Permission to Change

- On Queerness and Irish Traditional Music

Traditional Irish music - or trad - is a singular and profound thing. To come in to trad is to inherit a deep sociality—a camaraderie like no other; it is to become part of a vast network that extends throughout Ireland and abroad, and to access a history that is rich and immense.

In June 2023 I released my debut album Shapes That Are Different. It is a collection of songs that contemplates shame, desire, and queer selfhood. Musically the work sits at the intersections of folk song, indie music, and electronic sound design. Central to the work, through, is trad, and when asked to write about the album recently for Birmingham Tradfest’s Programme, I thought a lot about why I made the record, the issues it contemplates, and how they interface with a life in traditional music.

As the old adage goes, we are all products of our environment, and traditional music is an eco-system within which I have spent the majority of my life. I started playing the button accordion when I was 6 or 7, taught by Birmingham musician Alan Nevin. My dad plays the banjo, and my granny and great-grandfather were known to play a few tunes on the melodeon, which perhaps speaks to an inevitability of how big a part of my life trad would become. I joined the South Birmingham branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann - the Society of Irish Musicians - when I was 10, and started participating in Fleadhanna - Comhaltas-organised festivals of music that encompass competitions, communal music sessions and concerts - not long after. I quickly found community in trad—it was a paradigm shift for me in terms of perceiving the vastness of a culture I was stepping in to, its potential effect on selfhood, and its depth and history. I soon made great friends with musicians from all over England, Scotland and Ireland, especially with folks in Glasgow, London, Dublin, Belfast and Sligo.

One thing, though, that definitely wasn’t present in the trad world when I was growing up, or probably more accurately was actively absent, was a visibility or representation of LGBTQ+ people. This wasn’t endemic to trad as such, but as a young person who spent a lot of their time as a part of this scene, it was an acute absence.

I was born in 1992, in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. I went to school when Section 28 (the legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher that made it illegal for schools in England to “promote homosexuality”) was enacted. Many will remember Thatcher’s speech at the 1987 Tory Party conference in which she said: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” The writer and journalist Shon Faye wrote in her 2021 book The Trans Issue: “the shadow of section 28 fell heavily: the effect of suppressing education about LGBTQ+ lives was not only to prevent queer children existing openly at school but, just as perniciously, to create a culture of silence that allowed prejudice among kids and adults alike to flourish unchallenged.”

Section 28 was abolished only in 2003 when I was 11, and so throughout the whole of my primary education it was illegal for teachers to speak about the lives of LGBTQ+ people. In fact it was technically illegal for staff to even challenge homophobic abuse - not that it had seemed to be a factor in stopping them from doing so. Upon the law’s reversal, and my proceeding to secondary school, public attitudes and prejudices seemed anything but reversed. Homophobia was rampant throughout the first 18 years of my life: in school and sports teams; amongst friends and adults around me. Gay was an adjective to ascribe to something negative—a connotation to stigmatise—faggot an insult to wound. Growing up during this time one would amass scars from an onslaught of anti-queer rhetoric and legislation. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t (knowingly) get to know a gay person until I went to university when I was 19.

I didn’t grow up in Ireland, and so I can’t speak to the experiences of those who did, but the cultural and political climate of a home nation will inevitably come to impact members of its diaspora, especially one that so actively engages with the cultural activities of its homeland. In Ireland homosexuality was illegal until 1993. In October 1988, after a 14 year legal battle led by Senator David Norris, the European Court of Human rights ruled that Irish laws criminalising homosexuality had breached the European Convention on Human Rights. The verdict ultimately led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993, with then president Mary Robinson and future president Mary McAleese also playing an instrumental part in the process. Minister for Justice at the time Máire Geoghegan-Quinn said the move would allow gay people to “express themselves in personal relationships without the fear of being branded... as criminals.” The Irish state’s intertwining with the Church was part and parcel of such prolonged repudiation of queer lifestyles in Ireland, and the LGBTQ+ community were of course not the only ones to be affected by this union.

In 2015 Ireland made history in becoming the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage through referendum. An overwhelming majority voted to pass the legislation. I’m firmly of the opinion that marginalised groups should not have to speak to and for their inherent right to exist, or to justify their own humanity on a debate stage, but it was so heartening to see overwhelming public support for the LGBTQ+ community. Aside from gaining the legal right to marry, the referendum result felt like a turning point in public attitudes.

On track two of my album, Lessons, I sampled an interview with author Garth Greenwell discussing the narrator in his first book, What Belongs To You: “he’s out, he’s unashamed of his sexuality in the ways in which we’re accustomed to. He knows the lessons he was taught in his childhood and adolescence are bankrupt and false. And yet, he will never be someone who was not taught those lessons about himself.” These comments resonated so strongly with my experience of the world. I was making a record explicitly about queerness - I’m totally ensconced in the semiotics and semantics of gender and sexuality - and yet, despite such conscious action and affirmation, I am still someone who came of age in an environment in which it was implied that anything other than heteronormativity was contemptuous, and so a preoccupation with shame is at the core of the album.

In playing trad one will inevitably at some stage interface with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann - the primary Irish organisation dedicated to the promotion of the music, song, and dance of Ireland. CCÉ, predominantly state-funded (receiving €3.3 million from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports & Media in 2022), as well as through membership fees, is a vast and powerful organisation that plays a big part in defining the cultural conversation around and agenda in the Irish traditional arts. On the date of writing, 24th February 2024, there are no references at all in any Comhaltas online literature or websites regarding LGBTQ+ people. There is no official Comhaltas group for queer people or their allies. There are no official Comhaltas events to welcome or celebrate or platform queer people at fleadhanna or otherwise. Comhaltas as an organisation has never officially participated in any pride events in the UK or Ireland.

One may think it unnecessary to shout about or proclaim one’s sexuality in an arena such as trad, which could be seen as existing solely as a celebration of traditional music and song, but music and art do not exist in a vacuum; they are the result of a societal and cultural flourishing, a convergence of minds and ideas responding to life and society around us, of which queer people always have and always will be a part. To see people similar to you on stage has a profound impact; it is to understand that being part of a music, whilst being unashamedly yourself, is embraced and celebrated. Furthermore, all systems of oppression reinforce one another; none can be fought in isolation. To acknowledge and confront the systems that have systematically ostracised and oppressed queer people, is to challenge those that also continue to persecute the Traveller community, immigrants, people of colour, and women; indeed, the Irish people is one that is no stranger to persecution and prejudice, both at home and abroad. In an age where LGBTQ+ hate crimes are on the rise (up 112% in England in the last 5 years, up 30% in Ireland in the last year alone) visibility and active solidarity is of paramount importance.

With that said, in recent times, the LGBTQ+ community has achieved more and more representation in the trad and folk world, with community groups and happenings, both official and unofficial, convening around the UK and Ireland. These include the brilliantly titled Geílí as part of Dublin Pride; Dublin Pride Night at Templebar Tradfest; a Pride Ceílí as a part of Belfast Tradfest; the queer trad collective Isteach is amach, and, featuring the collective, the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s Ar Scáth a Chéile - a concert and conversations celebrating the voice of the LGBTQ+ community in trad; Bogha-frois - the Scottish folk LGBTQ+ organisation; and queer Irish traditional music sessions at London’s LGBTQ+ Community centre, amongst others. Contemporary Irish musicians are also taking up the mantle of speaking truth to power. Artists with a firm footing in folk music such as Lankum and Lisa O’Neill, as well those from other idioms such as Kneecap, SOAK, and Fontaines D.C. are all wonderful modern exponents of musics that are wrestling with systems that are designed to exploit and oppress people. In reality, Irish music has always been one of protest and resistance, but some folks’ oppression has often been given more time and scrutiny than others.

Growing up as part of a diaspora will inevitably result in a multitudinous identity. Trad is a part of me; it is absolutely inseparable from my self. It speaks to a lineage and a socio-cultural inheritance that is intertwined with Ireland and Irish-ness. My queerness is also absolutely inherent to my being; it has afforded me an agency and a freedom singular to being part of the LGBTQ+ community, and forced me to constantly think from a perspective that, by its very nature, is non-hegemonic. And so when considering this album, one made in contemplation of both my own and a broader queerness, I do so through a lens in part coloured by my experiences in trad, and I wonder how instrumental stronger LGBTQ+ representation within trad could have been in a journey to self-acceptance.

I now make a living writing, performing, producing and engineering music. I’m based between Helsinki, Finland and England, and get over to Ireland as much as I can to see family and friends and to play music. Much of the work I do is contemplating gender and sexuality, or the structures that have historically marginalised minority groups. In making Shapes That Are Different, I wanted to take ownership of my queerness, once a site of such conflict and shame, and weave those experiences into lyrics, into melody and harmony, into pure sonority; a sacred process—an act of defiance.

The author and poet Ocean Vuong said: “queerness begins with permission to change… it invites innovation; it is larger than sexuality and gender; it is action.” In theory, tradition is the antithesis of innovation, but I think in trad we are presented with a beautiful, paradoxical opportunity. We have the possibility to preserve and build upon a rich tradition, through means which embrace a modernity and pluralism, in a way that is as open and accessible as possible; to secure its future, and therefore our own, in the strongest and most righteous of lights.