“She Moved Thru' the Bizarre”: Davy Graham and Irish Orientalism

Abstract

Davy Graham's innovative 1963 rendition of the Donegal air “She Moved Through the Fair” and his “theory” of “a connection between Oriental music and the folk music of Ireland” are, I contend, best read under the rubric of Irish Orientalism. To demonstrate, I examine the writings of Herbert Hughes, the Celtic Revivalist who collected the air, explore Graham's background as son of a Scots father and Guyanese mother, and analyze how Graham's rhetoric engages Orientalist constructions of the exotic and female. Finally, I show that the DADGAD tuning Graham invented has become, for numerous Western guitarists, a signifier of exotic Otherness.