“That’S what they won’t take from you”: IriSh rebel music as a resistance practice in contemporary radical republican community

Abstract

The article presents the results of online fieldwork among the members of contemporary Irish Republican community, including physical-force Republicans, on the matter of genre boundaries and performative contexts of Irish rebel music as seen in said community. Part of the field data has been accumulated via email and phone interviews, and part has been collected from respondents via an anonymous Telegram channel. In reliance on this data, the author explores the performative functions of rebel music as established in scholarly literature, as well as attitudes of the informants towards the proclaimed “new” rebel music such as “dissident” gangsta rap (the latter is definitely not considered by the informants as even remotely Republican). Several points are argued, namely, the fact that rebel music can essentially be seen as hidden transcript as outlined by James Scott; the pragmatics of rebel music within radical Republican community are closely related to the need to counter the systemic public stigma experienced by Republicans; and that adherence to specific Republican values is crucial to ingroup definitions of genre boundaries and pragmatics. Whether there might have been a shift in attitude in radical Republican community towards punk scene, is also investigated.