Inbhear - Journal of Irish Music and Dance

 

Welcome to the first issue of the on-line journal for Irish music and dance, Inbhear. The intention is that this will be a yearly journal, free-to-access, concerned with these arts practices relevant to Ireland, the Irish (wherever they may be) or perceived to be of Ireland or the Irish. Our definition of Irish is inclusive, welcoming all the dance and music practices implied by the description above although there is an implicit focus on traditional arts.

The journal is also intended to be relevant to the areas of arts practice and academic research engaged at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, reflecting and augmenting our activities and providing ties to the communities of practice that develop resources for university and arts communities. A regular criticism, particularly among the traditional arts community in Ireland, is that the University does not deliver the fruits of its research back to the people that nourish it. There is certainly an element of truth in this critique and this is one platform to counter it.

This first issue is made up of five invited papers, mostly from faculty here at the Academy, to get things going, but from now we would like to invite submissions from any relevant discipline and from the community generally (the traditional music community, for example, has produced much fine scholarship outside of the academic world). We also intend to develop a media review section. We encourage submissions across the wider cross-section of media than the internet encourages. You will see that many of the papers contain graphics, audio and video and this is a trend we would like to encourage. There is no reason why compositions, choreographies and performances could not appear in future issues. Indeed anything which presents critically appraised and presented knowledge across a number of different sensory and artistic modes, unifying text, performance, music and dance, must be the future for performance studies in the widest possible sense.

So, please enjoy this issue but do think about how you can further contribute, through a ‘virtual’ community, to the real life of our performance practices.

For further information about the Irish World Academyof Music and Dance and the University of Limerick please visit the websites below:

• www.irishworldacademy.ie
• www.ul.ie