Tuned Out: Traditional Music and Identity in Northern Ireland

This book looks at the attitudes of Protestant performers to Traditional music in Northern Ireland. It reflects on broader Protestant community views of the music through their eyes and considers the impact of historical literature, political statements and other interventions which have affected and shaped Traditional music today.



Traditional music is taken to mean the dance music, forms of dance and style of songs which were the onetime entertainment of rural people prior to urbanization and the development of mass forms of entertainment.



The data collected for this study was originally researched in 1992 in a profoundly different political climate to that which burgeons in 2008. This study does not offer conclusions, but represents musicians' attitudes as a contribution to ongoing debate and assertion about culture and identity in Northern Ireland.

Fintan Vallelly is course co-ordinator and lecturer in Traditional Music in Dundalk Institute of Technology and is the author of The Companion to Traditional Irish Music.