of Malawi, who fuel their healing trances with music including choral clapping, call and response singing, and drumming, Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996). 44. See Ralph Lorenz, “Health Benefits of Singing: A Perspective from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chi Kung,” The Phenomenon of Singing, 9 (2014): 154–​166. 45. Catherine Wan et  al., “The Therapeutic Effects of Singing in Neurological Disorders,” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27(4) (2010): 287–​295. 46. See, for example, Kevin J. Ford, “Preferences for Strong or Weak Singer’s Formant Resonance in Choral Tone Quality,” International Journal of Research in Choral Singing, 1(1) (2003): 29–​47. 47. See Nathalie Henrich, Mara Kiek, John Smith, and Joe Wolfe, “Resonance Strategies used in Bulgarian Women’s Singing Style: A Pilot Study,” Logopedics

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Phoniatrics Vocology, 32(4) (2007):  171–​ 177. For further discussion on the transformative power of ensemble performance and the growth of world song in community choirs, see also Caroline Bithell, A Different Voice, A  Different Song:  Reclaiming Community Through the Natural Voice and World Song (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 48. See, for example, Georgina Born, Music, Sound and Space:  Transformations of Public and Private Experience (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2013); J. Boyd and R. Williams, “Ritual Spaces: An Application of Aesthetic Theory to Zoroastrian Ritual,” Journal of Ritual Studies 3(1) (1989):  1–​44; Gavin Brown, “Theorizing Ritual as Performance:  Explorations of Ritual Indeterminacy,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 17(1) (2003):  3–​18; Nicky Gregson and Gillian Rose, “Taking Butler Elsewhere:  Performativities, Spatialities and Subjectivities,” Environment and Planning D:  Society and Space 18(4) (2000):  433–​452; Jean Holm and John Bowker, Sacred Place (London and New  York:  Continuum, 2001); Thomas Solomon, “Dueling Landscapes:  Singing Places and Identities in Highland Bolivia,” Ethnomusicology 44(2) (2000): 257–​280; Martin Stokes, ed., Ethnicity, Identity and Music:  The Musical Construction of Place (Oxford:  Berg, 1994); Nigel Thrift, Spatial Formations (London: Sage, 1996). . 49. A. Bar-​Yosef, “Musical Time Organization and Space Concept: A Model of Cross-​ Cultural Analogy,” Ethnomusicology, 45(3) (2001): 423–​442, 423. 50. Ibid., 423–​442. 51. “Space,” “place,” “location,” “site,” and “field” have all been used to designate differing conceptual nuances (e.g., Foucault, 1972; Rice, 2003). The use of the term “space” here refers to an amalgam of these concepts. It includes imaginary or ideal space (as will be seen through the use of sound to create this sense of space), physical space (“real” or “natural”), as well as conceptual notions of location (“Ireland,” “the sanctuary”). 52. See Clare Carroll and Patricia King, Ireland and Postcolonial Theory. Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Fanning (2007); Joan Fitzpatrick, Human Rights Protection for Refugees, Asylum-​ Seekers and Internationally Displaced Persons:  A  Guide to International Mechanisms and Procedures (New  York:  Transnational Publishers, 2001); Jamie Hampton, Internally Displaced People: A Global Survey (London: Earthscan, 2002); Kuhling and Keohane (2007); Lydia Morris, Managing Migration: Civic Stratification and Migrants Rights. (London: Routledge, 2002). 53. Rice (2003), 153. 54. Ibid., 151–​152. 55. Thomas Whelan, The Stranger in Our Midst:  Refugees in Ireland:  Causes, Experiences, Responses (Dublin:  Kimmage Mission Institute of Theology and Cultures, 2001). 56. For further information on the effects of breath-​based meditation practices see, for example, Danny Wang, J.J., Hengyi Rao, Marc Korczykowski, Nancy

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Wintering, John Pluta, Dharma Singh Khalsa, and Andrew B. Newberg, “Cerebral Blood Flow Changes Associated with Different Meditation Practices and Perceived Depth of Meditation,” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1) (2011): 60–​67. 57. Ronald Skeldon, Migration and Development:  A  Global Perspective (Longman Development Studies) (London and New York: Longman, 1997). 58. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion ed. Gil Anidjar (New  York:  Routledge, 2002), 47. 59. Linda Allen, “Participation and Resistance: The Role of Pentecostal Christianity in Maintaining Identity for Marshallese Migrants Living in the Midwestern United States,” Journal of Ritual Studies 15(2) (2001): 55–​61, 55. 60. Solomon (2000): 257–​280; 257. 61. Gerhard Kubik, “Interconnectedness in Ethnomusicological Research,” Ethnomusicology, 44(1): (2000): 1–​14. 62. Phelan, (2003), Programme 2. 63. Phelan (2003), Programme 4. 64. Ugba (2009), 173. 65. While the focus here is on the sonic elements of ritual, it is worth noting movement as the other primary “embodied” ritual action; indeed, to the extent that it is implicit to all sound (the body cannot produce sound without movement), it is also an important aspect of sonic experience. 66. Colm Tóibín, The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (London: Vintage, 1995), 111. 67. Fuller (2002). 68. Ibid. 69. Donnelly (2002), 278. 70. For one example of media coverage and analysis of this event, see The Irish Times, Tuesday, April 2, 2002. 71. www.childabusecommission.ie/​rpt/​. 72. www.justice.ie/​en/​JELR/​Pages/​PB09000504. 73. Séamus Murphy, SJ, “No Cheap Grace: Reforming the Irish Church,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 99(395) (2010): 303–​316, 304. 74. Gerry O’Hanlon, SJ, “The Future of the Catholic Church: A View from Ireland,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 99(395) (2010): 289–​302, 289. 75. http://​www.irishtimes.com/​news/​social-​affairs/​religion-​and-​beliefs/​chapter-​ 20-​of-​murphy-​report-​distils-​horror-​of-​world-​that-​had-​lost-​its-​moral-​compass-​ 1.1462178. 76. See, for example, Mary O’Regan, “The Irish Church’s Failures Have Caused Its People to Choose Secularism over Faith,” The Catholic Herald, May 25, 2015. 77. Enda McDonagh, Faith in Fragments (Dublin: Columba Press, 1996), 10. 78. The Economist, “Irelands Crash:  After the Race,” file://​ /U ​ sers/​helenphelan/​ Desktop/​Ireland’s%20crash:%20After%20the%20race%20%7C%20The%20 Economist.webarchive (accessed August 3, 2013).

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79. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–​2000 (London:  Profile Books, 2004). 80. Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London: Profile Books, 2009). 81. For an analysis of statistics from 1973 to the present, see Patsy McGarry’s article in The Irish Times, September 20, 2002. 82. See The Irish Catholic, “The Changing Face of First Holy Communion,” August 6, 2013. 83. Ugba (2007), 169. 84. Ibid. 85. Vincent Twomey, The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2003). 86. Vincent Twomey, “The Catholic Church Today Lacks a Passion for Truth,” The Irish Times, April 14, 2003. 87. Martin Stokes and Philip Bohlman, Celtic Modern:  Music at the Global Fringe (Lanham, MD, and Oxford: Scarecrow Press, 2003). 88. John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium: Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee, 1998, Art. 7. 89. Mary Lee Nolan and Sidney Nolan, “Regional Variations in Europe’s Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Tradition,” in Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces:  The Geography of Pilgrimages, eds. Robert Stoddard and Alan Morinis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, Geoscience Publications, 1997), 61. 90. Phillip Bohlman, “Pilgrimage, Politics and the Musical Remapping of the New Europe,” Ethnomusicology 40(3) (1996): 375–​412; 395. 91. Anna Fedele, Looking for Mary Magdalene:  Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4. 92. Key texts on the anthropology of pilgrimage include Victor Turner and Edith Turner, eds., Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, Columbia Classics in Religion (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1978/​ 2011); John Eade and Michael Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred:  the Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London: Routledge, 1991); Alan E. Morinis, ed., Sacred Journeys: Anthropology of Pilgrimage (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992). A discussion on the primary theoretical underpinnings of pilgrimage in anthropology is rehearsed in Chris Park, Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion (London: Routledge, 1994). 93. See Mary Lee Nolan, “Irish Pilgrimage: The Different Tradition,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 73(3) (1983):  421–​438; Mary Lee Nolan and Sidney Nolan, Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Peter Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland: The Monuments and the People (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1991). 94. Nolan and Nolan (1997), 88. 95. Peter O’Dwyer, Towards a History of Irish Spirituality (Dublin:  Columba Press, 1995). 96. Vincent Twomey, The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin:  Veritas Publications, 2003).

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97. Liam Ryan OSA, field interview, 2004. 98. Helen Phelan, Sanctuary:  The World Church in Ireland. Programme 2:  The Egyptian Coptic Church, Lyric FM, August 17, 2003. 99. Phelan (2003), Programme 1. 100. Jane Soothill, “Shades of Belonging:  African Pentecostals in Twenty-​ First Century Ireland: Review,” African Studies Review, 53(2) (2010): 216–​217; 216. 101. Bohlman (1996), 376. 102. Ibid., 377. 103. Félix Guattari, Molecular Revolution:  Psychiatry and Politics (London:  Penguin Books, 1984), 106. 104. Phelan (2003), Programme 3. 105. Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can’t Sing:  The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste (New York: Crossroad, 1995). 106. Declan Kiberd, “Strangers in Their Own Country: Multiculturalism in Ireland,” in Multiculturalism: The View from the Two Irelands, The Crosscurrents series, eds. Enda Longley and Declan Kiberd (Cork: Cork University, 2001), 45.

C h a p t er   2 1. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle and London:  University of Washington Press, 1973). 2. A  summary of many of the issues and publications dealing with music and globalization can be found in Bob White, Music and Globalization:  Critical Encounters (Bloomington: Illinois University Press, 2012). 3. See, for example, Thomas Burkhalter’s study of popular and experimental music in contemporary Beirut, Local Music Scenes and Globalization:  Transnational Platforms in Beirut (London and New York: Routledge, 2015). 4. See, for example, Simone Krüger and Ruxandra Trandafoiu eds., The Globalization of Musics in Transit:  Music Migration and Tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 2013). 5. See, for example, Jonas Nakonz and Angela Wai Yan Shik, “And All Your Problems Are Gone:  Religious Coping Strategies among Philippine Migrant Workers in Hong Kong,” Mental Health, Religion and Culture 12(1) (2009): 25–​38. 6. John Bailey and Michael Collyer, “Introduction: Music and Migration,” Journal of Ethic and Migration Studies 32(2) (2006): 167–​182. 7. For an earlier discussion on these communities, see Helen Phelan, “Solomon and Derrida:  Wisdom Traditions in the Understanding of Music and Ritual,” in The Beginnings of Christian Music in Europe, ed. Simon Marincak (Bratislava: Centre for East-​West Spirituality, 2005). 8. For further information on the history of St. John’s Cathedral in Limerick, see the Limerick Diocesan website:  www.limerickdioceseheritage.org/​StJohns/​ textStJohns.htm and the entry on “Limerick” in The Encyclopedia of Music

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in Ireland, eds. H. White and B. Boydell (Dublin:  University College Dublin Press, 2013). 9. Lyra Ecclesiastica, May 1879, 72 from Paul Collins, “Soli Deo Gloria: Catholic Church Music in Limerick, c.  1860–​1950,” 4th Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (Limerick: Mary Immaculate College, 12006). 10. Munster News, April 15, 1905, 3 from Collins (2006). 11. For examples of Elikyia’s music, http://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=8Ev1tXFIE14 or http://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=RiFjkCHVPDs (accessed January 9, 2014). 12. For more information on the history of the Augustinians in Ireland, see Michael Hackett Benedict, A Presence in an Age of Turmoil:  English, Irish and Scottish Augustinians in the Reformation and Counter-​Reformation (Villanova, PA: Augustinian Historical Institute, 2002). 13. For further information on the Augustinians in Limerick, see http://​www. augustinians.ie/​. 14. See http://​osaprovnig.org/​?page_​id=49 for further information on the Augustinians in Nigeria. 15. This information was sourced in 2014 at http://​augustiniankenya.org/​?page_​ id=14. This URL was not active at the time of publication but additional information on the Augustinians in Africa is available at: http://​augustinians.net/​ index.php?page=africa_​en. 16. This information was sourced in 2014 at http://​www.augustinian.org/​what-​we-​ do/​missions/​south-​africa. This URL was not active at the time of publication but additional information on the Augustinians in Africa is available at: http://​ augustinians.net/​index.php?page=africa_​en. 17. Email correspondence, September 30, 2014. 18. See Mantle Hood, “The Challenge of “Bi-​Musicality,” Ethnomusicology, 4(2) (1960): 55–​59. 19. Anne Fausto-​Sterling, Sexing the Body:  Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 20. See V. L Cohen et al., “A Protocol for Cross-​Cultural Research on the Acquisition of Singing,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169 (2009): 112–​115. 21. Annibale Bugnini, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell, The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948–​ 1975 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990), 22. 22. See, in particular, Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972); Discipline and Punish (New  York:  Pantheon, 1977); and The History of Sexuality (Vols. 1–​3) (New York: Pantheon, 1978–​1986). 23. See Sherry Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). 24. Bell (1992), 94. 25. For further information on the history of somatic practices, see Don Hanlon Johnson, ed., Bone, Breath and Gesture: Practices of Embodiment, Vol. 1 (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1995).

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26. For further information on Delsarte’s somatic practice, see George Taylor, “François Delsarte:  A  Codification of Nineteenth-​ Century Acting,” Theatre Research International, 24 (1999): 71–​82. 27. Émile Dalcroze, The Eurythmics of Jaques-​Dalcroze (London:  Forgotten Books, 1913; reprint, 2013). 28. Liesl Van der Merwe, “Dalcroze-​ Inspired Activities:  A  Phenomenological Study,” Psychology of Music. Online.sage.pub.com 0305735613513485 (accessed September 3, 2014). 29. F. Matthias Alexander, The Use of Self (London: Orion Books, 1932). 30. For further discussion on the influence of somatics in contemporary Western philosophical through, see Richard Shusterman, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 31. Martha Eddy, “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance:  Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and it Relationship to Dance,” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 1(1) (2009): 5–​27. 32. Ibid. 33. Moshe Feldenkrais and Mark Reese, The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion (Berkeley: Frog Books, 2002). 34. Council for a Parliament of World Religions, www.parliamentofreligions.org (accessed September 3, 2014). 35. See Martha Eddy, “Somatic Practices and Dance:  Global Influences,” Dance Research Journal, 34 (2002): 46–​62. 36. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Sensing, Feeling and Action: The Experiential Anatomy of Body-​Mind Centering (Northampton, MA: Contact Editions, 1993). 37. Thomas Hanna, Bodies in Revolt:  A  Primer in Somatic Thinking (Novato, CA: Freeperson Press, 1985). 38. Shusterman (2008), 15. 39. Ibid., 4. 40. Ibid., 8. 41. Ibid., 37. 42. Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body:  Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), xi. 43. See, for example, Danah Boyd, It’s Complicated:  The Social Lives of Networked Teens (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 44. Richard Shusterman, Performing Live:  Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), 118. 45. Ibid., 192. 46. Ibid., 196. 47. Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves. trans Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press), 1991. 48. Foucault cited in Shusterman (2008), 9. 49. de Beauvoir cited in Shusterman (2008), 90.

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50. Wittgenstein cited in Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). 51. Roland Barthes, Image:  Music:  Text, trans. S. Heath (London:  Fontana Press, 1977), 155. 52. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD, and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1976). 53. Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 54. Ibid., xii. 55. Johnson (2007), 36. 56. Ibid., xiii. 57. Ibid., 237. 58. Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 2005), 245. 59. Bell (1992). 60. Shusterman (2000), 156. 61. John Caputo, On Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 57. 62. Ibid., 21. 63. Victor Turner, Forest of Symbols:  Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1967), 90. 64. Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul, trans. R. Guberman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 65. Hélene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, trans. K.  and P.  Cohen, Signs 1(4) (1976): 875–​893. 66. Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike Von Savigny, The Practice Turn in Contemporary Research (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 3. 67. See Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten, Music and Manipulation:  On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006). 68. Ephrem the Syrian:  Hymns, trans. Kathleen E. McVey, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 65. 69. For further information on changing attitudes toward Gregorian chant following the modern liturgical movement, see Helen Phelan, “Ireland, Music and the Modern Liturgical Movement,” in Catholic Church Music: 1850–​1962, ed. P. Collins. (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 73–​97. 70. Sean Lavery, “From the Editor,” Jubilus, 1(1) (1984): 3. 71. Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship:  Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 68. 72. Gerard Kock, “Between the Altar and the Choir-​loft: Church Music –​Liturgy or Art?” in Music and the Experience of God, Concilium Series, eds. David Powers et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 11–​19.

27

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73. Peter Jeffery, “Chant East and West:  Towards a Renewal of the Tradition,” in Music and the Experience of God, Concilium Series, eds. David Powers et  al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 22. 74. Bergeron (1998) uses the term “enchantment” to refer to the romantic nostalgia for the medieval period that characterized much of the modern liturgical movement. See Katherine Bergeron, Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 75. Ibid. 76. Peter Jeffery, “Solesmes High Mass—​or Low? A Review of Decadent Enchantments by Katherine Bergeron,” Early Music 27(3) (1999): 485. 77. Lavery devotes the entire final issue of Jubilus, 4(4) (1987) to the story of Solesmes. J. D. Crichton’s Lights in the Darkness:  Forerunners of the Liturgical Movement (Dublin: Columba Press, 1996) is an interesting Irish publication that concludes with a concise sketch of the movement, identifying Solesmes as the inaugural energy. A comprehensive biography of Guéranger’s role in the story of Solesmes is Dom Louis Soltner’s Solesmes and Guérange, 1805–​1875, trans. Joseph O’Connor (Orleans, MA: Paraclete Press, 1995). 78. Bergeron, 1998, 1–​2. 79. Prosper Guéranger, Institutions Liturgiques, vol. 1 (Paris: Débécourt, 1840). 80. Robert H. Winthrop, “Leadership and Tradition in the Regulation of Catholic Monasticism,” Anthropological Quarterly, 58(1) (1985): 30–​38. 81. Joseph Pothier, Les Mélodies grégoriennes (Tournai: Desclée, 1880), 6. 82. F. Joseph Kelly, “Plainchant, the Handmaid of the Liturgy: A Challenge and a Prophecy,” The Musical Quarterly, 7(3) (1921): 344–​350. 83. For a summary of recordings produced by Solesmes, see Mary Berry, “Gregorian Chant: The Restoration of the Chant and Seventy-​Five Years of Recording,” Early Music, 7(2) (1979): 197–​217. For a summary of performance styles that evolved in agreement or in conflict with Solesmes, see Lance Brunner, “The Performance of Plainchant:  Some Preliminary Observations of the New Era,” Early Music, 10(3) (1982): 316–​328. 84. Robert L Tuzik, How Firm a Foundation:  Leaders of the Liturgical Movement (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1990), 17; cited in Christopher Dorn, “The Lord’s Supper in Reformed Churches in an Age of Liturgical and Ecumenical Renewal: 1900–​1968,” New Horizons in Faith and Order, 1(1) (2007): 46. 85. Dorn (2007), 56. 86. Freidrich Heiler, Katholischer and Evangelischer Gottesdienst (München: Reinhardt, 1925), 9. 87. Odo Casel, The Mystery of Christian Worship and Other Writings (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1962), 9. 88. Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr., The Liturgical Renewal of the Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 25.

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89. Ernest B Koenker, “Objectives and Achievements of the Liturgical Movement in the Roman Catholic Church since World War II,” Church History, 20(2) (1951): 18. 90. Reference to motu proprio text from Anthony Milner, “Music in Vernacular: Catholic Liturgy,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 91st session (1964/​1965), 27. 91. “The Movement in Roman Catholic Church Music,” Letters to the editor, The Musical Times 72/​1061 (1931): 632. 92. Carl M. Fischer, “Review of Paul B.  Marx, Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, Minnesota; Liturgical Press, 1957),” The American Sociological Review, 20(2) (1959): 181. 93. Keith Pecklers, The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America: 1926–​1955 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998). 94. Day cited in Pecklers (1998), 276. 95. Columba Breen, “Glenstal Liturgical Congress,” Liturgical Arts, 29(4) (1961): 90. 96. Julie Kavanagh, “The Glenstal Liturgical Congresses 1954–​1975,” Worship, 72(5) (1998), 421–​444. 97. Gerard Gillen and Harry White, Music and the Church: Irish Musical Studies, vol. 2 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 333. 98. For an account of traditional prayers and blessings associated with Sunday and the Mass that survived into the twentieth century, see Vincent Ryan, The Shaping of Sunday: Sunday and Eucharist in the Irish Tradition (Dublin: Veritas, 1997). 99. For a more detailed account of the revival of plainchant in Ireland in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Zon Bennett, “The Revival of Plainchant in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1777–​1858: Some Sources and Their Commerce,” in The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995: Selected Proceedings, Part II: Irish Musical Studies, Vol. 5, eds. Patrick F. Devine and Harry White (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), 251–​ 261. 100. Ibid., 256. 101. For a more detailed account of Cecilianism in Ireland, see Kieran Anthony Daly’s, Catholic Church Music in Ireland, 1878–​ 1903:  The Cecilian Reform Movement (Dublin:  Four Courts Press, 1995); Harry White and Nicholas Lawrence’s “Towards a History of the Cecilian Movement in Ireland,” in Music and the Church:  Irish Musical Studies, Vol. 2, eds. Gerard Gillen and Harry White (Dublin:  Irish Academic Press, 1993), 78–​107; and a review of Daly’s publication by Helen Phelan in Doctrine and Life, 46 (1996), 311–​313. 102. Paul Collins, “Soli Deo Gloria: Catholic Church Music in Limerick, c.  1860–​ 1950,” 4th Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (Limerick: Mary Immaculate College), citing Joseph Smith in “The Reformation of Church Music,” Munster News, August 24, 1878, 4. 103. Harry White and Nicholas Lawrence, “Towards a History of the Cecilian Movement in Ireland,” 84.

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104. Paul Collins, “Soli Deo Gloria: Catholic Church Music in Limerick, c.  1860–​ 1950,” citing  Holy Week Ceremonies: St. John’s Cathedral,” Munster News, April 15, 1905, 3. 105. A full review of the summer school was published in Revue Gregorienne, 14(6) (1929). 106. J. Hébert Desrocquettes, “Le chant grégorien en Irlande et en Angleterre,” Revue Gregorienne, 15(6) (1930): 235. Translation by Charlotte Derenne. 107. Ibid. 108. Marie McCarthy, Passing It On:  The Transmission of Music in Irish Culture (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), 121. 109. Ibid., 184. 110. Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2002), 14. 111. Robert Culhane, “Irish Catholics in Britain,” Furrow, 1(8) (1950): 389. 112. John McGahern, “Irish Independent,” in Weekender, July 31, 1993, 2, 4. 113. Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to the Theology of Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 127. 114. Eamon Duffy, “Benedict XVI and the Eucharist,” New Blackfriars, 88(1014) (2007): 197. 115. John Cooney, “John Charles McQuaid at Vatican II,” Doctrine and Life, 48(4) (1998): 215. 116. Cyprian Love, “Glenstal Abbey, Music and The Liturgical Movement,” Studies in World Christianity, 12(2) (2006): 132. 117. Much of the information on the Glenstal liturgical congresses was facilitated through the kind assistance of Placid Murray, OSB, and Vincent Ryan, OSB, members of the Glenstal community, who provided invaluable access to archival records of the congresses, as well as numerous formal and informal interviews during my research in this area during 1995–​2000 for my doctoral dissertation, Laus Perennis: The Emergence of a Theology of Music with Reference to Post-​Vatican II Irish Catholicism (Unpublished PhD, University of Limerick, 2000). 118. Faith of Our Fathers: Classic Religious Anthems of Ireland, RTECD198, RTE. 119. Sacrosanctum Concilium, Art. 116 cited from Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Northport, NY:  Costello, 1975), 32. 120. Placid Murray, OSB, ed., Studies in Pastoral Liturgy (Maynooth:  The Furrow Trust, 1961). 121. Ibid., 132. 122. Ibid., 287. 123. Vincent Ryan, OSB, ed., Studies in Pastoral Liturgy, Vol. 2 (Maynooth:  The Furrow Trust, 1963). 124. Ibid, 115. 125. Minutes, Glenstal Liturgical Congresses, 1961.

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126. Minutes, Glenstal Liturgical Congresses, 1966. 127. Cyprian Love, “Glenstal Abbey, Music and The Liturgical Movement,” 137. 128. Johannes Quack, “Bell, Bourdieu, and Wittgenstein on Ritual Sense,” in The Problem of Ritual Efficacy, eds. William S. Sax et  al. (Oxford:  Oxford and New York, 2010), 184. 129. Fabre cited in Kathleen Coessens et  al., eds., The Artistic Turn:  A  Manifesto (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), 126. 130. Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 47. 131. See, for example, Margaret S. Barrett, “Sounding Lives In and Through Music: A Narrative Inquiry of the ‘Everyday’ Musical Engagement of a Young Child,” Journal of Early Childhood Research, 7(2) (2009): 115–​134; Liora Bresler and Christine Marmé Thompson, eds., The Arts in Children’s Lives:  Context, Culture and Curriculum (Dordrecht:  Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002); Patricia Shehan Campbell, Songs in Their Heads:  Music and Its Meanings in Children’s Lives, 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Patricia Shehan Campbell and Trevor Wiggins, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Musical Cultures (Oxford and New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2012). 132. See, for example, Ellen Dissanayake, “Ritual and Ritualization: Musical Means of Conveying and Shaping Emotion in Humans and Other Animals,” in Music and Manipulation:  On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, eds. Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten (New  York and Oxford:  Berghahn Books, 2006), 31–​57. 133. Samuel Tambiah, A Performative Approach to Ritual, The 1979 Radcliffe-​Browne Lecture (1981), 165. 134. Grimes (1995). 135. For more information on the salmon in Celtic mythology, see Patrick Ford, The Celtic Poets: Songs and Tales from Early Ireland and Wales (Belmont, MA: Ford & Bailie, 1999); Miranda Green, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); and James Mackillop, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 136. For further information on the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and its relationship to other ancient Near Eastern mythological traditions, see Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian:  The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); E. A. Wallis Budge, The Liturgy of Funerary Offerings: The Egyptian Texts with English Translations (New York: Dover Publications, 1994); J. L. Crenshaw, “Method in Determining Wisdom Influences upon ‘Historical’ Literature,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 88(2) (1969): 129–​142; and Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010); David F. Ford, Christian Wisdom:  Desiring God and

276

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Notes

Learning to Love (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007); Theodor H. Gaster, Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament (New  York:  Harper and Row, 1969); and Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom Literature:  A  Theological History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007). 137. I Kings 5:9. 138. 1 Kings 3:28. 139. See Susanne Gillmayr-​Bucher, “Body Images in the Psalms,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 28(3) (2004): 301–​326. 140. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, edited and introduced by Gil Anidjar (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 142. 141. Religion and Culture by Michel Foucault, selected and edited by Jeremy R. Carrette (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). 142. Edward Nowacki, Paper delivered for the Irish World Academy seminar series, University of Limerick, 2004.

C h a p t er   3 1. Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose. 1968–​1978 (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), 43. 2. See the Vision statement of the Academy, http://​www.irishworldacademy.ie/​ about-​us/​ (accessed June 24, 2015). 3. Ibid., 43. 4. For the Academy’s mission statement, see its Quality review reports at http://​ www.quality.ul.ie/​content/​reviews-​date (accessed June 7, 2016). 5. Theodore Jennings, “On Ritual Knowledge,” The Journal of Religion, 62(2) (1982): 111–​127; 113. 6. See Bruno Nettl, Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995). 7. The Academy was originally designated as a research center under the name “Irish World Music Centre” but was renamed as the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in recognition of its growing portfolio of programs and commitment to a widening spectrum of performing arts traditions. 8. It was followed later that day by the granting of full university status to Dublin City University. 9. These include Trinity College Dublin, University of Limerick, University College Dublin, University College Cork, National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway, NUI Maynooth, and Dublin City University. 10. Finbarr D. Bradley and James J. Kennelly, The Irish Edge:  How Enterprises Compete on Authenticity and Place (Dublin: Orpen Press, 2013). 11. Ibid., 80. 12. For further details of this event, see http://​www.irishworldacademy.ie/​wp-​ content/​uploads/​2014/​06/​Convocation-​A5-​Programme-​WEB.pdf (accessed June 24, 2016).

 27

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13. Siobhan Long, “Majoring in Trad Music at the Taj Micheal,” The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, October 11, 2010, 16. 14. I am grateful to Jack Talty for his generosity in affording me access to his ethnographic work for his doctoral research, The “Ivory Tower” and the “Commons”?: A  Problematisation of Irish Traditional Music Pedagogy in Irish Higher Education (University of Limerick: Unpublished PhD research, 2016). 15. Marie McCarthy (1999). 16. Ó Súilleabháin cited in McCarty (1999), 142. 17. For further information on imbas, see Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Myth, Legend and Romance: An Encyclopedia of The Irish Folk Tradition (London: Ryan, 1990). 18. See Christine Zucchelli, Trees of Inspiration (Cork: Collins Press, 2009). 19. Niall Mac Coitir, Irish Trees:  Myths, Legends and Folklore (Cork:  Collins Press, 2003), 75. 20. See Daragh Smyth, A Guide to Irish Mythology (Kildare:  Irish Academic Press, 1988). 21. See Patrick Ford, The Celtic Poets: Songs and Tales from Early Ireland and Wales (Boston: Ford & Bailie, 1999). 22. Zucchelli (2009). 23. Ford (1999), 43. 24. For a more detailed account of monasticism and education in medieval Ireland, see Ó Cróinín (1995). 25. See http://​www.robertketchell.com/​. 26. Nettl (1995). 27. For further information, see WATERMARK, curated by Niamh Nic Ghabhann (Irish World Academy Publication, 2014). 28. Email correspondence with Daniel Cordier, December 5, 2012. 29. See, for example Gloria R. Hunt, Foundation Rituals and the Culture of Building in Ancient Greece (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 30. See, for example, Shingo Einoo and Jun Takashima, From Material to Diety: Indian Rituals of Consecration, Japanese Studies on South Asia Series, Vol. 4 (New Delhi:  Manohar Publishers, 2005); and Anna A Ślączka, Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India: Text and Archeology (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). 31. Kathryn A. Kamp, et  al., “A Ritual Spindle Whorl Deposit from the Late Classic Maya Site of El Pilar, Belize,” Journal of Field Archeology, 31(4) (2006): 411–​423. 32. Alison Rosse, “The Dowris Hoard,” Irish Arts Review, 2(1) (1985): 25–​28. 33. Roman Zaroff, “Aśvamedha:  A  Vedic Horse Sacrifice,” Studia Mythologica Slavica, VIII (2005): 75–​86. 34. Justyna Baron and Bernadeta Kufel-​Diakowska, eds., Written in Bones:  Studies on Technological and Social Contexts of Past Faunal Skeletal Remains (Wroclaw: Institute of Archeology, University of Wroclaw, 2011). 35. Seán Ó Súilleabháin, “Foundation Sacrifices,” The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, LXXV (1945): 45–​52; 47.

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36. Ibid., 46. 37. Ibid., 46. 38. See, for example, Ronald Buchanan, “Notes:  A  Buried Horse Skull,” Ulster Folklife, 2 (1956):  60–​61; Alan Gailey, “Horse Skulls under a County Down Farmhouse Floor,” Ulster Folk Museum and Transport Museum Yearbook, 13–​14 (1968–​1969); K. M Harris, “A Further Note: Buried Horse Skulls,” Ulster Folklife, 3(1) (1957): 70–​71; and “A Note: More Buried Horse Skulls” from Ulster Folklife, 4 (1958): 76–​77: Caoimhín Ó Danachair, “Notes: A Pot under a Kitchen Floor,” The Journal of the Cork Historical and Archeological Society, LX(192) (1955): 128–​129; and “The Luck of the House” from Ulster Folklife, 15(16) (1970): 20–​27; Seán Ó Súilleabháin, “Foundation Sacrifices,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, LXXV (1945):  45–​52; Joseph Ranson, “Foundation Sacrifices,” The Past: The Organ of the Ui Ceinnsealaigh Historical Society, 4 (1948): 123–​126. 39. For further information on this, see Gerard Gillen, “Performance in Context in Third Level Balanced Curriculum,” available as a supplementary document to the online version of A Review of Music Education in Ireland, Incorporating the Final Report of the Music Education National Debate, September 2001, http://​ www.musicnetwork.ie/​docs/​doc115.pdf (accessed July 9, 2009). 40. Ibid. 41. For an earlier discussion on the relationship between the Academy and the emergence of somatic philosophy, see Helen Phelan, “Voicing Imbas: Performing a Philosophy of Music Education,” in Oxford Handbook of Music Education Philosophy, eds. Wayen Bowman and Ana Lucía Frega (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 63–​85. 42. Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike Von Savigny, eds, The Practice Turn in Contemporary Research (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 8. 43. For further information on practice as epistemic, see Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, eds., Practice as Research:  Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry (London and New  York:  I. B.  Tauris, 2010); Kathleen Coessens et  al., eds., The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009); John Freeman, Blood, Sweat and Theory: Research Through Practice in Performance (Oxfordshire: Libri Publishing, 2010); R. Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (Hants:  Palgrave and Smith, 2013); Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean, eds, Practice-​Led Research, Research-​Led Practice in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 44. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973) was Geertz’s most influential text in this regard. 45. Frederic Jameson’s The Political Unconscious (London and New York: Routledge, 1981) is an example of the Marxist legacy in cultural theory, arguing, “the political perspective … as the absolute horizon of all reading and interpretation” (1). 46. See, for example, Claude Lévi-​ Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. C. Jacobson and B. Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963); and Roland Barthes, Image: Music: Text, trans. S. Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977).

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4 7. See Ortner (2006). 48. See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). 49. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory:  Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1979). 50. See Marshall Sahlins, Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities:  Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press, 1981); and Culture in Practice: Selected Essays (New York: Zone Books, 2000). 51. Ortner (2006), 2. 52. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 53. Asad (1993), 36. 54. Susan Melrose, “The Vanishing, or Little Erasure without Significance?” Performance Research, 11(2) (2006): 95–​107. 55. Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 28. 56. Deborah Kapchan, “Performance,” in Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture, ed. Burt Feintuch (Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 2003), 121–​145. 57. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked:  The Politics of Performance (New  York and London: Routledge, 1993). 58. Ibid., 133. 59. Barthes (1977). 60. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:  Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 25. 61. Barbara Kirshenblatt-​ Gimblett, “Performance Studies,” in The Performance Studies Reader, ed. Henry Bial (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 43–​55. 62. Phelan (1993). 63. Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). 64. See Schatzki (2001). 65. See Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959). 66. For further information on Hortus Deliciarum, see Rosalie Green et  al., eds., Hortus Deliciarum by Herrad of Hohenbourg 2v. Manuscript Reconstruction with Commentary (London: Warburg Institute, 1979). 67. See Bruce Kimball, The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History (Lanham, MD: University of America Press, 2013). 68. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 242. 69. Ibid, v.

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70. Lawrence Kramer, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 8. 71. See, for example, Susan McClary, Feminine Endings:  Music, Gender and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), and Conventional Wisdom:  The Content of Musical Form (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2000). 72. David. J. Elliott, Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 39. 73. Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 1. 74. Cook and Everist (1999), ix. 75. Henry Bial, The Performance Studies Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 128. 76. Ronald Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re-​inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2000), 13. 77. Phelan (2012). 78. See, for example, publicity for a 2013 concert in the Irish Arts Centre, New York, http://​www.irishartscenter.org/​music/​suillebhan.html (accessed September 15, 2014). 79. Helen Phelan, Anáil Dé /​The Breath of God:  Music, Ritual and Spirituality (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2001), 143. 80. See, for example, a radio interview with Miriam O’Callaghan on September 14, 2014. for Irish radio, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), http://​www.rte (accessed September 15, 2014). 81. Ellen Koskoff, “What Do We Want to Teach When We Teach Music? One Apology, Two Short Trips, Three Ethical Dilemmas and Eighty-​Two Questions,” in Rethinking Music, eds. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1999), 545. 82. See Rebecca Walker, “Fill/​Flash/​Memory:  A  History of Flash Mobs,” Text and Performance Quarterly, 33(2) (2013): 115–​132. 83. Jekaterina Lavrinec, “From a ‘Blind Walker’ to an ‘Urban Curator’:  Initiating ‘Emotionally Moving Situations’ in Public Spaces,” LIMES: Cultural Regionalistics, 1 (2011): 54–​63. 84. http://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=zv96XV2oOp4. 85. David Elliott, “Puerto Rico:  A  Site of Critical Performative Pedagogy,” Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 6(1) (2007): 2–​24. 86. Wayne Bowman and Kimberly Powell, “The Body in a State of Music,” in International Handbook of Research in Arts Education, ed. Liora Bresler (Netherlands: Springer, 2007), 1087–​1108; 1101. 87. Ronald Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re-​inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2000), 4. 88. Ibid., 5.

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89. WATERMARK, curated by Niamh Nic Ghabhann (Irish World Academy Publication, 2014).

C h a p t er   4 1. The practice of “ritual lab” is based on the pedagogical approach introduced in Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies (1982/​1995) and further discussed in Rite Out of Place: Ritual, Media and the Arts (2006). 2. Since 2003, the KMI Institute of Theology and Cultures has been located at Milltown Institute under the auspices of the Department of Mission Theology and Cultures. 3. Grimes (1995) (rev. ed.), 17. 4. Ibid., 21. 5. Ronald Grimes and Susan L. Scott, “The Barn and the Lab,” in Grimes (2006), 117–​129. 6. For further information, see Edmund M. Hogan, The Irish Missionary Movement: A Historical Survey 1830–​1980 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1990). 7. Grimes (2006), 123. 8. Ibid., 117. 9. Ibid., 120. 10. See, for example, Winnie Wade et  al., Flexible Learning in Higher Education (New  York:  Routledge, 2013); or Monica Fedeli et  al., “The Use of Learning Contracts in an Italian University Setting,” Adult Learning, 24(3) (2013): 104–​111. 11. Grimes (2006), 120. 12. Ibid., 118. 13. Ibid, 121. 14. Ibid., 124. 15. Ibid., 124. 16. Ibid., 125. 17. Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). 18. Steven Connor, “Edison’s Teeth:  Touching Hearing,” in Hearing Cultures; Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, ed. Veit Erlmann (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004). 19. Robin Maconie, The Concept of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 20. Connor (2004), 162. 21. Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 42. 22. Seán Lucy, Unfinished Sequence and other poems (Dublin:  Wolfhound Press, 1979), 58. 23. Ibid., 59.

28

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Notes

24. For an earlier discussion on this topic, see Helen Phelan, “With the Sun Along the Wall:  Music and Performative Perspectives on Liturgy,” in City Limits: Mission Issues in Postmodern Times, eds. Joe Egan and Thomas R. Whelan (Dublin: Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, 2004), 119–​132. 25. Ibid., 84. 26. Ibid. 27. See Pádraig P Ó Néill, “Boethius in Early Ireland:  Five Centuries of Study in Sciences,” in Music and the Stars:  Mathematics in Medieval Europe, eds. Mary Kelly and Charles Doherty (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), 29. 28. Jeremy S. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 6. 29. Maconie (1990), 67. 30. Dorit Tanay, Noting Music, Marking Culture: The Intellectual Context of Rhythmic Notation, 1240–​1400  (Holzgerlingen:  American Institute of Musicology, Hänsler-​Verlag, 1999). 31. Jame Schaefer, Theological Foundations for Environmental Ethics:  Reconstructing Patristic and Medieval Concepts (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2009), 3. 32. Leo Treitler, Source Readings in Music History edited by Oliver Strunk (1950), rev. ed. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1998), 227. 33. Tia DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 21. 34. Gallagher and Zahavi (2008), 69. 35. William S. Sax et al. (2010), 6. 36. Christopher Bannerman, “The Butterfly Unpinned,” in Christopher Bannerman et  al., eds., Navigating the Unknown:  The Creative Process in Contemporary Performing Arts (London: Middlesex University Press, 2006), 12–​23. 37. Philip. V. Bohlman, “Ontologies of Music,” in Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds., Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17. 38. Felicia Hughes-​Freeland and Mary M. Crain, eds. Recasting Ritual: Performance, Media and Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 1. 39. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E.  M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953). 40. See Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols:  Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Harvill Press, 1961). 41. Stefan Halikowski Smith, “The Mystification of Spices in the Western Tradition,” European Review of History, 8(2) (2001): 119–​136; 127. 42. The New Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1985). 43. The Koran (Penguin Classics, London: Penguin Books, 1993). 44. Halikowski Smith (2001): 119. 45. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religions Life (1912), trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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46. William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. (New  York:  Dover Publications, 1950). 47. Donald. A. Nielsen, Three Faces of God:  Society, Religion and the Categories of Totality in the Philosophy of Émile Durkheim (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 189. 48. Claude Lévi-​Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest-​Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963). 49. Ronald Grimes, Rite Out of Place:  Ritual, Media and the Arts (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2006), 112. 50. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3. 51. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh:  The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 21. 52. Grimes (2006), 105. 53. See, for example, Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-​Structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969); and Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Onika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1960). 54. See, for example, Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1959); and Karl Barth, God Here and Now (1963) (New  York and London: Routledge, 2003). 55. See, for example, Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1998); R. Schechner and Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); The Future of Ritual:  Writings on Culture and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993). 56. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 57. Sherry. B. Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 9. 58. Ute Huesken and Frank Neubert, eds, Negotiating Rites (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2012), 1. 59. Grimes (2006), 113.

C h a p t er   5 1. For an earlier discussion on the connection between practice theory and ritual, see Helen Phelan, “Practice, Ritual and Community Music: Doing as Identity,” International Journal of Community Music, 1(2) (2008): 143–​158. 2. For further information on the emergence of community music, see Lee Higgins, Community Music in Theory and Practice (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2012).

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3. Grimes (1995), xx–​xxi. 4. Marie McCarthy, “The Community Music Activity Commission of ISME, 1982–​ 2007: A Forum for Dialogue and Institutional Formation,” International Journal of Community Music, 1(1) (2008): 39–​48; 48. 5. Kari Veblen, “The Many Ways of Community Music,” International Journal of Community Music, 1(1) (2008): 5–​21; 5. 6. Bell (1992), 69. 7. Ibid., 70. 8. Ibid., 70. 9. Cook and Everist (1999), xi. 10. Lee Higgins, Boundary Walkers:  Contexts and Concepts of Community Music. (University of Limerick: PhD dissertation, 2006), 57. 11. Ibid, 89. 12. See website, fesfestival.com (accessed June 30, 2015). 13. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (London:  Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1966), and The Tacit Dimension (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1958). 14. Allan M. Williams and Vladimir Baláž, International Migration and Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 2008), 57. 15. John O’Flynn, “Re-​appraising Ideas of Musicality in Intercultural Contexts of Music Education,” International Journal of Music Education, 23(3) (2005): 191–​203. 16. Patricia Shehan Campbell, “Music Education in a Time of Cultural Transformation,” Music Educators Journal, 89(1) (2002): 27–​32; 30. 17. Jean Downey, “Informal Learning in Music in the Irish Secondary School Context,” Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 8(2) (2009): 46–​59. 18. Peter Dunbar-​ Hall, “Ethnopedagogy:  Culturally Contextualised Learning and Teaching as an Agent of Change,” Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 8(2) (2009): 60–​78. 19. David Elliott, “Music as Culture:  Toward a Multicultural Concept of Arts Education,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 24(1) (1990): 147–​166; 149. 20. Robert Walker, “Music Education Freed from Colonialism:  A  New Praxis,” International Journal of Music Education, 27(1) (1996): 2–​15. 21. Lise Vaugeois, “Social Justice and Music Education: Claiming the Space of Music Education as a Site of Postcolonial Contestation,” Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 6(4) (2007): 163–​200. 22. Wendy Masi and Roni Leiderman, eds., Baby Play (San Francisco:  Weldon Owen, 2004). 23. See, for example, Robert Lickliter and Lorraine E. Bahrick, “The Development of Infant Intersensory Perception:  Advantages of a Comparative Convergent-​ Operations Approach,” Psychological Bulletin, 126(2) (2000): 260–​280. 24. Cook (1990), 114. 25. John Sloboda, The Musical Mind:  The Cognitive Psychology of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 59.

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26. Maconie (1990). 27. See D. J. Elliott and M. Silverman, Music Matters: A Philosophy of Music Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), for a more extensive discussion of emotional communication and music. 28. Graham Welch, Evangelos Himonides, Jo Saunders, Ioulia Papageorgi, and Marc Sarazin, “Singing and Social Inclusion,” Frontiers in Psychology, 5(803) (2014): 1–​12. 29. Oscar Odena, Music as a Way to Address Social Inclusion and Respect for Diversity in Early Childhood (Belfast: The National Foundation for Educational Research and Queen’s University, 2007). 30. Ibid. 31. Allan M. Williams and Vladimir Baláž, International Migration and Knowledge (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 2. 32. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 4th ed. (Basingstoke and New  York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 311. 33. Castles and Miller (2009), 3. 34. Khalid Koser, International Migration: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 35. Castles and Miller (2009). 36. For further information on these migration patterns, see Robin Cohen, ed., The Cambridge Survey of World Migration (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1995). 37. Castles and Miller (2009). 38. Irial Glynn, Tomás Kelly, and Mac Éinrí, Irish Emigration in an Age of Austerity (Cork: EMIGRE, University College Cork). 39. Premen A. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity:  International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India (New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers University Press, 2002). 40. Sergio Vergalli, “The Role of Community in Migration Dynamics,” Labour, Ceis, 22(3) (2008): 547–​567. 41. John Blacking, How Musical Is Man? (Seattle and London:  University of Washington Press, 1973), 10. 42. Thomas Turino, Moving away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experiment of Urban Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 43. Keila Diehl, Echoes of Dharamsala: Music in the Life of a Tibetan Refugee Community (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2002). 44. Karen F. Olwig and Kirsten Hastrup, eds., Siting Culture:  The Shifting Anthropological Object (London: Routledge, 1996), 7. 45. Gerd Bauman, Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-​Ethnic London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14. 46. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 2006).

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47. Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport, The Trouble with Community:  Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 64. 48. Newman (2007). 49. Marianne Moyaert, Fragile Identities: Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011). 50. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes, with a preface by Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 51. Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowly (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 52. Derrida (2001), 33. 53. Ibid., 34–​35. 54. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 271–​272. 55. Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 56. Derrida (2000), 3. 57. Ibid., 15. 58. Ibid., 27. 59. Ibid., 27. 60. Derrida (2001), 23. 61. Ibid., 9. 62. Ibid., 45. 63. Derrida (2000), 135. 64. Ibid.. 65. Kristeva (1991), 15. 66. Ibid., 15–​16. 67. Ibid., 16. 68. Miriam Stoppard, Conception, Pregnancy and Birth (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2006). 69. Irène Deliège and John Sloboda, eds., Musical Beginnings: Origins and Development of Musical Competence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 70. Ibid. 71. Derrida with Anne Dufourmantelle (2000), 64. 72. Keith Swanwick, Musical Knowledge:  Intuition, Analysis and Music Education (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 4. 73. Derrida (2000), 147. 74. Swanick (1994), 1. 75. Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life:  The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 76. Derrida (2001), 17. 77. Ibid., 35–​36.

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78. Lee Higgins, “The Impossible Future,” Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 6(3) (2007): 74–​96; 83. http://​act.maydaygroup.org/​articles/​Higgins6_​ 3.pdf (accessed January 8, 2010). 79. Ibid., 84. 80. Ibid., 86–​87. 81. For further details on the targeted initiative program, see Progressing the Action Plan: Funding to Achieve Equity of Access to Higher Education (Dublin: National Office for Equity of Access to Higher Education, 2005); and Towards a National Strategy:  Initial Review of HEA Targeted Initiatives to Widen Access to Higher Education (Dublin:  National Office for Equity of Access to Higher Education, 2005). 82. Travellers are an indigenous minority group in Ireland with shared cultural values, language, customs, and traditions. Nomadism is an important aspect of their culture, distinguishing them from the settled or sedentary population, though many travellers also live in settled communities. There are approximately 25,000 travellers in Ireland from 4,485 family groups. There are also an estimated 15,000 Irish travellers in Britain and 10,000 of Irish descent in the United States (see http://​itmtrav.ie/​irishtravellers for further information on the traveller community in Ireland). 83. For further information on “Sound Links,” see Huib Schippers, Shaping the Music:  Education from a Global Perspective (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2009). 84. For further information on Comhcheol and World Carnival, see Helen Phelan, “Let Us Say Yes … Music, the Stranger and Hospitality,” Public Voices, IX(1) (2007): 113–​124; and “Sonic Hospitality: Migration, Community and Music,” in Oxford Handbook of Music Education, Vol. II., eds. Gary McPherson and Graham Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 168–​184. 85. Bell (1992), 83. 86. Bourdieu (1977), 79. 87. Sherry Ortner, “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1) (1984): 126–​166. 88. See Michael Hawn, “A Comparison between Sequential and Cyclic Musical Structures and Their Use in Liturgy,” in Anáil Dé /​The Breath of God: Music, Ritual and Spirituality, ed. Helen Phelan (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2001), 37–​54. 89. Mary McGann, A Precious Fountain: Music in the Worship of an African American Catholic Community (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004). 90. Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 112. 91. McCarthy (1999), 121. 92. Ibid., 184. 93. Helen Phelan, Comhcheol. Film documentary commissioned by the Sanctuary initiative at the Irish World Academy. Produced by S.M.V.I. Productions (2001).

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94. Micheál Mac Gréil, Emancipation of the Travelling People: A Report on the Attitudes and Prejudices of the Irish People Towards the Travellers Based on a National Social Survey 2007–​’08 (Maynooth: NUI Maynooth Publications, 2010). 95. Phelan, Comhcheol. 96. For further information, see the RTE Archives, http://​www.rte.ie/​archives/​ 2014/​0523/​619189-​limerick-​youre-​a-​lady/​ (accessed August 22, 2014). 97. Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings, trans. Louis Marks (New York: International Publishers, 1957). 98. Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth:  A  Study of Millenarian Activities (London: Basil Blackwell, 1969). 99. See, for example, Selva J. Raj and Corinne G. Dempsey, eds., Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines (SUNY Series in Hindu Studies) (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002). 100. See, for example, Boaz Shoshan, Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2002). 101. See, for example, Anne-​Christine Hornborg, “Ritual Practice as Power Play or Redemptive Hegemony:  The Mi’kmaq Appropriation of Catholicism,” Svensk Missionstidskrift, 92(2) (2004): 169–​193. 102. See, for example, Mary Keller, The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2005). 103. Higgins (2006), 62. 104. A. Owens, “ICO Helps Children to Find Their Voices,” Limerick Chronicle, March 23, 2010, 8. 105. R. Commane, “Twenty-five Nations Join Song at Presentation Primary,” Limerick Post, March 27, 2010, 24. 106. Nicholas Cook, Music, Imagination and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 107. Higgins (2007): 87. 108. Gregory F Barz and Timothy J Cooley, Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11. 109. Ibid., 14.

C h a p t er   6 1. Personal journal, October 24, 2012. 2. For further information, see website, http://​www.dublin.ie/​arts-​culture/​one-​ city-​one-​people.htm (accessed September 15, 2014). 3. Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian, Making  Congregational  Music  Local  in Christian Communities  Worldwide. London: Routledge, 2017 (forthcoming).

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4. For further information on the Northern Ireland peace process, see Timothy J. White and Martin Mansergh, Lessons from the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). 5. The Irish Statute Book, http://​www.irishstatutebook.ie/​eli/​1998/​ca/​19/​enacted/​ en/​print.html (accessed December 5, 2016). 6. Ibid. 7. Andrew Finlay, “Multiculturalism after the Good Friday Agreement,” Irish Journal of Anthropology, 19(3) (2006): 8–​17. 8. Lentin and McVeigh (2006). 9. Ibid., 52. 10. For more information on Irish immigration law, see Emily Grabham, Davina Cooper, Jane Krishnadas, and Didi Herman, eds., Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location (Oxon and New York: Routledge-​Cavendish, 2009). 11. From Mark Maguire and Tanya Cassidy, “The New Irish Question: Citizenship, Motherhood and the Politics of Life Itself,” Irish Journal of Anthropology, 12(3) (2009): 18. 12. See Mary Corcoran and Michel Peillon, Uncertain Ireland: A Sociological Chronicle, 2003–​2004 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2006), 66. 13. Comments from choir members are presented anonymously. 14. (C)IRA is an abbreviation for the Continuity Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary organization, which emerged in the 1980s in a split from the Provisional IRA. 15. In the interests of privacy, all names and some details mentioned in these field note excerpts have been changed. 16. For an earlier discussion on my work with this choir, see Helen Phelan, “Religion, Music and the Site of Ritual: Baptismal Rites and the Irish Citizenship Referendum,” International Journal of Community Music 2(1) (2009): 25–​38. 17. Refugees, 1(126) (2002): 7 (cover story, author unnamed). 18. Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 19. See Jane Edwards, Maeve Scahill, and Helen Phelan, “Music Therapy: Promoting Healthy Mother-​Infant Relations in the Vulnerable Refugee and Asylum Seeker Community,” in Music: Promoting Health and Creating Community in Healthcare Contexts, ed. Jane Edwards (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 154–​168. 20. Ibid., 159. 21. Ibid., 165. 22. See T. Field, “Maternal Depression Effects on Infants and Early Interventions,” Preventative Medicine, 27 (1998): 200–​203. 23. Malcolm MacLachlan and Michael O’Connell, Cultivating Pluralism: Psychological, Social and Cultural Perspectives on a Changing Ireland (Dublin:  Oak Tree Press, 2001).

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24. Bryan Fanning and Mutwarasibo Fidele, “Nationals/​Non-​nationals: Immigration, Citizenship and Politics in the Republic of Ireland,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(3) (2007): 439–​460. 25. Irish Times, August 26, 2004. 26. Derrida (2000), 35. 27. Kristeva (1991), 7–​8. 28. Phelan and Kuol (2005). 29. In Gregory F. Barz, Performing Religion:  Negotiating Past and Present in Kwaya Music of Tanzania (Amsterdam:  Editions Rodopi, 2003). Barz notes the fluid nature of African expressive religious culture, particularly with reference to kwaya (choir) music and its assimilation of several cultural influences, from urban African musics to recorded American and European popular music. 30. N. Kennedy, P. Jerrard-​Dunne, M. Gill, and M. Webb, “Characteristics and Treatment of Asylum Seekers Reviewed by Psychiatrists in an Irish Inner City,” Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 19 (2002): 4–​7. 31. Daily Roman Missal (Princeton, NJ, and Chicago:  Scepter Publishers and Midwest Theological Forum, 1993), liv. 32. Ibid, lvi. 33. A  version of this Praise and Worship song can be heard at Nigerian Church Online, http://​www.nigerianchurchonline.com/​songs/​what-​manner-​man-​jesus (accessed September 20, 2014. 34. An arrangement of this song is available on the CD recording by Elikya entitled To Lingana /​Love One Another (Sanctuary recording, 2002). 35. Asad (1993), 36. 36. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Believing: An Historical Perspective (Oxford: One World, 1998), 36–​37. See also The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1962/​1991); Faith and Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Towards a World Theology:  Faith and the Comparative History of Religion (London: MacMillan, 1989). 37. For further information, see Joel C. Kuipers, “Ululations from the Weyewa Highlands (Sumba):  Simultaneity, Audience Response, and Models of Cooperation,” Ethnomusicology 43(3) (1999): 490–​507. 38. Guy Beck, Sacred Sound:  Experiencing Music in World Religions (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 1. 39. Schechner (2003). 40. See, for example, Peter Winn’s work on the necessity of legal ritual to human governance in Austin Sarat et al., Law and the Humanities. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 41. See Hawn’s article on form and ritual in Phelan, ed. (2001), as well as Michael C. Hawn, New Songs of Celebration Render (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2013). 42. For more information on the origins of the Sacraments of initiation, see Bradshaw (1992), and for an earlier discussion of the metaphor of Auditorium

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Tirocinia, see Phelan, “Auditorum Tirocinia:  The Apprenticeship of Hearers  –​ Music and Contemporary Catholic Initiation Rites in Ireland,” Orientalia et Occidentalia 1(1) (2007b): 283–​293. 43. Ibid., 290. 44. Peter O’Dwyer, Towards a History of Irish Spirituality (Dublin: Columba Press), 16. 45. Raymond Gillespie, Devoted People:  Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). 46. Thomas. M. Finn, “Ritual Process and the Survival of Early Christianity: A Study of the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 3(1) (1989): 69–​89. 47. Phillip Hallie, Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm (New  York:  Harper Collins, 1997). 48. Beck (2006), 1. 49. For further information on Agaunum, see Marcel Chicoteau, The Journey to Martyrdom of Saints Felix and Regula circa 300 A.D.: A Study of Sources and Significance (Brisbane: Watson Ferguson, 1984). 50. Bohlman (1996). 51. Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley, Mighty Stories:  Dangerous Rituals (San Francisco: Jossey-​Bass, 1998). 52. Ibid., 65.

C onc lusion 1. Caputo (1997), xviii. 2. Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 155–​156. 3. Caputo (1997), xxviii. 4. Longley and Kiberd (2001), 55 5. Grimes, 2006, 150. 6. ibid, 155. 7. ibid, 153. 8. Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991). Sourced in Hawn, ed. 2013. 9. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 10. DeNora, 2000. 11. Irish Times, August 9, 2014. 12. ibid. 13. Irish Times, August 18, 2014. 14. Lentin and McVeigh, 2006. 15. Irish Times, August 18, 2014. 16. ibid.

29

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1 7. Longley and Kiberd (2001), 50. 18. Edward Said, “Afterword,” in Carroll and King (2003), 179. 19. Mary Collins, “Principles of Feminist Liturgy,” in Marjorie Procter-​Smith and Janet R. Walton, Women at Worship (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1993). 20. John Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 8. 21. Paula Meehan, Pillow Talk (Meath: The Gallery Press, 1994), 71.

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 315

Index

Abbey of St. Maurice of Agaunum, 15 African Church, 22–​27, 32–​35, 42, 46, 51–​52, 59, 131, 185, 193–​194, 212–​215, 227–​244 Ahlquist, Karen, 263 Allen, Denis, 266 Allen, Linda, 40, 266 An Garda Síochána, 45 Anáil Dé /​Festival of World Sacred Music, 12, 14, 28, 185–​189, 218 Anderson, Herbert, 244 anthropology, 5, 48–​49, 79, 123–​124, 130–​131, 150, 172–​174, 196–​197, 207, 224, 267 archaeology, 115–​119 Asad, Talal, 124, 236–​238 Assmann, Jan, 275 asylum seeker, 3–​7, 14, 19–​35, 39–​41, 56–​59, 138, 184–​220, 223–​241, 252–256, 260, 262 Augustinians, 12, 26, 27–​32, 50–​62, 227–​233, 269 Bannerman, Christopher, 172 baptism, 46, 221–​223, 232–​234, 237–239, 241–​244 Barth, Karl, 125, 177 Barthes, Roland, 76 Barz, Gregory F., 219, 290

Bateson, Mary Catherine, 8 Beauduin, Lambert, 86–​88 Beck, Guy, 238, 243 Bell, Catherine, 14, 65, 78, 98 Benedictines, 83–​88, 92–​98 Bergeron, Katherine, 83 Berry, Mary, 272 Bithell, Caroline, 265 Blacking, John, 55, 130–​131, 196 Bohlman, Phillip, 48, 51, 172, 244 Boniface VIII, 47 Bourdieu, Pierre, 122–​123, 177–​178, 206–207, 211–​213 Bowman, Wayne D., 134 Bradley, Finbarr D., 107–​108 Bradshaw, Brendan, 82, 290 breathing techniques, 15, 36, 40, 42, 55, 65–​75, 137, 146, 165, 184, 189–​190, 202, 215, 251, 257 Breen, Columba, 89–​90 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 4, 260 Bugnini, Annibale, 63 Burke, Rev. Dr. John, 91–​92 Burridge, Kenelm, 212–​213 Butler, Judith, 125–​126, 131 Campbell, Patricia Shehan, 190 Caputo, 78–​79, 199, 249–​250, 256

316

316

Index

Carroll, Clare, 265 Casel, Odo, 86 Castles, Stephen, and Mark J Miller, 193 Cecilianism, 57–​58, 90–​93 Celtic spirituality, 46–​51, 115–​122 Celtic Tiger, 3, 20–​21, 43–​47, 234, 241, 254 Centre de Pastorale Liturgique, 94–​95 chant, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, 28–​52, 80–​119, 136–138, 148, 151–​156, 160, 170, 184, 185, 201, 209–​210, 239, 244–​245 Charismatics, 32–​33 citizenship, 7, 11, 24–​25, 59–​60, 195–196, 210, 221–​244, 254–​255 Cixous, Hélene, 79 Cohen, Bonnie Bainbridge, 69 Collins, Mary, 256 Collins, Paul, 91 Columban, 15, 81, 95 Comhcheol Women’s Community Choir, 12, 14, 204–​215 community music, 14, 181–​184, 204–​218 conservatory, 66 Cook, Nicholas, 127–​128, 190–​192, 203, 217 Corpus Christi, 93–​96 Council for a Parliament of World Religions, 270 Cullen, Paul, 25, 91 Culler, Jonathan, 209 Dalcroze, Émile, 66 DeNora, Tia, 171 Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, 22 Derrida, Jacques, 16, 40, 76, 100, 198–204, 211, 213, 219, 232, 249–​252 Dewey, John, 67–​75 Dialogos (vocal ensemble), 185 diaspora, 2–​5, 21–​23, 49 Diehl, Keila, 196

Doras Luimní, 5, 24, 26, 184, 210 Downey, Jean, 190 Driver, Tom F., 177–​178 Dublin City Council, 222 Dublin City University, 276 Duffy, Daniel, 96 Duffy, Eamon, 94 Dunbar-​Hall, Peter, 190 Durkheim, Emile, 173–​175 Eckstein, Lars, 6 Edwards, Jane, 231 Eliade, Mircea, 173–​175 Elliott, David J., 128, 134, 190 enchantment, 83–​85, 272 Ephrem the Syrian, 80–​81 ethnography, 9, 128, 233–​234 ethnomusicology, 5, 9, 38–​41, 48, 55, 62, 114, 128–​131, 137, 150, 217–​220, 245, 261 Eucharist, 2, 64, 85–​86, 92–​96, 209, 234, 238 Eurhythmics, 66–​67 European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 313 European Union, 3, 20–​23, 46, 225, 254 Faith of Our Fathers, 96 Fausto-​Sterling, Anne, 63 Fedele, Anna, 48 Feldenkrais, Moshe, 68–​71 feminism, 48, 68, 74, 132, 195, 213, 256 Ferriter, Diarmaid, 46 Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, 184 Festival of World Sacred Music, 5, 12–​14 Finlay, Andrew, 224 Finn, Thomas M., 242–​243 Flynn, Thomas, 189 football hooliganism, 261 Foucault, Michel, 65, 74, 101, 122, 253, 265 Fuller, Louise, 93

 317

Index Gael Linn, 260 Gaelic revival, 8 Gallagher, Shaun, 78, 99, 171 Garde, Thomas, 95 Geertz, Clifford, 123 Giddens, Anthony, 122–​123, 213 Gillen, Gerard, 121 Gillespie, Raymond, 242 Glenstal Abbey, 5, 83, 92–​98, 119 globalization, 55, 268 Goffman, Erving, 126 Good Friday Agreement, 4, 223–​225 Gramsci, Antonio, 212 Great Famine, 20, 47, 91, 194 Greek philosophy, 7, 69–​70, 114–​117, 135, 168–​169, 174, 253–​254 Gregorian, 8, 57–​58, 81–​98, 245 Grimes, Ronald, 11, 14, 99, 129, 132–​139, 146–​163, 176–​178, 181, 252, 261 Grotowski’s Polish Theatre Lab, 139 Guattari, Félix, 51 Guéranger, Prosper, 83–​85 Gymnastik, 65 Hallie, Phillip, 243 Hanna, Thomas, 69 Hawn, Michael C., 240–​241 Heaney, Seamus, 4, 105 hegemony, 51, 132, 206, 212–​219 Herrad of Hohenbourg, 126 Higgins, Lee, 183, 204, 213 Higgins, Michael D., 120, 205 holistic, 101, 190, 247 Holy Week, 58–​59, 91, 97 Homer, 7 homosexuality, 3, 43–​44, 131–​132, 257 Hood, Mantle, 62–​63 Hortus Deliciarum, 126–​127, 174 hospitality, 7, 13, 164, 181–​253 Huesken, Ute, and Frank Neubert, 178 Hughes-​Freeland, Felicia, and Mary M. Crain, 172

317

Igbo, 61–​62, 208 imbas, 110–​115, 120, 133 incarnation, 48, 80, 84, 130 Incarnationis Mysterium, 48 India, 69, 117, 194–​196, 213, 236 integration, 24, 67, 130, 159, 192–​197, 211–​227, 241, 247–​252 Irish Chamber Orchestra, 205, 216 Irish citizenship referendum, 7, 11, 14, 59, 221–​227, 244, 254 Irish folk tradition, 4, 47, 111–​112, 242 Irish mythology, 100, 110–​116, 120, 133–135, 152, 173 Irish World Academy, 4–​11, 12, 26, 30, 105–​140, 184, 205, 245, 253, 260 James, William, 75, 175 Jeffery, Peter, 82 Jesuits, 1, 45, 210, 259 Jewish, 2, 5, 6, 8, 21, 49, 174, 238, 249, 259 John Paul II, 2, 43, 48 Johnson, Don Hanlon, 72, 76–​77, 166 Johnson, Mark, 176 Kavanagh, Julie, 90 Kelly, John, 205 Kiberd, Declan, 252, 255 kinesthetic, 7, 63, 67, 80, 188, 247–​248 Koenker, Ernest B., 87 Koran, 174 Kramer, Lawrence, 128 Kristeva, Julia, 74, 79, 201, 232 Kubik, Gerhard, 41 Kuipers, Joel C., 238 Kurien, Premen A., 195 Lakoff, George, 76, 176–​177 laus perennis, 14–​15, 43, 244, 266 Lavery, Sean, 81–​82, 194 Lavrinec, Jekaterina, 132 legislation, 44, 83, 225–​227, 230, 313

318

318

Index

Lentin, Ronit, and Robbie McVeigh, 28, 224 Lévi-​Strauss, Claude, 123, 173–​176 Logos, 241 Love, Cyprian, 95, 98 Lucernarium choir, 28, 58–​60 Lucy, Seán, 167

multiculturalism, 4, 13–​14, 51, 57–​60, 73–​74, 110, 187–​189, 215–​216 Murphy, Séamus, 45 Murphy Report, 44, 45 musicology, 78, 83–​84, 114, 121–​122, 126–​131, 136, 168, 172, 183, 203, 217–​220, 240

Mac Coitir, Niall, 111 Mac Gréil, Micheál, 210 MacLachlan, Malcolm, and Michael O’Connell, 231 McCarthy, Marie, 110, 182 McClary, Susan, 128 McGahern, John, 93–​94 McGann, Mary, 207–​208 McGarry, Patsy, 45 McGlynn, Eileen, 24 McGlynn, Joe, 27, 210 Maher, Michael, 262 Maredsous Abbey, 95 Marincak, Simon, 29, 31 Marxist, 123, 211, 249 Master’s in Community Music, 205–​206, 216 Master’s in Ritual Chant and Song, 5, 8, 13, 27–​28, 58, 137–​138, 146, 156, 184 Meehan, Paula, 258 Melrose, Susan, 124–​125 memory, 3, 35–​37, 42, 53–​54, 81, 153, 160–​168, 191, 207, 215, 232, 238, 251 Methodist, 22, 26, 32, 46, 52, 233 migration, 3, 9, 11–​12, 19–​21, 39–​40, 46, 189, 193–​199, 204, 218, 220, 224–​ 226, 230, 254 Missal, 86, 234, 236 Mocquereau, André, 89 Mocquereau, Dom, 91 monasticism, 94–​95, 11, 114, 120, 244 Mont St. Odile, 126 motherhood, 215 Moyaert, Marianne, 197

nationalism, 2, 93, 209, 261–​262 Nettl, Bruno, 106, 114 New Revelation Pentecostal Church, 12, 32 New Testament, 262 Newman, Elizabeth, 7, 197 Ní Riain, Nóirín, 5 Nigerian Pentecostal Church, 11, 19, 26, 32–​33, 41 Nolan, Mary Lee, 48–​49 Nomad (project), 25, 205, 208, 210 Northern Ireland, 4, 28, 192, 197, 223–​226 Nussbaum, Martha, 253, 256 Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí, 20 Ó Súilleabháin, Mícheál, 4–​5, 110, 114, 116, 129–​135, 205 O’Flynn, John, 189 Old Testament, 100 Olwig, Karen F., and Kirsten Hastrup, 196 Ortner, Sherry, 65, 122–​123, 178, 207 pastoral, 27, 52–​56, 64, 82–​89, 94–​97 Pecklers, Keith, 88 pedagogy, 2, 7–​13, 63–​69, 106–​108, 120, 130–​134, 136, 154, 163, 178, 190, 253 Phelan, Peggy, 125 philosophy, 66–​71, 74, 77–​78, 114, 127–​134, 199 physiological, 9–​12, 37, 54, 70, 106, 191, 202, 246–​248 pilgrimage, 12, 47–​51, 93, 95, 238, 244

 319

Index Pius X, 58, 86–​89, 97 Placid, Dom, 96–​97 Placid, Murray, 96 poetry, 8, 80, 105, 112, 114, 127, 130, 167, 176, 191, 201, 258 Polanyi, Michael, 189 polyphony, 8, 13, 57–​59, 80, 88, 91, 127, 169–​171, 208 Pothier, Joseph, 84 Power, Richard, 6 Presbyterian Church, 25–​26, 32, 46, 52 Promised Land, 40 Protestant, 1, 3, 53, 87, 114, 192, 197 Quaker, 57, 152 racism, 222, 225, 255 Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), 58 Ratzinger, Joseph, 94 Redemptorists, 26, 57–​59, 86 Reformation, 53, 57, 90 refugee, 5, 21–​27, 34–​39, 59, 195–​198, 201, 205, 210, 221, 224–​230, 255 resonance, 9–​10, 12–​15, 20, 35–​43, 54, 75–​77, 165, 172, 188, 246, 248 Rice, Timothy, 39 ritual lab, 5, 11–​13, 98–​99, 124, 136–​178, 193–​194, 242, 253 ritual pit, 12, 115–​121 Robbins, Joel, 33 Robinson, Mary, 4 Ryan, Liam, 44 Ryan, Vincent, 97 Ryan Report, 44 sacraments, 46, 61–​64, 96, 234 Sacred Space, 48 Sahlins, Marshall, 123 Sanctuary (project), 5, 26, 41, 184, 205, 208, 210, 215, 221, 228, 230, 234, 246 Sax, William S., 171

319

Schatzki, Theodore, 122 Schechner, Richard, 124–​126, 164, 177, 239 Second Vatican Council, 1, 5, 8, 56–​58, 63–​64, 82–​96, 136 sensory, 10, 41–​43, 68–​78, 99, 153, 190, 203–​204, 219–​220 sexual scandal, 12, 43–​46, 74, 222, 224, 254, 257 Shehan Campbell, Patricia, 190 Shepherd, Massey Hamilton, Jr., 87 Shusterman, Richard, 56, 70–​78, 126, 134, 246 Sisters of Mercy, 24, 26 Slavic music, 8, 29 Sloboda, John, 191 Smith, Jonathan, Z., 177 Smith, Joseph, 58, 91 Smith, Stefan Halikowski, 173–​174 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 236–​237 social justice, 88 Society of St. Gregory, 92 Solesmes, 58, 82–​95 Solomon, Thomas, 41 somaesthetics, 56, 71–​78, 246 sonic, 6–​13, 37, 41, 51–​55, 61–​67, 76, 79, 84, 99, 106, 129, 145, 153, 158–159, 165, 170, 183, 190, 202–​213, 238–​243, 252 Sound Links (project), 205 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 15 St. John’s Cathedral, 11, 12, 56–​60, 91, 228 St. Michael’s Church of Ireland, 11, 12, 19, 32 structuralism, 123 Syrian monks, 15 tacit, 9, 10–​15, 122, 135, 188–​218, 245–​248, 256 Tambiah, Samuel, 99 Tanay, Dorit, 168

320

320 Taylor, Charles, 122, 124 temporality, 6–​15, 76, 99, 137, 165–​189, 208, 218, 245–​252 The Elim Pentecostal Church, 32 The Irish Times, 45, 47, 108, 226, 231 Tillich, Paul, 177 traveller, 14, 208–​220, 252, 261, 287 Trinity choir, 59, 223, 232–​236, 253 Trio Medieval, 185 Turino, Thomas, 196, 203 Turner, Victor, 79, 177, 217, 243 Twomey, Vincent, 46–​49 Ugba, Abel, 25, 34, 36 United Nations (UN), 4, 229 utopia, 40, 173, 201, 203 van Gennep, Arnold, 177 Vaugeois, Lise, 190 Vergalli, Sergio, 196 Vespers, 29–​31, 87, 263

Index virtual space, 140–​141 Walker, Robert, 190 water, 8–​9, 35, 99–​100, 110–​112, 117, 135, 152, 165, 220, 239, 242 WATERMARK, 135 Whelan, Thomas, 137 White, Harry, 90–​91 Williams, Allan M., and Vladimir Baláž, 193 Winthrop, Robert H., 84 wisdom literature, 32, 99–​100, 110–​120, 127, 164 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 75, 122, 172, 182 World Carnival, 14, 184, 192, 206, 215–​219, 253 Yeats, William Butler, 8 Yoruba, 5, 185, 208, 211, 214, 233 Zavershinsky, George, 27, 50, 263

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