Áine Mangaoang

Projects

Music, Place & Memory

Project: Sonic Signatures: Irish Music in Oslo

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang (PI)

Publication: “(Be)Longing: Irish Musicking and Place-Making in Oslo, Norway” in Sonic Signatures: Music, Migration and the City at Night (Edited by Derek Pardue, Ailbhe Kenny, and Katie Young)

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Project: The Dublin Music Map // Mapping Popular Music in Dublin

Investigators: John O’Flynn (PI) & Áine Mangaoang (Postdoc) 

Funding: Fáilte Ireland’s Applied Research Grant (2015-’16) with additional support from St Patrick’s College and Dublin City University 

Partners: Culture Night (Ireland), Hard Working Class Music Convention and Festival (Dublin), Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO). 

About the project: Mapping Popular Music in Dublin was the first comprehensive research study on popular music in Dublin today, based at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University and funded by Fáilte Ireland. Shortlisted for the Dublin City University President’s Award for Engagement, John O'Flynn and I carried out a twelve-month ethnography of Dublin's popular music experience, incorporating perspectives of fans (citizens and tourists), musicians, and music industry personnel.

Peer-reviewed results of this project include the journal article by O’Flynn and Mangaoang, Sounding Dublin: Mapping Popular Music Experience in the City, Journal of World Popular Music, Vol. 6: 1 (2019). Research from this project also informs the forthcoming co-edited volume Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge). Other project outcomes include the Mapping Popular Music in Dublin Executive Report (2016) and the research-informed Dublin Music Map (2016), both available as free downloads. Media interviews and coverage of the project include The Irish Times On The Record and How Music Works. 

An additional related outcome from this research includes the edited volume Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music, coedited by Áine Mangaoang, John O’Flynn and Lonán Ó Briain (Routledge 2020), which includes 19 chapters on Irish popular music. For more about this book, check out this episode of the Lines on Music podcast that features an interview with two of the book’s editors.

Curating Music: Archives & Exhibits

Events Organized:

Public Seminar “This Really Happened”: Confirmation, Memory, & the Representation of Popular Music History” at Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo (2017)

Public Exhibition “Music, Photographs & Stories from the Archives” at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2016)

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Project: Music, Photographs, and Stories from the Archives 

This research and public-engagement project examined popular music materiality. It culminated in a curated public exhibition of music memorabilia at the Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool). I also produced a short film documenting the project, called Music, Photographs and Stories from the Archives (2016).

Investigators: Sara Cohen (PI), Áine Mangaoang (RF), with Mike Jones and Les Roberts

Funding: Arts and Humanities Research Council Cultural Engagement Fund; Knowledge Exchange & Impact Award, Business Gateway, University of Liverpool

Partners: Institute of Popular Music; Sarah Fisher (Director), Open Eye Gallery; Liverpooljazz; BBC Radio Merseyside 

 Pop-Opera & Politics

Project: "Here Lies Love" and the Politics of Disco-Opera

This research suggests a range of perspectives and discourses for understanding the relationships between pop music and politics, through a case study of Here Lies Love (2013) -- a disco-opera based  on the life of former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Despite composer David Byrne’s claims of separating art from politics in Here Lies Love, my analysis demonstrates how the music is, through its various multimodal forms, fraught with overt socio-cultural and political significance, that can be read as an escalating revisionist, apologist text that operates in defense of Imelda. An essay from this project ‘Here Lies Love and the Politics of Disco-Opera’ appears in the Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, edited by David Brackett, Kenneth Smith, & Ciro Scotto, (Routledge 2018).

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Staff Research Award, National University of Ireland (University College Cork) 

 Music, Media & Deaf Culture

Project: YouTube and Sign Language Music Videos

Music is frequently perceived as an exclusively auditory phenomenon. Within the field of music studies, literature on hearing loss and deafness is noticeably scarce. Widely-held assumptions are that deaf culture is one without music -- a community silent to the experiences of music & sound. Media have been instrumental in shaping how hearing people perceive deaf individuals and Deaf culture. Over this past decade, thousands of amateur, user-generated videos featuring an individual or group interpreting or translating a select Beyoncé song into a recognised sign-language have emerged via YouTube. This research explores how YouTube’s platform provides an ideal conduit for the mediation and re-examination of the art of signed songs on the one hand, while on the other, problematises issues faced in attempts to devise inclusive and exhaustive interpretations of Beyoncé’s music through visual signs. Findings from this research-in-progress is published in the following book chapter and additional forthcoming articles:

Publication: Mangaoang, Á. 'I See Music': Beyoncé, YouTube, and the Question of Signed Songs. In Beyoncé Knowles: At Work, On Screen, and Online, Martin Iddon and Melanie Marshall (eds.), Indiana University Press (2020)

Community Music

Project: Sing Out With Strings Reports 

I have life-long interests in community music, music as social integration, and inclusive music education. I worked with the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s community engagement programme Sing Out With Strings from 2014-’16. Established in 2008, the Irish Chamber Orchestra provides weekly workshops in singing, song-writing and violin tuition for 300 children across Limerick city, as a Community Engagement Programme working in Limerick primary schools. The Sing Out With Strings project addresses issues of inclusion, equality of access and provision and highlights the numerous benefits that a long-term project of this nature has on the children, staff, parents and the wider community. I am the author of two reports on Sing Out with Strings, commissioned the Irish Chamber Orchestra (2015 & 2016). 

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Irish Chamber Orchestra

Partners: Galvone National School (now Le Chéile National School); St Mary’s National School; Irish Chamber Orchestra, University of Limerick