Are You Dancing?: Showbands, Popular Music, and Memory in Modern Ireland

From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, showbands were all the rage among Ireland's dancing audiences. Performing covers of rock 'n' roll and pop hits from American and British weekly Top 10 charts, they riveted their fans, dismayed many parish priests, and offered Irish youth a taste of modernism and pop culture from outside of Ireland.

In Are You Dancing?, Rebecca S. Miller tells the story of how these working-class bands brought new sounds and choreographies to the Irish and Northern Irish p...