In this comprehensive study of the most influential of modern Irish musicians, Sean Williams and Lillis Ó Laoire successfully combine a thorough examination of the major themes and influences in Joe Heaney’s life and performances with a painstaking contextualization of the man and his art in the broader framework of Irish history. As a critical biography, the text is more concerned with exploring the motives and methods of its subject than presenting a simple chronological narrative of his life (6). The result is an engaging and exhaustive study of the historical developments and social realities that impacted Heaney’s attitudes, performance styles, and his eventual rise to prominence as the sean-nós (“old-style”) singer par excellence.
In the book’s nine chapters, divided into four major sections, the authors explore the performative and cultural systems through which Heaney moved. The title of each section aptly describes their focus: Sean-nós Singing, which relates the development and practice of the style; The Iconic Repertoire, a discussion of Heaney’s song choices and their implications; Masculinity in a Musical Context, which positions Heaney as a particular type of Irish male, and considers the role of his art in expressing that masculinity; and Joe Heaney in America, a look at the singer’s career outside of Ireland.
Heaney was born during the early stages of the development of sean-nós, a style cultivated specifically to oppose contemporary forms associated with British colonialism and popular music that was felt to embody a "tawdry, contaminated modernity" (29). Despite this explicit constructedness, the authors note, sean-nós came to be seen as authentically, traditionally Gaelic. For various reasons, the particular style of Connemara—Heaney’s native region—came to be seen as the most authentic (33). Williams and Ó Laoire suggest that Heaney was largely trained through the oral tradition and had little formal musical learning, though he later had access to contemporary music theory (47). The conventions of Western music such as vibrato and dynamics (the raising or lowering of volume) were forbidden in sean-nós: “Clearly, this aversion centers on both the desire for purity and the fear of polluting the tradition, which so deeply inform much of nationalist rhetoric, and the study of folkloric forms that constitute a part of it” (57).
The importance of the traditional is a recurring theme in the authors’ treatment of Heaney’s life. In chapter 4, discussing the religious laments in Heaney’s repertoire, Williams and Ó Laoire argue that Heaney’s emphasis on vernacular religious expression champions the perspective of the Irish people against the orthodoxy of the Church. This privileging of the vernacular, they claim, was in line with the goals of the Gaelic League, which “attempted to add legitimacy to the folk culture. It celebrated links between folklore and medieval aristocratic culture, imagining a direct continuity that could serve as the basis for the resurrection of the Gaelic nation” (94). In similar vein, in chapter 5 the authors observe that Heaney consciously positioned himself as a representative of the traditional culture that he felt Ireland was increasingly rejecting (113-114).
A major strength of the book is the authors’ deft handling of the complex development of Irish folklore study, and their impressive ability to keep the larger cultural and political trends of Irish history in view as they consider Heaney’s development as an artist. Williams and Ó Laoire position Heaney as the culmination of the Gaelic League’s ideals. His status as representative of a particular type of Irishness makes an examination of his life especially illuminating for any reader interested in the history of Irish folklore.
Of course, Heaney’s role as heir and exemplar of Irish tradition was not unproblematic. According to Williams and Ó Laoire, the sean-nós singer, who represents the harsh, rural past, also necessarily embodies aspects of Irish culture and history that some may wish to forget. In chapter 6 the authors consider the relationship of the male sean-nós singer to the Irish tenor, who embodies the forward-thinking image of Irish modernity. "In a sense, [the tenor] stands for the acceptable modern equivalent of the sean-nós singer" (140). While sean-nós is less popular than Irish tenor music, both styles, the authors suggest, are intimately tied to romanticized (if contradictory) notions of Irishness (153).
Some of those who wanted to reject the traditional past that Heaney represented were Irish-Americans. In the first half of the twentieth century Irish Americans tried to distance themselves from Irish traditional culture, which was perceived as backwards and unacceptable to contemporary American society. This is one reason, the authors posit, why many Irish-Americans did not understand Heaney or his art. This changed, however, in the later years of the century, and explains the warmth with which Heaney was received by Irish-American students when he began to teach in Seattle at the University of Washington (204-205).
At every point the authors take great care in placing Heaney’s trajectory as a singer in the appropriate historical and cultural contexts. From his birth in the west of Ireland to his eventual emigration, he is always situated as both a product and a shaper of trends in Irish history, traditional music, and folk music more generally. Individual songs in his repertoire are analyzed closely, with highly technical language and occasional brief transcriptions accompanying deep analyses of each song’s personal and cultural significances. An example is their treatment of Heaney’s attitude toward the Potato Famine, and the songs he chose to sing (or not to sing) in order to educate American audiences about this dark chapter in Irish history. Heaney chose not to sing the song "Johnny Seoighe," which relates to the famine as experienced in his native region and which remains controversial today (71). Instead he sang a song called "Come Lay Me Down"—heavily influenced by the popular American song “Muldoon the Solid Man”—which he linked with the famine through spoken narratives that accompanied the song’s performance. His choice of the song, the authors argue, was based on the needs of his American audiences (86-87).
The book’s final chapters discuss Heaney’s role in the folk music revival in the United States, his long career as a doorman in New York City, and his eventual appointment as a visiting artist at the University of Washington. In 1982 Heaney was awarded the NEH’s National Heritage Fellowship (192), arguably the pinnacle of his career. His eventual success in the United States stands in contrast to his relative lack of recognition in Ireland. Somewhat ironically, the authors note that after his death Heaney has become the sean-nós singer par excellence in Ireland and abroad. And his significance is not limited to the sean-nós tradition: "Heaney is the single most important individual artist to have emerged from the Gaelic community in the twentieth century" (210).
While “Bright Star of the West” may be a bit daunting for casual readers, it is an intimate and important look at the life of a major figure in Irish folk music. It is a significant work for ethnomusicologists, folklorists, and scholars of Irish culture, and a fitting tribute to the life and art of Joe Heaney.
--------
[Review length: 1170 words • Review posted on September 28, 2011]