W.B. Yeats and The Waterboys: The Legacy of a Mystic Animated Ireland in Twenty-first Century Pop Culture

Abstract

[eng] William Butler Yeats was a pivotal figure in the configuration of a new Irish identity, especially after their newly gained independence in 1922. According to him, such national distinctiveness was to be found in the magic essence of a living nature and landscape capable of interacting with humankind, as opposed to the industrial, urban power of the British Empire. Nevertheless, globalisation in the twenty-first century implied an erasure of any type of identitarian traits. For that reason, Irish folk band The Waterboys were determined to restore such roots through their music. In their album An Appointment with Mr. Yeats (2011), they were able to combine both the main motifs in Yeats’s poems with new musical elements in order not only to reinstate this mystic atmosphere around the Irish national feeling, but also to enhance such characteristics. This dissertation will therefore conduct an interdisciplinary analysis — mainly literary and musical — through the study of several songs included in the aforementioned album in order to demonstrate how The Waterboys succeded in their attempt to reawaken and reconstruct a distinctive Irish conscience thanks to their selection and modification of Yeats!s original poems, as well as to the additional reinforcement through musical features.