Richard Parfitt's recently published monograph claims to be the ‘first comprehensive history of music's relationship with Irish nationalist politics.’ The title immediately recalls Joseph Ryan's doctoral dissertation (St Patrick's College, Maynooth, 1991) ‘Nationalism and music in Ireland’, which made the provocative assertion that nationalism in Ireland had a primarily negative influence on music and its development in the country. When Harry White took up this argument in The keeper's recital in 1998, he unleashed a storm of controversy in academic circles, with book reviews and counter-arguments evincing a degree of passion rarely seen in peer-reviewed journals. The keeper's recital remains a key, if controversial, text on the subject, and the Ryan/White thesis is regularly cited in academic discourse. Parfitt refers to this argument briefly, noting its problematic conclusions and its aggregation of all nationalists into a single bracket that rejected art music as ‘alien’ and Anglophile. His alternate examination of primarily popular music offers another perspective, but without considering art music in any detail, its claim to being a ‘comprehensive’ history is equally limited. Similarly, the ‘nationalism’ which is examined here is primarily separatist and republican; the cultural nationalism which spanned religious and class divides is given only token attention.

Parfitt sets out to interrogate the effects of popular nationalism on song, music and dance, and examines how musical culture informs both the construction of communal identities and the contentions between them. The book is laid out in five parts, in loosely chronological order, from the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 until the early years of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the late-twentieth century. Early chapters contextualise nationalist songs in the soundscapes of the nineteenth century, as experienced in community settings such as theatres, music halls, parades, music festivals, and churches, as well as domestic music-making. Subsequent chapters chart the critical period encompassing the home rule movement and cultural revival, when overtly nationalist music was appropriated by constitutional nationalists, and the Gaelic League and other cultural institutions advocated the de-Anglicisation of Ireland, deploring the use of English music hall songs.

Part two deals with the radicalisation of Irish politics from 1913 leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the partition of the island. Parfitt considers the functions of music within revolutionary nationalist culture – mourning martyrs and commemorating fallen heroes; legitimising new groups by association with the music of older movements; expressing identities; claiming political space and providing some revolutionary glamour to non-violent activities. Parts three and four cover the same time period from 1923 to 1972, exploring respectively the role that music played in the newly-independent Irish state, and in the six northern counties. The final section examines the progress of dance from 1935 to 1972, and charts the increasing influence of contemporary and foreign forms of dance, despite conservative efforts to ‘preserve the national character’ through the promotion of jigs, reels and hornpipes.

Parfitt has a flair for an eye-catching title (e.g., chapter 9: ‘This Morning a Man Was Hanged. This Evening We Had a Concert’), and is at his most engaging tracing the appropriation of a common musical heritage by conflicting political groups for diametrically opposed aims. However, the author's perspective has a troubling tendency towards the colonial; at times he seems over-zealous in dismantling or trivialising nationalist narratives, while British unionist and colonial perspectives, themselves forms of nationalism, are left unexamined. The book lacks any serious consideration of the events and circumstances which gave rise to the more extreme nationalism which is the focus of the study.

Musical artefacts are considered from a variety of perspectives, including their relationship with political movements and their efficacy as propaganda and recruitment tools, but the author fails to engage with music as expressive of a deeply embedded grievance and resistance against a powerful and dominant neighbour, whose governance over the period of study was certainly not always benign. For example, the discussion of the divisions in northern counties after partition is curiously sanitised of the violence that formed a backdrop to the confrontations of opposing communities. The internment policy in the 1970s leading up to Bloody Sunday is remarked on as a propaganda victory for republicans and for the damage it caused the army's reputation; Parfitt does not appear to consider the psychological impact and alienation that it inflicted on a nationalist community. Similarly, given his starting point of 1848, some discussion of the devastating effects of the Famine on the indigenous musical culture seems merited. Without the historical perspectives of these traumas, expressed grievances in music can be represented as faintly ridiculous, and Parfitt is not above poking a little fun at the positioning of the English as a ‘common villain’ or lyrics extolling ‘manly resistance to British rule’.

This is underscored by minor but persistent carelessness with Irish terminology and names. We are told that Brendan Behan, in addition to being a republican activist and ineffectual revolutionary, ‘also wrote plays’, which seems something of an understatement given his international stature as a writer. The Feis Ceoil (the national music festival founded in 1897) gets rather harsh treatment when Parfitt critiques its modest fundraising efforts as a betrayal of the anti-materialist aspirations of the revival movement. In the concluding statements of the book, the author remarks that ‘Of the many “soldiers” who have pledged their lives to Ireland in song, very few have been forced to fulfil their oath in battle.’ Such a claim might well hold true for any population in any country in the world. A more scrupulous exorcism of colonial bias would have made this a more balanced and palatable read. An engagement with the complexities of national and ethnic identities, and their historical contexts, would also make for a more nuanced argument.