Iarla Ó Lionaird, a sean-nós singer, on the romanticism of rural life, growing up in a big family and traditional music
Iarla Ó Lionaird: ‘My mother would keep each of her children home from school one day a week so she could get to know us’
I started singing at age five in the local church choir. All of my brothers and sisters were good singers but only the boys joined the choir because in those days it was men only and that was that. Growing up, sean-nós was the common singing style in my region so it was the music in my head. Later I became aware that there were other versions in other regions in Ireland.
I grew up speaking Irish and all of the songs I sang in recent years with The Gloaming were in Irish. The response to that music was such an emotional one you’d have to conclude that music is a superlative bridge between people. Of course audiences abroad didn’t understand what I was singing about, but they did receive the emotional meaning and they seemed to receive it very fully. I think Irish music has that potential in spades.Real World Records after sending in a cassette tape.
The Afro Celtic Sound System had a wonderful harpist from Brittany and since then I’ve loved its sound and wanted to interact with it in a more direct way. I got funding from Harp Ireland and theto commission a young composer, Connor Way, whom I’d met while teaching at Princeton a few years ago, to write a couple of arrangements of old sean-nós songs for the harp. I wanted to try to bring the harp tradition and sean-nós tradition together across time and space.
Me-Myself-And-Ireland West-Cork Peter-Gabriel Iarla-O-Lionaird
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