Daniel T. Neely

I am a musician and ethnomusicologist with specialties in the musics of Ireland and Jamaica. I received the Ph.D in Musicology from New York University in 2008.  

I'm active in the world of traditional Irish music.  I've written a weekly column on the subject for New York's Irish Echo newspaper since 2012 and was named one of their “40 Under 40” in 2013.  Since 2021, I've been a member of Ward Irish Music Archive's board of advisors and at different points over the years I've taught classes on the history of Irish music on the master's level for NYU's Glucksman Ireland House.  From 2008-2023, I was the Public Relations Officer for the Mid-Atlantic Region of Comhaltas Ceoltoirí Éireann (North America's largest region of the world's primary Irish organization dedicated to the promotion of the music, song, dance and the language of Ireland) and from 2012-2016 I was the artistic director of the Augusta Irish Week in Elkins, West Virginia.  From 2009-2017, I led a popular traditional music session at Lillie’s Bar and Restaurant in Manhattan.  I also played tenor banjo with the champion New York Céilí Band in 2016-2017 and from 2005–2013 I led the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, a New York-based group modeled on the Irish-American dance bands of the 1920s and 1930s.  Mick Moloney taught me the tenor banjo and inspired my love for Irish music history.  I've played the fiddle, learning from Brian Conway, since 2018.

My historical research focuses on Irish music in America, particularly during the period from 1890 to 1930. I have concentrated on musicians in Boston, Massachusetts, such as Daniel Sullivan, his son Dan J. Sullivan, William and Michael Hanafin, Shaun O'Nolan, and others who were within the orbit of the “Dan Sullivan Shamrock Band.”  I also have a special interest in the Flanagan Brothers, the influential banjo and accordion group from County Waterford who lived and worked in New York City during the 1920s and 1930s. An All-Ireland Affair: The Music of the Famous Flanagan Brothers is a fully integrated multimedia presentation I lead with Diarmuid Ó Meachair on melodeon, that celebrates the music and lives of these important Irish music pioneers through lecture and performance.  Finally, I am deeply interested in Irish music in New York during the 1960s and 1970s and contributed a biography of Martin Mulvihill for the expanded reissue of the Martin Mulvihill Collection of Irish Traditional Music  (1985/2023).   The places I've given invited lectures on these all subjects include Boston College, Holy Cross, Technical University Dublin, the Catskills Irish Arts Week, the Ward Irish Music Archives, Na Píobairí Uilleann (Dublin, IE), and the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann (Wexford, IE).

My research into Jamaica's mento music began in earnest in 2000.  This work was supported by several grants over the years, including a Fulbright Grant and NYU’s Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, that resulted in my dissertation, “Mento, Jamaica’s Original Music”: Development, Tourism and the Nationalist Frame.  This research led to essays in publications including Sun, Sea and Sound: Music and Tourism in the Circum–Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2014; also, co-edited with Tim Rommen), Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean (Temple University Press, 2009; with Ken Bilby), Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018), Jamaica Jamaica! (Philharmonie de Paris, 2017), and the Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (2008).  I also performed on and was music director of the Jolly Boys mento band’s 2010 album Great Expectation, was the special consultant and advisor for the documentary Pimento and Hot Pepper: The Story of Mento Music (Best Documentary, 2017 Palm Bay Caribe Film Festival; Official Selection, 2017 Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival), and was an organizer and invited lecturer for the Institute of Jamaica's 2017 Grounation conference on mento.  

Another area I've explored is the history and aesthetics of ice cream truck music.  I conducted research having been inspired by Steven Feld's “Anthropology of Sound” course and presented my findings at a few different academic meetings in the early 2000s.  These led to an essay in Esopus magazine (2005) that was anthologized in The Esopus Reader (2022).   A much longer and far more comprehensively researched essay on the subject appeared in the Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014).  I've spoken about this music with a variety of news and media outlets over the years, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.  In 2021 I was a guest on America's Test Kitchen's podcast.

Finally, in the late 1990s I played guitar in a Boston-based ska band called Skavoovie and the Epitones.  In September 2024, Skavoovie reunited for the first time for the Supernova International Ska Festival and then followed up in June 2025 with shows in Boston, Connecticut, and New York City.  We had a brilliant, memorable time at all of them!