From Ireland to the States: the re-contextualisation of U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” in different political contexts

• Laura Filardo-Llamas ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Valladolid

     Universidad de Valladolid

     Valladolid, España

     
• Localización: Journal of language and politics, ISSN 1569-2159, Vol. 18, Nº. 4, 2019, págs. 509-525
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this article I start from an understanding of songs as socio-cultural discourses which may also perform a political function. This political function can be reflected in the promotion of particular world-views about given socio-political events and/or in the attempt by the singer to make the audience perform given political actions. To prove this, I will look at the re-contextualisation process undergone by a well-known song by U2: “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” (1983). This song was originally written to respond to the violence of the Northern Irish conflict, but it has been later used to react to other socio-political events. By relying on a cognitive approach to the study of songs, this paper tries to answer two questions: (i) how can we explain the re-contextualisation process undergone by the song and why is it possible? and (ii) how is politics embedded in musical performances?