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Inisheer Vocalist Sings the Way She Feels
CEOL
By Earle Hitchner
[Published in Earle Hitchner's "Ceol" column in the IRISH ECHO newspaper on April 16, 2003, in New York City. Copyright © Earle Hitchner. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of author.]
Every so often in the Irish tradition, a singing voice emerges that both demands and commands attention. It was true of Dolores Keane, Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, and Karan Casey, to name but four, and it's equally true now of Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola (pronounced "Lah-sa-reena Nee Hun-ee-luh"). Her self-issued solo debut, "An Raicín Álainn" ("The Beautiful Comb"), was launched last August not in Ireland but in Lorient, Brittany, where she sang before 12,000 people at the Inter-Celtic Festival. Quietly, even stealthily, the album crept into the consciousness of traditional music followers in Ireland, where it began to receive glowing reviews, get increased radio airplay, and sell in numbers unusually high for a self-release. Right upfront, I confessed to Ní Chonaola that of the more than 1,000 CDs I received for review last year, hers, sadly, was not among them. "Ah, people are always saying to me, 'Where did you come out of?'" Ní Chonaola volunteered, trying to console me, "so I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, the album hasn't had its first birthday yet. There's plenty of time." She was speaking from Galway, close to the sea and within sight of her beloved Aran Islands, though she refused to tell me where exactly. "I'm between Galway and Inisheer, and wherever the world takes me," she said with a laugh. Ní Chonaola, who admitted to being in her late 20s, was not wholly sprung anew like Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus." The first, limited-issue recording on which she appeared was devoted to Aran Island singing and is now out of print. Her next significant album was French musician Hector Zazou's "Lights in the Dark" (Erato/Warner, 1998), on which she sings three songs in Irish and also recites a poem. "I was in Dublin at the time," Ní Chonaola recalled, "and I got a phone call from a talent scout who was looking for Irish singers for this project. I submitted a recording of my voice, and Hector liked it." Irish singers Breda Mayock and former Anúna member Katie McMahon also appear on the album, a contemporary, electronically ambient setting for mostly Irish traditional sacred songs that sold well. "Hector has a good ear for what works and what doesn't," Ní Chonaola said. "We just recorded a new song together, 'Dragonfly,' that will be out on an album in October. He did the music, and I did the lyrics for the song. I like the idea that I can do both types of music, modern and sean-nós."
STRONG STREAK OF ARTISTIC INDEPENDENCE Born in Galway City, as so many children from the Aran Islands are, and raised on Inisheer, the smallest of the three main Aran Islands lying in the mouth of Galway Bay, Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola comes from a creative family. Her mother's side is full of artists, while her father, Dara, is a novelist, biographer, short-story writer, and poet; her brother Mac Dara is a singer and photographer; brother Fionnán sings as well, and brother Diarmaid does graphic design. Dara, Mac Dara, and Diarmaid all applied their talents to her CD. Her father's poem, "Show Me the Isles," became the basis for the song "The Isle of Teiscinn," and he wrote the Irish lyrics for the song "The Waves of Connemara." Mac Dara photographed his sister for the album and sings the song "I Myself Go Fishing" on it. Diarmaid handled the CD design and layout. Ní Chonaola's upbringing on Inisheer was "very safe," she said. "There are hardly any cars, and the air is so clean. You'd go to Galway to shop." Her childhood was filled with songs and singing in the sean-nós ("old-style" and unaccompanied) tradition. "Inisheer has a slight Munster twist to the Irish language," she said. Her grandmother, Peige, who lived a long time in Boston, came from and returned to Inishmaan. "She had a lot of songs that she passed on to my father, who passed them on to me," Ní Chonaola said. "My father sang a little bit, but he prefers to write. I'm the opposite. I'd rather sing than speak." Ní Chonaola attended a few classes in sean-nós singing on Inisheer and also entered some competitions as a teenager. "When you're that young, you're trying out your voice or whatever talent you have," she said. "That was the time I really became aware of my voice." No one vocalist, Ní Chonaola insists, shaped her music. "I think it's important for singers to develop their own styles," she said. "I don't want too much influence because I want my own personality to come through in my voice." That is especially true of the approach she took to her solo debut, spare without being spartan. "The simple arrangements were good for my voice, and I felt the treatment I gave the songs were what they wanted and needed," she explained. "Music is another language, and when I'm singing, I feel I'm actually speaking to someone by using a different part of my brain. I just sing the way I feel." In the years following boarding school in Galway and a degree in Celtic Studies from Dublin's Trinity College, Ní Chonaola honed in on her vocal talent, though she still teaches school from time to time to make ends meet. She's performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland during a "Lights in the Dark" tour, and she's appeared on several Irish TV and radio programs. There was even a TV documentary on her, "Léargas," last November on RTÉ. "The producer heard my album," she said modestly. A purity of expression is perhaps the distinguishing attribute of "An Raicín Álainn." There's no sense of strain or compromise in her closely miked vocals. "Maybe it's an independent streak I have, but I go by my intuition and instinct," she said. "I felt this is what I'm supposed to do and the way I'm supposed to do it." Ní Chonaola asked Máire Breatnach, a fiddler, violist, and pianist she first met at a concert in Belfast, to produce the CD. "In one way, I wanted a woman producer because a lot of the songs have a feminine quality," she said. "I also liked Máire's energy and music." Besides Breatnach, whistle player Mary Bergin, guitarist Pat Hargan, harper Paul Dooley, bodhrán player Johnny McDonagh, and piano accordionist Alex Barcelona perform on the album, which was recorded in Cuan Studios in Spiddal, Galway, except for one track. "'Song of the Gale' was done in Paris with Alex, who's a French player," Ní Chonaola said. "He composed the melody, and I wrote the lyrics."
TRADITIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL The majority of songs on "An Raicín Álainn" are traditional, and some are quite familiar, such as "The Twisting of the Rope." The vocal group Skara Brae recorded it back in the early 1970s, and it became very popular in the 1960s after Joe Heaney (1919-1984), the great sean-nós singer from Carna, recorded it. "I think Heaney's character came through all his songs," Ní Chonaola said in admiration. "He made them very alive." She has a similar ability to transform a song and make its impact seem fresh and new. Her style is intimate, drawing listeners in, and when she drops into a low whisper in a low register, as she does near the end of "Coincidence," the effect can be subtly startling. That track, more than three minutes of lilting to McDonagh's bodhrán playing, is perhaps the most experimental on the CD. "It's not normal lilting," Ní Chonaola conceded. "Like other parts of the album, it's a bit abstract. I like to think outside the box." That she does, sustaining or bending notes at times, inserting pauses at others, all the while maintaining a breathy discipline in this original slice of mouth music without words. Her investment of feeling in each album track is almost palpable. Nowhere is this more obvious than in "Inisheer on Inisheer," in which she adapts a poem by Ethna Carberry (1866-1911) to a gorgeous melody from Thomas Walsh, and "Fair Úna," a tragic Connacht love song written by Tomás Mac Coisdealbhaigh that she sings sean-nós. "I find when I sing 'Fair Úna,' I need a break afterward," she said. "It's a very strong song." The strength of the sean-nós tradition continues to inspire and excite Ní Chonaola. "Sean-nós songs are my training, my backbone, and have huge energy," she said. "In a way, they're like a prayer. They're condensed emotion. You can almost imagine the persons who composed these songs from the energy they put into them. You sing some sad songs and feel relieved afterward. I know I always feel better after I sing." Ní Chonaola sees a similarity between the sean-nós singers and songs on the Aran Islands and the world-famous, cream-colored, distinctively patterned sweaters made there, the so-called Aran ganseys. "Each woman who knits has her own style of making a sweater, a special stitch, so you could tell who made what sweater," she said. "My grandmother had a special stitch. I feel some of the songs I sing are like the knitting, and I supply my own special stitch to them." At the end of this month, Ní Chonaola will be displaying her special vocal stitch at the Festival of the Poets in Scotland, and in June she's scheduled to perform at Galway City's Town Hall. "I'd love to go to America and sing," she added. With further U.S. radio and press exposure for her spellbinding solo CD, an invitation should not be far behind.
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