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rfmcdonaldThe music of Sinéad O'Connor in the prime of her career, in the decade after and including her 1987 debut The Lion and the Cobra, includes some of my favourite pop music songs. At the time--not later in her career, I fear--O'Connor took her voice and her songwriting abilities to an intimate place that clicked, massively, with people around the world. The 1994 album Universal Mother was less commercial than the others of its type, but it still had that appeal, with songs like the Irish Famine song "Famine" and the angry--and Michel Gondry-filmed--"Fire on Babylon".
I mentioned the excellence of Sinéad O'Connor's music, but the shock of her presentation also accounts for her fame. Yes, she was an Irishwoman, but she was an angry Irishwoman, a woman who didn't fit the norms for Irish womanhood that: pious, quiet, fundamentally unchallenging. "Fight the enemy", remember? She was Irish, but Irish in a different way. Ireland had evolved.
Today's St. Patrick's Day. Had I wanted, I could have claimed some sort of Irish-Canadian identity with a moderate degree of credibility, through my father's side. More than a quarter, certainly. But leaving blood quanta aside--yes, please--how could I conceivably lay claim to any kind of meaningful Irish identity? Irish-Canadian identity would be enough of a stretch, I suppose, long since assimilated into a general "Prince Edward Island-ness".
There are many, many diasporas out there, but very frequently ethnic identity in any particular diaspora community isn't felt the same way as ethnic identity in the homeland. The communities have been cleaved, and evolved differently. We got a bit of this today when Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore spoke disapprovingly about the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade's ban on gay groups: "What these parades are about is a celebration of Ireland and Irishness. I think they need to celebrate Ireland as it is, not as people imagine it. Equality is very much the center of who we are in our identity in Ireland. This issue of exclusion is not Irish, let's be clear about it. Exclusion is not an Irish thing, I think that's the message that needs to be driven home." But then, if the parade organizers accepted that their organization and quite possibly themselves weren't meaningfully Irish in that basic dimension, where would they and their community be?
I mentioned the excellence of Sinéad O'Connor's music, but the shock of her presentation also accounts for her fame. Yes, she was an Irishwoman, but she was an angry Irishwoman, a woman who didn't fit the norms for Irish womanhood that: pious, quiet, fundamentally unchallenging. "Fight the enemy", remember? She was Irish, but Irish in a different way. Ireland had evolved.
Today's St. Patrick's Day. Had I wanted, I could have claimed some sort of Irish-Canadian identity with a moderate degree of credibility, through my father's side. More than a quarter, certainly. But leaving blood quanta aside--yes, please--how could I conceivably lay claim to any kind of meaningful Irish identity? Irish-Canadian identity would be enough of a stretch, I suppose, long since assimilated into a general "Prince Edward Island-ness".
There are many, many diasporas out there, but very frequently ethnic identity in any particular diaspora community isn't felt the same way as ethnic identity in the homeland. The communities have been cleaved, and evolved differently. We got a bit of this today when Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore spoke disapprovingly about the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade's ban on gay groups: "What these parades are about is a celebration of Ireland and Irishness. I think they need to celebrate Ireland as it is, not as people imagine it. Equality is very much the center of who we are in our identity in Ireland. This issue of exclusion is not Irish, let's be clear about it. Exclusion is not an Irish thing, I think that's the message that needs to be driven home." But then, if the parade organizers accepted that their organization and quite possibly themselves weren't meaningfully Irish in that basic dimension, where would they and their community be?
