The original Revival of Gaelic culture can be found in various forms throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps the most well-known elements are Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League), founded by Douglas Hyde for a purely cultural focus on language and heritage (later infiltrated and politicised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood), and the Irish Literary Revival, spearheaded famously by likes of William Butler Yeates and the work of the new Abbey Theatre.
Today, we are experiencing a younger, trendier, and more accessible Celtic Revival, aided by modern media. Whilst aspects of the early Revival acted as a more militant, or at least, organised movement, the movement of today lacks this organisation, due to its more organic nature. It is made up of genuine, individual talent, forcing itself into the world and commanding respect for itself in the mediums of art, film, music, literature, and language.
The Revival is evident on the public record. At the 2023 Academy Awards, Irish productions received twelve nominations across ten categories, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay, four Irish writers were named in the 2023 Booker Prize longlist, and The Dublin-based band Lankum were nominated for the 2023 Mercury Prize for their fourth album False Lankum.
However, although these examples of international recognition are important to celebrate, the new movement generally seeks to avoid the artistic influence on either side of the island’s waters. This is perhaps the result of a bitter taste left in the mouth from a once dominant, cultural control of Irish consciousness.
The Irish are now looking within. People are speaking with each other, through dedicated social media profiles, podcasts, or in pubs, about their heritage and the magic of the landscape. Traditional Irish music is experiencing a new lease of life, particularly in Belfast. Irish rappers no longer perform in the dingiest of Dublin pubs with put-on American and English accents, ashamed of the sound of their own voices. Today, Irish rappers like Kojaque are selling out venues all over the Western world, performing in their own accents, and in some cases in their own ancient, indigenous language, while acts like The Mary Wallopers are breathing new life into old Irish ballads.
Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (a country with no language is a country with no soul), as Pádraig Pearse said, and while Gaeilge (Irish language) is generations away from having the place in people’s mouths that it did in the early days of colonialism, the number of pupils attending Irish-medium schools outside the Gaeltacht (Gaeilge-speaking area) increased by nearly 40,000 between the 90s and 20s.
On the ground in Ireland, particularly among the youth, it is cool to use Gaeilge again, and Irish people of all ages are beginning to shed the deep-embedded generational trauma that exists as guilt for not knowing one’s own language. Embracing instead the inherent longing to learn it. This is in no small part the effect of the new Celtic Revival and the influence of some of its representatives such as Manchán Magan and Kneecap, both of whom are using their work to make Gaeilge interesting and attractive.
Magan is among a group of modern Irish literary talent. The nation has historically been famed for its writers, and that tradition continues in the age of modernity. Alongside Magan are Blindboy Boatclub, who manages to tell stories of various kinds in a truly unique, neurodivergent way, using both written literature and his incredible podcast, Sally Rooney, a generation-defining author, whose work has found great success both in print and when adapted for television, and Claire Keegan, whose acclaimed novella Foster was adapted to become the first ever Irish language film to be nominated for an academy award.
Alongside this, Irish Instagram is littered with reposts of the artwork of Diabhal666 and Aoife Cawley, as the walls of Belfast are littered with murals by Wee Nuls. In 2023, artist Spicebag managed to create a discussion on art and the role of the Gardaí (police) in the Irish housing crisis when his piece titled Eviction gathered attention on Twitter and entered the public discourse.
The artists, writers, and performers named in this article are just some of many in a vast sea of emerging Irish talent that is progressively solidifying itself as part of the culture. The Celtic Revival of the past was a tool used to loosen Ireland from her colonial chains through the romanticised promotion of ancient heritage. Although these chains continue to exist in various forms on the island today, they are looser now than they have been for hundreds of years, and the youth of Ireland, the future of Ireland, are using the culture to push the boundaries of what it means to be a Celt further than we or our ancestors have been allowed before.
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