You are invited to our Cultural Heritage Management Seminar Series 7. This online talk on March 20 2025 at 7.00 pm (Greek time), 5 pm (Irish time) is given by Dr Adam Behan (Maynooth University), Irish Popular Music, Cultural Heritage, & the Institutionalisation of Rock Music in the 1970s. Registration information below.
Abstract: Though it is a relatively recent phenomenon, popular music has already become part of the processes of cultural preservation and national heritage-making in Ireland, often for commercial ends and tourist appeal. But of the many kinds of popular music that should be part of these efforts, it is rock music that is usually the focus of attention. Taking this problem as a point of departure, in this paper I examine the entanglement of Irish rock culture with the country’s emerging domestic music industry in the late 1970s, especially in terms of the founding of Hot Press (Ireland’s longest running, most prominent music magazine), the launch of RTÉ Radio 2, and the growing university gig circuit, out of which many of the most influential managers and promoters emerged. I argue that these developments involved a larger process of the institutionalisation of rock music in Ireland, one that has implications for which kinds of Irish popular music are readily remembered, valued and considered worth commemorating in terms of the nation’s heritage. Though I leave open the question of how Irish popular music should best be conserved going forward, I argue that only by grappling with this historical problem of institutionalisation can we begin instead to formulate an approach that is diverse in its inclusion of genres and subcultures, many of which are precarious and always at risk of disappearance.
Biography Adam Behan is a musicologist who works on western music in the twentieth century, both classical and popular. He holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, and is currently an IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Maynooth University, where he is writing a book about Irish popular music at the end of the twentieth century. His research has won awards including the Karl Geiringer Scholarship from the American Brahms Society and the Westrup Prize from the Music & Letters Trust. He is a member of the SMI Council and his work appears in several journals, including Music Analysis, Twentieth-Century Music, Music & Letters, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association.
To register for the seminar online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iihsa-culture-heritage-management-seminar-series-7-tickets-1280548648479