Singing my way to Social Justice

Abstract

My name is Karan Casey and I am a singer. In this paper I am interrogating the performance of social justice, and how my ideals are performed, as an Irish woman, as a social activist, as a traditional and a folk singer and as a cultural voice. Having a twenty five year career as an Irish singer I will be emphasising the voice of the professional artist and how my power as an active agent and participant in this setting gets to the heart of social responsibilities that are important to me. I will be investigating my song choices to see if they contribute to a discussion of social justice and how this is demonstrated performatively and through the text. You can approach this article in two ways. You can click here on the link for the full performance or you can scroll down through this paper and play the songs within the context of my writing. I hope you enjoy it whichever pathway you choose.