20-50
20th century
A01=Michael O'Malley
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
american culture
art
Author_Michael O'Malley
automatic-update
biographical narrative
biography
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGH
Category=AVLT
chicago
cop
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
emigrants
emigration
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
folk tradition
historical context
history
home country
identity
illinois
immigrants
immigration
influence
ireland
irish americans
Language_English
leadership
life story
mobility
movement
music
musical studies
musicality
officer
PA=Available
police chief
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
united states of america
usa
Product details
- ISBN 9780226818702
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 May 2022
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The remarkable story of how modern Irish music was shaped and spread through the brash efforts of a Chicago police chief.
Irish music as we know it today was invented not only in the cobbled lanes of Dublin or the green fields of County Kerry but in the burgeoning American metropolis of early-twentieth-century Chicago. The boundaries of the genre combine a long vernacular tradition with one man's curatorial quirks. That man was Francis O'Neill: a larger-than-life Chicago police chief, and an Irish immigrant with an intense interest in his home country's music.
Michael O'Malley's The Beat Cop tells the story of this hardly unknown yet little-investigated figure, from his birth in Ireland in 1865 to a rough-and-tumble early life in the United States. By 1901, O'Neill had worked his way up to become Chicago's chief of police, where he developed new methods of tracking people and recording their identities. At the same, he also obsessively tracked and recorded the music he heard from local Irish immigrants, favoring specific rural forms and enforcing a strict view of what he felt was and wasn't authentic. His police work and his musical work were flip sides of the same coin: as a music collector, O'Neill tracked down fugitive tunes, established their backstories, and formally organized them by type. O'Malley delves deep into how O'Neill harnessed his policing skills and connections to publish classic songbooks still widely used today, becoming the foremost shaper of how Americans see, and hear, the music of Ireland.
Michael O'Malley is professor of US history in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the author of Face Value: The Entwined History of Money and Race in America, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
