When history gets personal
This interview is based on Christopher Shannon’s new book, Singing From the Heart: The Dady Brothers, Irish Music, and Ethnic Endurance in an American City.
***
You’re an intellectual historian at the core, I think. So this means this particular book is a different project from your other books—and a more personal one too! Could you tell us a bit about this book’s genesis? How did you arrive at this topic, and how and when did you decide that there was a book here, and that you were the one to write it?
Yes, this is a million miles away from my first books in intellectual history, Conspicuous Criticism and A World Made Safe for Differences. It does, however, reflect the general shift from analysis to narrative in my scholarly work. In American Pilgrimage (2022), I tell the “big story” of Catholic life in North America, from the colonial period to the present. In this book, I tell a “little story” of Irish music in an industrial neighborhood in a mid-sized American city.
On a related note, there is that cliché that every book historians write is, really, thinly veiled autobiography. But in the case of this book, this is especially true for you, I think. Is this a correct assessment? If so, how did this personal connection shape your work on this project and your approach to telling this overall story?
You got me. True confession: Yes, this book is a thinly, even not so thinly, veiled autobiography. The “industrial neighborhood” is the Tenth Ward in the northwest section of Rochester, NY, where I grew up. John and Joe Dady were the youngest children in an Irish Catholic family of six, while I was the last (and best!) of an Irish Catholic family of seven. Those numbers were about average for Baby Boom Catholics in our neighborhood. I never thought of writing anything so personal when I started grad school forty years ago, but as I got older I turned my attention more toward the things that matter most to me. After decades as a wandering scholar, my life in the Tenth Ward still means the most to me. I had to keep some writerly detachment and avoid the trap of imposing my story on John and Joe, but there was certainly enough honest overlap to keep me personally connected to the story.
Can you tell us something unexpected or surprising that you discovered while writing this book?
Well, in our digital, internet age where the whole world of music is just a mouse click away, I was shocked to remember just how inaccessible most non-mainstream music was back in the days of analog records. If it wasn’t on AM Top Forty Radio or a “progressive rock” FM station, you really had to dig just to hear the music. This is challenge enough for a fan, but even more for aspiring professional musicians who want to learn the music to play for public performance. I was especially struck by how much John and Joe learned Irish music in the old-fashioned way, through oral transmission: First, ballad singing at The Irish Inn and later the instrumental tradition at The Friendship Tavern.
Most readers don’t necessarily spend much time thinking about how books get made—the business of publishers, contracts, etc. But writers have to think about it, and you certainly had to make some decisions with this book. Would you tell us a little bit about how you made the decision in this case not to work with a traditional publisher? What would you recommend to another historian in your shoes?
Ughh. This is the most frustrating and disappointing part of the process of writing this book. Though I have published five books with a variety of presses, no university press was interested in this book. A reviewer for one university press confided in me that the editor sent her a copy of the manuscript with the question: “Would anyone outside of Rochester care about this?”
Local studies, even neighborhood studies, were once the bread and butter of social history. Apparently this is no longer the case. In the end, I had to self-publish. Joe Dady died while I was working on the book. I felt a deep obligation to John, his family, and the people of our neighborhood to get the book out one way or the other.
Advice to other historians? “Mothers, tell your children/Not to do what I have done!” Seriously, the self-publishing route is not a bad option. With print on demand, it is far more affordable than it used to be. There is a bit of a quality drop-off (choice of fonts, formatting, copy editing), but no complaints from readers so far.
You are a prolific researcher and writer! Now that this project is done, what is next for you?
No more books, at least for now! As I was working on the book, I was also working up a separate but related performance piece base on neighborhood experiences and the general story of Irish Catholics in postwar America. It is called, “A Little Slip of Heaven: Songs and Stories of the American Irish, from Baby Boom to Baby Bust.” The songs are all original compositions, many based on traditional Irish melodies. I perform them with simple guitar accompaniment. I have performed a couple of sold-out shows up in Rochester the past two years, one in the back room of McGinnity’s, the last Irish bar in the Tenth Ward, and another at a local community theater. Pretty good for living in Virginia and having no local name as a musician. With the book completed, I want to focus more on promoting this musical performance.
So for the next year or so, I become “Christopher Shannon, the Singing Historian.”
Image: Chris Shannon performing Irish music in Rochester, NY, credit: Christendom College
