The Irish in the Atlantic World

Transatlantic Migrations of Irish Music in the Early Recording Age

Transatlantic Migrations of Irish Music in the Early Recording Age Scott Spencer In the early twentieth century, recordings of Irish musicians in America had a major impact on traditional musicians in both Irish America and Ireland. This idea has often been repeated in Irish music circles, and academic discourse surrounding the movement of these recordings generally includes a version of the same generic sentence: “These early 78-rpm records made their way to Ireland and had a profound effect upon the tradition.” Publications on the subject employ a wide variety of verbs to describe the means by which these recordings moved through what is often described as a somewhat murky Atlantic trade route. In these statements agency has been left to question, and as a result myths of origin have developed. As London-based Irish musician and scholar Reg Hall has noted, “I’ve heard of ‘Returned Yanks’ coming home with a new dress or new suit, a wind-up gramophone and a few records, but the story eventually becomes a bit of a myth.”1 Musicians and historians alike have hinted at the engines behind this murky Atlantic trade route, many times implying an innate and inexplicable tendency among Irish American 78-rpm records to migrate across the ocean toward their spiritual home: “The music they recorded in the United States during the three decades prior to the 1950s found its way back to Ireland on 78rpm records, and became enormously influential.”2 Some publications suggest a system of natural osmosis (or possibly reverse osmosis): “McKenna’s discs made a tremendous impact when they filtered back home.”3 Anecdotal evidence and the recollections of Irish musicians have pointed to their moving through the postal system. Harry Bradshaw’s entry in The Companion to Traditional Irish Music on fiddler Michael Coleman mentions that “Coleman ’s records . . . were sent back to Ireland, where they gave inspiration to players.”4 However, many Irish Americans doubted the ability of the American or Irish postal systems to deliver the brittle 78-rpm records intact. As musician 54 | Scott Spencer Tommy Gilmartin has said, “They’d imagine if they posted them they’d be broken , which they would at the time.”5 The following chapter should help to illuminate this elusive and undocumented migratory pattern through a study of the economic, technologic, and cultural facets of commercial and subcommercial recordings of Irish traditional music in the early twentieth century. The result will be a window onto the ways in which Irish traditional music became a cross-Atlantic phenomenon with the dawn of the recording age and will demonstrate how musicians both in the diaspora and in the geographic center of the tradition have engaged in debates on ideas of traditionality and authenticity—a dialogue that continues today. At the dawn of the age of sound recording and in the early years of record companies, advertising and marketing was modeled on the mindset of the nineteenth -century furniture business. Companies were eager to sell phonograph players and lavish record cabinets to the general public, as these items represented large single-ticket expenses. The first decades of the industry were marked by a focus on marketing expensive gramophone cabinets over the relatively inexpensive records. In 1897 Edison Home Phonograph machines were selling for forty dollars, and the year 1899 saw 151,000 phonographs manufactured in the United States.6 Initially the industry focused on marketing these cabinets to the American middle class, but as the industry tapped out this early market demographic, companies began to introduce improved versions of the gramophone to cater to the middle-class market and fresh attention was focused on creating new markets. Just after the turn of the century, the most underdeveloped market in the United States for gramophone players was that of ethnic communities, and so in the early 1900s, the recording industry turned a good deal of attention toward immigrant communities: By about 1905 the record companies had jumped into the new ethnic market with enthusiasm. Of the three major firms, Columbia, which usually ranked second in its sales performance and was generally interested in marketing innovations, seemed the most eager to sell directly to foreign newcomers. Columbia was probably the first national American firm to consciously aim an elaborate ethnic catalogue at its foreign customers. Its 1906 catalogue offered musical records in twelve languages, and within three years the company had issued two additional sets of catalogues for immigrant audiences.7 Marketing departments in the major record companies...