Felix Morgenstern
Irish Traditional Music in Germany locates the experiences of German Irish traditional music practitioners within the broader framework of modern European history. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this volume illustrates the ongoing centrality of cultural capital and acquired technical prowess as fundamental gatekeepers of inclusion within the principal performance and transmission settings of German Irish music sessions and workshops. While continuing to adapt some norms of belonging shaped in the music’s place of origin, such arrangements ultimately decouple the translocal German community of practice from its Irish authenticating centre. Morgenstern interrogates these forms of anxious control as part of a broader cultural anxiety tied to the traumatic misuses of German folk music for extreme nationalist and racist propaganda purposes during the Nazi era. He posits that a nostalgic German gaze towards Ireland has enabled the transfer and sublimation of patriotic German sentiments onto a proximal European musical tradition. Unravelling the distinctions between the historical, anti-colonial and expansive imperial registers of Irish and German musical exceptionalism is key to comprehending the political alignment of former post-war German artists with Irish rebel songs. 6
