Ballads Beyond Borders

About the Book

Understanding the Irish diaspora is crucial to understanding the history of music in the United States. Sarah Gerk merges analysis with big-picture views of Irish and U.S. history to reveal the social interactions that intertwined Irish immigration with American musical practices.

Irish migrants instigated and maintained a social process that affected all Americans, beyond but very much including music. Gerk brings together examples of relevant music that originated in Ireland, the United States, or elsewhere, to demonstrate the ways we can think about both the Irish diaspora specifically and immigration to America more generally. As she shows, the ubiquity of the Irish influence broadly shaped popular music throughout many different communities. Gerk’s attention to migration history, national identity, and race brings to light both the social contexts of Irish diaspora and the constellation of transnational connections in which it took place.

Interdisciplinary and illuminating, Ballads Beyond Borders explores new dimensions of Irish music, performance, and performers in the diaspora.

* Publication supported by an H. Earle Johnson Publication Subvention from the Society for American Music; by a grant from the AMS 75 PAYS Fund and General Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and by a grant from the L. J. and Mary C. Skaggs Folklore Fund.