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Irish Music and Musicians in the United States: An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2010

PAUL F. WELLS
Affiliation:
pfwells@mtsu.edu
SALLY K. SOMMERS SMITH
Affiliation:
ssommers@bu.edu

Extract

“The Irish came early and often to America,” quipped musicologist Charles Hamm in his landmark book Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. Although the largest waves of immigration occurred during the years of the potato famines in the 1840s and 1850s, the process began long before then and continues to the present day, albeit with many ebbs and flows in the stream. Today nearly 36.5 million people in the United States claim Irish ancestry.

Type
Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2010

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References

Bringing It All Back Home: The Influence of Irish Music. Liner notes by Nuala O'Connor. Dublin: Hummingbird Records, 1990.Google Scholar
Doherty, Elizabeth. “The Paradox of the Periphery: Evolution of Cape Breton Fiddle Tradition, c. 1929–1995.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Limerick, 1996.Google Scholar
Hamm, Charles. Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.Google Scholar