Thesis submission ID 99 | created
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Johanne Devlin Trew, Music, Place and Community: Culture and Irish Heritage in the Ottawa Valley
Volumes, pp.: 1
Supervisor(s): Prof. Micheal O Suilleabhan
Repository (online): http://hdl.handle.net/10344/1209
General specialism: Musicology
Historical timeframe: 1994-2000
Key terms, concepts: Local knowledge, community, identity, ethnicity, space and place, performance, migration, Irish diaspora
Key terms, persons: Don Messer, Graham Townsend, Donnie Gilchrist
Key terms, places: Canada, Ottawa Valley, Quebec, Eastern Ontario, Ottawa River
Key terms, genres, instruments: Traditional music, dance music, old time music, folk music, oral literature
Abstract:
Because of its relative isolation until recent times, the Ottawa Valley has developed and maintained its own unique traditions and culture. Three predominant groups: the Irish, the Scots and the French-Canadians, settled in the region during the past two hundred years, in patterns that little respected current provincial borders. `The Valley' forms an area in Canada on both sides of the Ottawa River in Ontario and Quebec that is well known for its rich singing, storytelling, fiddling and stepdancing traditions. Due to the predominance of Irish settlement in the region during the nineteenth century — the largest concentration of people of Irish origin in British North America — the culture of the Ottawa Valley has a predominantly Irish flavour.
Considered within a theoretical framework outlining the importance of local knowledge (Foucault, Lyotard, Geertz) and taking into account theories of community, identity and cultural hybridity (Anthony Cohen, Victor Turner, Homi K. Bhabha), the study examines the influence of place (Basso, Feld, G. Rose, Soja, Tuan) and history, expressed in the performance of cultural traditions (oral narrative, music, dance, Orange parades, etc.), as underlying the construction of community identity. The thesis demonstrates how communities anchor their identity in their local environment and conversely, how their sense of place influences the expression of their identity.
In the last chapter, entitled “Conflicting Communities: Traditional `Old-Time' Culture and Canadian Unity,†the popularity of commercial fiddler Don Messer is explored within the wider Canadian context of the emerging liberal nationalism of the 1960s. Its legacy of conflict, which has resulted in the suppression of traditional culture in favour of elite culture, is deconstructed by examining the versions of Canadian identity as expressed in traditional or folk culture, as promoted by the government and as portrayed in the media, and their relationship to the current political/cultural crisis in the country.
Based on three years of fieldwork conducted in the Ottawa Valley region employing ethnographic methodology which included: attending cultural events from fiddle and stepdancing contests to house parties, establishing a network of contacts throughout the region, conducting in-depth interviews with musicians, dancers, and local historians, and undertaking extensive historical research, including the use of census data.
Johanne Devlin Trew, Music, Place and Community: Culture and Irish Heritage in the Ottawa Valley
PhD, University of Limerick, 2000
Volumes, pp.: 1
Supervisor(s): Prof. Micheal O Suilleabhan
Repository (online): http://hdl.handle.net/10344/1209
General specialism: Musicology
Historical timeframe: 1994-2000
Key terms, concepts: Local knowledge, community, identity, ethnicity, space and place, performance, migration, Irish diaspora
Key terms, persons: Don Messer, Graham Townsend, Donnie Gilchrist
Key terms, places: Canada, Ottawa Valley, Quebec, Eastern Ontario, Ottawa River
Key terms, genres, instruments: Traditional music, dance music, old time music, folk music, oral literature
Abstract:
Because of its relative isolation until recent times, the Ottawa Valley has developed and maintained its own unique traditions and culture. Three predominant groups: the Irish, the Scots and the French-Canadians, settled in the region during the past two hundred years, in patterns that little respected current provincial borders. `The Valley' forms an area in Canada on both sides of the Ottawa River in Ontario and Quebec that is well known for its rich singing, storytelling, fiddling and stepdancing traditions. Due to the predominance of Irish settlement in the region during the nineteenth century — the largest concentration of people of Irish origin in British North America — the culture of the Ottawa Valley has a predominantly Irish flavour.
Considered within a theoretical framework outlining the importance of local knowledge (Foucault, Lyotard, Geertz) and taking into account theories of community, identity and cultural hybridity (Anthony Cohen, Victor Turner, Homi K. Bhabha), the study examines the influence of place (Basso, Feld, G. Rose, Soja, Tuan) and history, expressed in the performance of cultural traditions (oral narrative, music, dance, Orange parades, etc.), as underlying the construction of community identity. The thesis demonstrates how communities anchor their identity in their local environment and conversely, how their sense of place influences the expression of their identity.
In the last chapter, entitled “Conflicting Communities: Traditional `Old-Time' Culture and Canadian Unity,†the popularity of commercial fiddler Don Messer is explored within the wider Canadian context of the emerging liberal nationalism of the 1960s. Its legacy of conflict, which has resulted in the suppression of traditional culture in favour of elite culture, is deconstructed by examining the versions of Canadian identity as expressed in traditional or folk culture, as promoted by the government and as portrayed in the media, and their relationship to the current political/cultural crisis in the country.
Based on three years of fieldwork conducted in the Ottawa Valley region employing ethnographic methodology which included: attending cultural events from fiddle and stepdancing contests to house parties, establishing a network of contacts throughout the region, conducting in-depth interviews with musicians, dancers, and local historians, and undertaking extensive historical research, including the use of census data.
Thesis submission ID 99