Newsletter, October 21, 2019

Two Presentations by Professor Helen Phelan
Helen Phelan is Professor of Arts Practice at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland. She is an Irish Research Council recipient for her work on singing and new migrant communities in Ireland. Her most recent book, Singing the Rite to Belong: Music, Ritual and the New Irish, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. As a singer and ritual scholar, she specializes in chant associated with religious rituals and is co-founder of the female vocal group Cantoral, who released their much acclaimed CD recording of Irish medieval chant in 2014. She serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals including Frontiers in Psychology, The International Journal of Community Music and Experiments and Intensities: A Journal for Performance-as-Research. She is founder of the Singing and Social Inclusion research group and a member of the University of Limerick Sanctuary board. Her primary research interests are in singing, ritual and migration as well as arts-based and arts practice research methods.

Professor Phelan will be giving two presentations while visiting Indiana University:
Singing the Rite to Belong: Music and Ritual in a Changing Ireland  
Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 10:00am to 12:00pm 
First Christian Church Sanctuary (205 East Kirkwood Avenue)
 This workshop is conducted by Professor Helen Phelan, a scholar and singer specializing in the role of music in ritual. For this workshop, she will explore three examples of ritual music connected with her home country of Ireland. The first is a piece of medieval chant to St. Brigid, a Celtic Saint sharing many of the attributes of the older, pre-Christian goddess, Brigantia. The second piece is a Congolese song drawn from Dr. Phelan’s work with new migrant ritual communities in Ireland. The final piece is from the Celtic feast of Samhain, a precursor to Halloween.

This morning workshop will appeal especially to singers and choirs since it will give them a chance to learn medieval and more modern Irish chant.

The flyer for this event can be found here, on the Department of Anthropology’s website. 
Sing a Song for the Mistress of the Bones: Music, Ritual and the Celtic Feast of Samhain Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Mathers Museum (416 North Indiana Avenue) 
This presentation explores the musical and ritualistic evidence for the emergence of the Celtic ritual cycle, with a focus on the rituals of Samhain, the precursor of Halloween.

The flyer for this event can be found here, on the Department of Anthropology’s website.