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Irish Music Renewal: How Immigrants Shine in Ireland’s Music Scene

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Irish Music Renewal: How Immigrants Shine in Ireland’s Music Scene

“Floating on sea but I’m stricken by poverty; wars and politics famine and disease; blinding promises I never got to see; stuck in Heathrow never got to oversea; but I could’ve been under the sea; and the family would never hear of me again.” – Rusangano Family, Heathrow.

Relocation has always been central to the Irish experience, but for most of Ireland’s history, the Irish have played the role of emigrant. Immigration, while always present in small numbers, has only become more central to Ireland’s identity recently.

For most, immigration fits. Ireland is an increasingly socially liberal society, one that’s transformed rapidly from a repressed-feeling state where homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1993 under intense pressure from EU courts, to one where, only 22 years later, gay marriage was legalised by popular vote.

Hip-hop’s trajectory has arguably been as dramatic. As recently as the late 00s, Ireland’s best-known example of hip-hop was a comedy duo called Rubberbandits, performing cutting comic satire with only oblique links to the music it spawned from.

And then it all changed: a pathway of rapid development, with the likes of Lethal Dialect and Mumblin Deaf Ro – later better known as an author under his real name, Ronan Hession – helping pave the way for a scene that would eventually be dominated by brilliant immigrants.

Rusangano Family were arguably the first Irish hip-hop act to gain truly notable international acclaim, winning the Choice Music Prize 2016 for a spectacular record that put immigrant-issues front and centre, ‘Let The Dead Bury The Dead’. In hit single ‘Heathrow’, they describe the alienation of entering the western world via one of Europe’s biggest hubs, the London airport.

Made up of a County Clare DJ, and childhood immigrants from Togo and Zimbabwe, the trio told the Irish Times “I know people who have been through the worst just to get here,” adding “It takes some people to tell the story in some way that’s relatable.” The Irish music scene related in a big way.

Meanwhile, parts of the rap scene have been driven forward by a collaborative collective run by an Englishman. Phil Udell is a long-time music journalist who switched to helping out the burgeoning domestic rap scene in his new home in Ireland when he saw its potential, forming Word Up Collective, now perhaps the most influential set of acts in Irish rap.

And then there’s the brilliant Denise Chaila, of Zambian roots, whose music loudly and proudly proclaims her Irishness and her broader identity, in smash hits like ‘Anseo’ (Irish for ‘here’). “I don’t think that I’ve found my place here, I think I made it,” she wrote in an essay on her own identity.

“Ireland is a nation of immigrants, and (white) Irish people, more than most white people around the globe, know what it’s like to experience cultural genocide, know what it means to leave your country to take refuge somewhere else,” she continues.

“I’m your black James Bond. Anseo. Spice box, taxi by the Centra. Anseo.”

And the list goes on: Simi Crowns (born in Lagos, Nigeria, he moved to Dublin at the age of eleven) raps with a weighty Yoruba accent and won the Best Upcoming Artist award at the Irish African Music Awards. “I will not be satisfied until the listeners love or hate what I do, there’s no room for them to choose not to express some sort of emotion,” he said of his punchy style.

Much-hyped Emzee A hails from within the same borders, while Rejjie Snow, of part Jamaican, part Nigerian heritage, has played alongside Madonna and Kendrick Lamar and worked with MF Doom. He delivers brilliant Irish language insight, adding “You have to make new experiences on the earth. It’s the only way to understand yourself, but it’s also the only way to find your place in the world.” Right now, the scene shines, its lights having landed from beyond our borders.

After all, Ireland still remembers the famous put down that met many of their own in Britain: No Blacks. No Dogs. No Irish. And by and large, Ireland embraces diversity, and how now it lights up in our music. Diversity is, after all, strength.