The Irish Diaspora In America

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This multi-method approach to my research allows me to present a well-rounded examination of how a genre of music (that is no longer mainstream or common) has been remembered over the course of approximately one hundred years. My thesis presents an overview of the history of the Irish diaspora in America and their influence and connection with American popular music, then, I examine how this genre of music has survived and how memory and conceptions of this music—including the conceptions of the Irish people—have evolved into the twenty-first century. One must consider historical representation when discussing popular music and music production in American circa 1880 through 1920. When people hear the words “Tin Pan Alley,” public and scholarly …show more content…
In the post-famine era of the late 1800s, the Irish were still negotiating with their identity as Americans. Most of the Irish in America were lower-class citizens and struggled to get ahead in a success-driven society that catered to white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASPs). Stokes states that one reason “music is so important to ‘top down’ ethnicities is that musicians often appear to celebrate ethnic plurality in problematic ways. Musicians in many parts of the world have a magpie attitude towards genres, picked up, transformed and reinterpreted in their own terms” (Stokes 1994, p. 16). This holds true for the musicians and performers on the stages of vaudeville. To gain acceptance and respect would be a very difficult challenge for the Irish, because, in many ways, they saw themselves as—and indeed they were—people who suffered ethnocide from British rule, as well as mass starvation due to the Great Famine. The Irish came to America as people who were downtrodden, but with the hope of a better life. To achieve success and to gain a foothold in American society, “they would have to construct an image of themselves as Irish and as Americans that would gain acceptance in the broad mainstream American culture” (Williams 1996, p. 1). Remarkably, they were able to find a platform on Tin Pan Alley and in vaudeville to create and sell an image to the rest of American society, in many ways leading to their upward mobility and acceptance in the United States. Stokes articulates that “music is credited with powers of bringing people together and engendering the moral cohesion of the community, evoking collective and private memory. Place, for many migrant communities, is something which is constructed through
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