Historians of Irish America and the nineteenth-century United States have long turned to contemporary musical expression in search of insight into those who created, performed and listened to particular songs. Nevertheless, this analysis is often peripheral and with the notable exception of scholars such as Mick Moloney, it rarely enjoys the dedicated focus that Dan Milner endeavours to bring with this volume. Taking as his primary source material the popular songs commercially printed and distributed in broadsides, songsters and as sheet music, Milner — himself a musician of some note — argues for their utility in tracing the fortunes of the Catholic New York Irish across the hundred years that he regards as the ‘critical era of Irish integration in the city of New York’ (p. 3). He finds in their lyrics evidence for a gradual integration, as the Catholic Irish moved from a minority position of vulnerability and insecurity in the eighteenth century towards one of increasing confidence and acceptance by 1880, when their first and second generations made up 35 per cent of the city's population.
The book is set out chronologically, its five chapters charting the story of the city's Catholic Irish from the colonial period to the conclusion of the initial mayoral term of William Russell Grace, New York's first Irish Catholic mayor. Each section explores this experience by setting an analysis of song lyrics within a discussion of existing scholarship and period newspaper reports. This approach occasionally causes elements of the text to read as historiographical synthesis, particularly for those earlier periods where fewer songs survive. It is little surprise, therefore, that The unstoppable Irish focuses the majority of its attention on the decades following the Great Famine, and the abundant Irish American musical legacy created as a result of the mass immigration it precipitated.
The author is to be commended for the impressive number and variety of songs discussed, many of which are reproduced in whole or in part through the text. Their subject and sentiments vary from mid-century songs of exile, nationalism and pride in military service to later-nineteenth-century ballads concerned with labour and social issues. It is in the analysis of the songs and the often-impressive detective work undertaken into their origins and evolution that the volume's main strength lies. This is exemplified in the fascinating discussion of the popular ballad ‘Skibbereen’, which Milner demonstrates was a Fenian song composed in America and initially set to the same fast-paced martial tune as ‘The wearing of the green’.
As well as the songs themselves, the author examines the musical world of groceries, concert saloons, theatres and variety houses in which they were performed — locations that often doubled as important centres of political and community life. Evidence for integration was also discernible in the types of performances that graced such venues. Within variety entertainment, the adoption of Irish stage personas increased in number and positivity as the Irish became more embedded within the fabric of New York life. This was typified by performers such as Italian American Antonio (Tony) Pastor, whose sympathetic and humorous depictions of the Irish drew crowds from both inside and outside the ethnic community. Milner demonstrates how such improving representations contrasted sharply with the increasingly regressive depiction of African Americans, typified by the blackface minstrelry that emerged in Manhattan, a wildly popular form of entertainment within which Irish American musicians were prominent.
There are sections of the book where a more detailed examination of both the songs’ limitations and their capacity to inform and/or challenge existing historiography would have been welcome. An example can be found in the chapter dealing with the Civil War, where analysis begins with the premise that Catholic soldiers ‘used self-imposed segregation to avoid hostility and discrimination by enlisting in separate ethnic military units’ (p. 120). This assumption frames the discussion of Irish-themed Civil War music that follows, a surviving corpus overwhelmingly dominated by songs celebrating a handful of ethnic units and individuals. Here, the music created was not fully representative. In fact, far from segregating themselves, the overwhelming majority of New York Irish servicemen chose to march to war in non-ethnic formations. This significantly complicates any musical analysis, prompting the important question as to why the majority Catholic Irish military experience was not prominent in contemporary popular song.
Such reservations aside, The unstoppable Irish succeeds in demonstrating the degree to which song reflected increasing Irish integration, acting as a musical manifestation of Irish American progression and the changing perceptions of wider American society. The book serves as a welcome addition to the body of work on nineteenth-century American and Irish American song, and signposts the significant research potential of this rich, evocative and underemployed historical resource.
