During the Troubles, music shaped alternative identities for a generation of Northern Irish teenagers

During the Troubles, a harrowing 30-year conflict over the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, music opened up alternative ways of understanding identity. Along with boxing and greyhound racing, music offered a rare site of cross-community interaction. Musical identities also offered a powerful counterpoint to the media’s depiction of young people in Northern Ireland as either vulnerable victims or potential recruits to paramilitary organisations. This spirit of resistance through…