Irish Traditional Music in Germany

Felix Morgenstern is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Limerick. He previously lectured in Wurzburg and Vienna, and was PI on a FWF postdoctoral grant at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (2021-2024). He is the current Deputy Editor of the journal Ethnomusicology Ireland and co edited the volume Joint Knowledge Production and Collaboration in Ethnomusicological Research (Shaker, 2024) with Kendra Stepputat. Published articles have appeared in the Yearbook for Traditional Music (2023), in Popular Music History (2022), in New Hibernia Review (2021), and in Ethnomusicology Forum (2021a).

A tour de force. Through an incisive analysis of ethnographic voices, interrogation of historical discourses and sophisticated application of cultural theory, Morgenstern demonstrates how German musicians’ adoption of Irish traditional music allows them to bridge the shameful disjuncture caused by the Nazi appropriation of German folk music. Crucially, he demonstrates the advantage—both musical and in status and authority—of middle-class, relatively wealthy German musicians with the means to travel to Ireland, where they acquire social and cultural capital alongside musical expertise. He labels their connections with Irish musicians intercultural transactions, thereby introducing a new term and a new way of understanding the dynamics of non-nationals playing Irish traditional music.Dr Helen O’Shea, Honorary Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology, The University of Melbourne, Australia