Publications

For a complete list of publications, see here.

Selected work listed below:

Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (2021)

by Áine Mangaoang, John O'Flynn and Lonán Ó Briain

Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music is the first book dedicated to popular music on the island of Ireland. The volume brings together essays by leading scholars of Irish popular music, and serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Irish popular music.

Made in Ireland covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Ireland. Each chapter provides adequate context so readers understand why the music act, genre or phenomenon under question is of lasting significance to Irish popular music. Selected chapters offer critical perspectives on the music of internationally acclaimed artists from Ireland/Northern Ireland (including Sinéad O’Connor, U2, The Undertones, Divine Comedy, and others), as well as insights on popular music genres and practices unique to Irish contexts, including local articulations of international genres like hip hop, punk, DIY, and country. Other chapters consider the popularization and mediatization of Irish traditional and popular music through Gaeilge (the Irish language), critical approaches to Irish Republican music, and domestic music production, consumption, and distribution, from the early twentieth century to the present day.

Made in Ireland represents the substantial growth in the field of Irish popular music studies, and shines a light on the highly diverse field of music-making on the island. As such, the volume will resonate with scholars and fans of popular music, Irish history and cultural studies, the Irish diaspora, and many more.

To avail of a 20% discount on this book, enter the code FLR40 at checkout on the visit the Routledge webpage here.

Reviews

"There can be little doubt that Ireland is an enduring and prolific presence in the world of popular music. The editors of this book are to be congratulated on drawing together a quality cast of contributors, whose expertise in various aspects of Irish popular music serves to produce a rich and compelling exploration of the significance and legacy of Irish popular music artists in both local and global contexts."
Andy Bennett (Griffith University), author of Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place
"Made in Ireland is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of popular music (broadly understood) in Ireland currently available. The contributors come from a variety of disciplines and offer a number of illuminating perspectives that should make this book of interest to readers in popular music studies more broadly."
Timothy D. Taylor (UCLA), author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets

"This unique volume addresses a number of lacunae in Irish Music Studies in a way that broadens and deepens the field immeasurably. Extending far beyond the jigs and reels of pub sessions or performances at rural song circles, Made in Ireland is both urgent and immediate in its examination of Ireland’s direct engagement with rock, hip hop, country, punk, and other popular genres. Underlying these sounds is a pulse of identity, rebellion, and connection to place and scene that no other current book explores."
Sean Williams (Evergreen State College), author of Focus: Irish Traditional Music

Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online (2020)

Áine Mangaoang, “‘I See Music’: Beyoncé, YouTube, and the Question of Signed-Songs.” In Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online. Martin Iddon & Melanie Marshall (eds.), Indiana University Press.

Who runs the world? The Beyhive knows. From the Destiny's Child 2001 hit single "Survivor" to her 2019 jam "7/11," Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has confronted dominant issues around the world. Because her image is linked with debates on race, sexuality, and female empowerment, she has become a central figure in pop music and pop culture. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online explores her work as a singer, activist, and artist by taking a deep dive into her songs, videos, and performances, as well as responses from her fans. Contributors look at Beyoncé's entire body of work to examine her status as a canonical figure in modern music and do not shy away from questioning scandals or weighing her social contributions against the evolution of feminism, critical race theory, authenticity, and more. Full of examples from throughout Beyoncé's career, this volume presents listening as a political undertaking that generates meaning and creates community. Beyoncé: At Work, On Screen, and Online contends that because of her willingness to address societal issues within her career, Beyoncé has become an important touchstone for an entire generation—all in a day's work for Queen Bey.

Beyoncé- At Work, On Screen, and Online.jpg

Reviews

“Iddon and Marshall's Beyoncé is poised to expand critical conversations about the biggest and most influential pop star of the 21st century.”
Daphne A. Brooks (Yale University) Author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom

Dangerous Mediations: Pop music in a Philippine prison video (2019)

by Áine Mangaoang

Co-Winner of The 2021 International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US) Woody Guthrie Award for the most outstanding books on popular music, together with Deborah Wong’s Louder and Faster: Pain, Joy, and the Body Politic in Asian American Taiko

In 2007, an unlikely troupe of 1500 Filipino prisoners became Internet celebrities after their YouTube video of Michael Jackson's ground-breaking hit 'Thriller' went viral. Taking this spectacular dance as a point of departure, Dangerous Mediations explores the disquieting development of prisoners performing punishment to a global, online audience. Combining analysis of this YouTube video with first-hand experiences from fieldwork in the Philippine prison, Áine Mangaoang investigates a wide range of interlocking contexts surrounding this user-generated text to reveal how places of punishment can be transformed into spaces of spectacular entertainment, leisure, and penal tourism.

In the post-YouTube era, Dangerous Mediations sounds the call for close readings of music videos produced outside of the corporate culture industries. By connecting historical discussions on postcolonialism, surveillance and prison philosophy with contemporary scholarship on popular music, participatory culture and new media, Dangerous Mediationsis the first book to ask critical questions about the politics of pop music and audiovisual mediation in early 21st-century detention centres.

For more details, visit the Dangerous Mediations Bloomsbury homepage.

(Order a copy directly from www.blomsbury.com and get a 35% discount using the code: GLR MP8 on the first page at checkout).

Reviews

“In this rich ethnographic case study, Áine Mangaoang brings together a welcome, provocative and highly original mix of music, YouTube and prison. She raises thoughtful questions about participation and incarceration, leisure and exploitation, the global and the local, that will resonate far beyond her case.”
Nancy Baym, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, USA

“An enlightening, extensive, and engaging work! Áine Mangaoang's explanation of the phenomenal popularity of the Dancing Inmates' Thriller, a YouTube sensation, unearths layer after layer of paradoxes embedded in Philippine history, musicological studies, prison performances and digital cross-currents. The tensions that spring from navigating between rehabilitation and oppression, creativity and captivity, entertainment and punishment, submission and assertion, cultural identity and stereotyping, among others, make Dangerous Mediations a cautionary tale in adapting inmate performance, especially of the digital variety, as a vehicle for prison reform.”
Ricardo Abad, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines

“This book deepens our understanding of the mediation of music in the digital era. Through a wide-reaching analysis, Mangaoang reveals the subversive potential of music and how new media texts are bound up with power, punishment and postcolonialism.”
Barley Norton, Reader and Senior Tutor in Music, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Journal of World Popular Music, Vol 6, N0 1 (2019)

O'Flynn, J. and Mangaoang, Á. “Sounding Dublin: Mapping Popular Music Experience in the City” Co-authored with J. O’Flynn. Journal of World Popular Music. 6(1), 2019.

This article interrogates ideas of popular music "sound(s)" linked to place by interpreting data gathered during the applied research project Mapping Popular Music in Dublin (MPMiD) 2015-16. An outline background, rationale and framework for MPMiD is presented, followed by a review of methods developed and overall themes that emerged. Focusing on the project's "Sounding Dublin" strand, the article analyses the responses of 366 participants from a section of MPMiD's e-survey relating to music, musicians, sounds and soundtracks that might be considered "typical" (or otherwise) of Dublin. Although a substantial minority of participants eschew notions of sonic uniqueness linked to place in the abstract sense, the data reveal a rich tapestry of experiences and standpoints linked to ideas of a Dublin sound or sounds. Some appear to concur with conventional hagiographies of rock and folk, with others challenging received narratives and proposing alternative viewpoints, scenes and pathways. "Dublin-specific" associations emerging across various genres are based on appraisals of performer engagement, accent and timbre, and narrative/lyrical style.

Ceol Phádraig: Music at St Patrick’s College Drumcondra, 1875-2016 (2019)

Mangaoang, Á. “Music and Tourism”. In Ceol Phádraig: Music at St. Patrick’s College Drumcondra, 1875-2016. J. Buckley & J. O’Flynn (eds.) Peter Lang: Dublin, 2019.

The book records and interprets key musical developments, appraises the work of major contributors, and captures the activities of students, staff and visiting musicians at St Patrick’s College up to its incorporation into Dublin City University in 2016. It represents a major scholarly work that details the progress of music at a university college in Ireland, and it is envisaged that its varied chapters and themes will evoke further memories and discussions among graduates of the College and others.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches (2018)

Mangaoang, Áine, "Here Lies Love and the Politics of Disco-Opera" , in The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis ed. Ciro Scotto , Kenneth Smith and John Brackett (Abingdon: Routledge, 18 Oct 2018 ), Routledge Handbooks Online.

The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches widens the scope of analytical approaches for popular music by incorporating methods developed for analyzing contemporary art music. This study endeavors to create a new analytical paradigm for examining popular music from the perspective of developments in contemporary art music.

Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis- Expanding Approaches.jpg

Mapping Popular Music in Dublin: Executive Report (2016)

Mangaoang, Á. and O'Flynn, J. Mapping Popular Music in Dublin: Executive Report. Fáilte Ireland & Dublin City University, 2016.

The Mapping Popular Music in Dublin ( MPMiD) research project sought to map popular music experience in Dublin by looking at popular music from the viewpoint of fans (citizens and tourists), musicians, and music industry personnel. By providing the first comprehensive overview of popular music experience in Dublin to date, this report aims to inform tourism, civic, culture and music industry organisations.

Performing the Postcolonial: Philippine Prison Spectacles after Web 2.0 (2014)

Mangaoang, Á. “Performing the Postcolonial: Philippine Prison Spectacles after Web 2.0” Postcolonial Text, Special Issue: The Parapostcolonial, 9(4), 2014: 1-18.

This essay argues that the legacy of colonialism lives on in contemporary Philippine experience, a century after the Philippine Exhibit of the St. Louis World Fair (1904). Drawing from the renowned Philippine phenomenon of the Dancing Inmates of Cebu – a group of 1500 prisoners at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Centre (CPDRC), this essay traces the noticeably American nature of the Philippine state after decades of explicit and implicit US imperialism. The CPDRC prisoners' performances, both during the live hataw sayaw and recorded iterations via YouTube, with hundreds upon hundreds of clearly marked Filipino prisoners at its core, become metaphors for twenty-first-century postcolonial Philippine attempts to assert their independence from the United States.

Torture: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (2013)

Mangaoang, Á. “Dancing to Distraction: Mediating ‘Docile Bodies’ in ‘Philippine Thriller Video.’” Torture: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (Special Issue on Music & Detention), 23(2), 2013: 44-54.

The essay explores how seemingly innocuous products of user-generated-con- tent are imbued with ideologies that obscure or reduce relations of race, agency, power and control. By contextualising the video’s origins, I highlight current Philippine prison conditions and introduce how video-maker/ programme inventor/prison warden Byron Garcia sought to distance his facility from the Philippine prison majority. I then investigate the ‘mediation’ of ‘Thriller’ through three main issues. One, I examine the commodification and transformation from viral video to a thana-tourist destina- tion; two, the global appeal of ‘Thriller’ is founded on public penal intrigue and essentialist Filipino tropes, mixed with a certain novelty factor widely suffused in YouTube formats; three, how dance perfor- mance and its mediation here are conducive to creating Foucault’s docile bodies, which operate as a tool of distraction for the masses and ultimately serve the interests of the state far more than it rehabilitates (unconvicted and therefore innocent) inmates.