Aistear: Performing cultural encounter: an arts practice investigation of Karen, Burmese and Irish harping traditions

Aistear: Performing Cultural Encounter: An Arts Practice Investigation of Karen, Burmese and Irish Harping Traditions is an arts practice PhD submission that encompasses a written dissertation and two performance works. The objective of the dissertation is to explore the relationship between artistic practice, creativity and cultural encounter facilitated through intercultural musical exchanges during ethnographic fieldtrips to Burma between 2009 and 2012. The focal point includes an investigation into a significant moment in that creative process during which an interaction with the Karen and Burmese musical harping traditions resulted in a systematic documentation of a harp tradition of which little is known.

An extensive arts practice literature review offers a contextual theoretical strand to the research. In accessing the multiple dimensions of performance practice and its interaction with social and cultural processes various theoretical and conceptual frameworks in philosophy, pyschology, phenomenology, performance theory, ethnomusicology and anthropology are drawn upon. Combining these conceptual frameworks with performance practice aims to demonstrate how cultural and musical enrichment can lead to a deepening of research insight within and for an artistic discipline. An examination into the historical literature pertaining to the harping tradition in Ireland follows together with ethnographic chapters on the Karen and Burmese harping traditions utilising fieldwork material collected in Burma between 2009 and 2012. In exploring how cultural, historical and musical experiences develop and enrich creative practice, two performance works were created.

The first performance work, Suaimhneas, investigated a personal trajectory of creativity in a solo work. It also aimed to uncover a performer’s organic development of a creative practice steeped in the Irish music tradition while at the same time presents one performer’s particular vision within the current harping landscape. In exploring and demonstrating how interaction with a music culture outside of the Irish harping tradition can be mapped and presented, the second contrasting performance work Aistear was devised. An analysis of the data collected such as transcriptions, ethnographic film work, fieldwork recordings, interviews and questionnaires informed the performative representation of the research outcome. In connecting one’s practice and experience with a wider cultural sphere this project has not only served as an exploration into performance practice but also offers new understandings of an extraordinary harp tradition in Burma, a tradition little reported on or understood in world music.