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How influential was Irish music in America
Music was the easiest thing an Irish emigrant could have brought with them, but it was all in the fate of where the Irish emigrant settled, the obvious ones being New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. There are some parts of Eastern Canada where the Irish Immigrants settled, where they settled in amongst some French, English and Scots. The Irish music was part of a revolutionary mixture that we know as French Canadian music, this is most evident in their fiddle playing. There is an island off the Canadian east coast where the population in predominantly Irish, this island is called Prince Edward Island; this is where you can hear hybrids of well-known Irish tunes. The Irish influence did not just stop there, it also spread down to the Appalachian Mountains, this is where most of the English and Northern Irish immigrants flocked, unlike Canada where the Population was predominantly Irish French and Scottish, where the music was very important to them, maybe again a sense of national pride. In the Appalachians there was a mixture in society, there was Native Americans, African Americans and Germans so this led to a fairly weak Irish community, as a result this was a major factor in the development of what we know as American Traditional music and eventually American country music and bluegrass.
From the 1800’s to early 1900’s you can only talk about Irish traditional music in American pop culture as the staged performance. Lets remember the social status of the Irish in America at this time their were seen as the lowest of the low, going to back to the saying “No Dogs, No Black’s, No Irish”. This was a time where some of these families had no work, and if they were lucky enough to own an instrument and to be able to play, the only option they had was dressing up and blackening their faces to imitate African Americans and play, music not necessarily Irish.
Approximate Word count = 1572
Approximate Pages = 6.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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