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Ambivalence 3 ‘Irish blood, English heart’: Ambivalence, unease and The Smiths Sean Campbell The dominant forms of popular music in most contemporary societies have emerged, notes Simon Frith, ‘at the social margins – among the poor, the migrant, the rootless’.1 This has certainly been the case in Britain, where, as one high-profile music magazine put it, ‘a potent shebeen of home-grown music’ has been ensured only by ‘a multi-ethnic mix’ in which ‘the immigrant Irish have proved most crucial’.2 The vital role played by second-generation Irish musicians in
7 Sounding out the margins: ethnicity and popular music in British cultural studies SEAN CAMPBELL Introduction In their discussion of the development of British cultural studies,1 Jon Stratton and Ien Ang point out that the ‘energizing impulse’ of the field has ‘historically … lain in [a] critical concern with, and validation of, the subordinate, the marginalized [and] the subaltern within Britain’ (1996: 376). Accordingly, many of the field’s principal practitioners have paid a considerable amount of attention to questions of ‘race’2 and ethnicity in post
1 ‘Why pamper life’s complexities?’: An introduction to the book Sean Campbell and Colin Coulter There are certain moments when the winds of popular cultural appraisal shift with a pace and in a direction that few could have anticipated. The radical reevaluation of The Smiths that has occurred in recent years marks an especially striking case in point. It might seem odd to recall now, but there was a time not so long ago when the cultural stock of the band was at a low. Amid the ascent and ubiquity of dance music in the early 1990s, The Smiths – who had
The concept of 'margins' denotes geographical, economic, demographic, cultural and political positioning in relation to a perceived centre. This book aims to question the term 'marginal' itself, to hear the voices talking 'across' borders and not only to or through an English centre. The first part of the book examines debates on the political and poetic choice of language, drawing attention to significant differences between the Irish and Scottish strategies. It includes a discussion of the complicated dynamic of woman and nation by Aileen Christianson, which explores the work of twentieth-century Scottish and Irish women writers. The book also explores masculinities in both English and Scottish writing from Berthold Schoene, which deploys sexual difference as a means of testing postcolonial theorizing. A different perspective on the notion of marginality is offered by addressing 'Englishness' in relation to 'migrant' writing in prose concerned with India and England after Independence. The second part of the book focuses on a wide range of new poetry to question simplified margin/centre relations. It discusses a historicising perspective on the work of cultural studies and its responses to the relationship between ethnicity and second-generation Irish musicians from Sean Campbell. The comparison of contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction which identifies similarities and differences in recent developments is also considered. In each instance the writers take on the task of examining and assessing points of connection and diversity across a particular body of work, while moving away from contrasts which focus on an English 'norm'.
M1426 - COULTER TEXT.qxp:GRAHAM Q7 17/7/08 08:02 Page 232 12 From shellshock rock to ceasefire sounds: popular music Sean Campbell and Gerry Smyth In recent years a number of authors have sought to establish popular music as an important element within the Irish critical imagination. They have done so because among the many achievements of international popular music studies has been an appreciation that this kind of cultural practice provides one of the key means for subjects to understand the world and themselves in relation to it. As Martin Stokes
This book seeks to offer a rather wider frame of analysis than is typically adopted in accounts of the nature and significance of The Smiths. It focuses on the Catholic and broader religious dimensions of The Smiths. The book explores the theme of suicide in the songs of The Smiths. It also seeks to examine how the kitchen-sink dramas of the early 1960s influenced Morrissey's writing. The book proposes that beyond the literal references in his lyrics there lies a sensibility at the heart of these films akin to the one found in his poetic impulse. The book expands the argument with some concluding thoughts on how cinema has 'returned the favour' by employing The Smiths' songs in various ways. It examines the particular forms of national identity that are imagined in the work of The Smiths. The book ranges from class, sexuality, Catholicism, and Thatcherism to musical poetics and fandom. It then focuses on lyrics, interviews, the city of Manchester, cultural iconography, and the cult of Morrissey. The distinctive sense of Englishness that pervades the lyrics, interviews, and cover art of the band is located within a specific tradition of popular culture from which they have drawn and to which they have contributed a great deal. The book breaches the standard confines of music history, rock biography, and pop culture studies to give a sustained critical analysis of the band that is timely and illuminating.
question simplified margin/centre relations; a historicising perspective on the work of cultural studies and its responses to the relationship between ethnicity and second-generation Irish musicians from Sean Campbell; and our own comparison of contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction which identifies similarities and differences in recent developments. In each instance the writers take on the task of examining and assessing points of connection and diversity across a particular body of work, while moving away from contrasts which focus on an English ‘norm’. A recurring
imaginaries from elsewhere that can provide escape routes CAMPBELL PRINT.indd 245 21/09/2010 11:25 246 Out of place with The Smiths to other ways of thinking and feeling. The readiness of some fans and journalists to lock down The Smiths as arbiters of a quintessential and timeless Englishness could itself have influenced Morrissey’s later rhetoric mourning the passing of a national way of life. As Sean Campbell argues, a narrow English view of The Smiths obscures the histories and perspectives of the Anglo-Irish.7 More prosaically, it simply downgrades the diversity
extraordinary and unexpected. The three organisers (Sean Campbell, Colin Coulter and myself) had arrived at the idea for the conference during several discussions in 2003, and felt that twenty years after the formation of The Smiths was an appropriate point to begin thinking about staging an event to reflect on them. As academics, we were used to staging formal conferences and did not expect this event to be particularly different from ones that we had organised before. The media response, therefore, took us somewhat by surprise. Altogether, there were more than fifty
Did I Get? Punk, Memory and Autobiography’, in Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk ed. by Roger Sabin (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 227–228. 8 Gerry Smyth, Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005), p. 49. 9 See, for example, Sean Campbell, ‘“Pack Up Your Troubles”: Politics and Popular Music in Pre- and Post-ceasefire Ulster’, Popular Musicology Online, 4 (2007) www. popular-musicology-online.com/issues/04/campbell-01.html [accessed 24 July 2017]. 190 Northern Ireland and the politics of boredom