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Gael Force Twins
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Penguin Eggs, Gael Force Twins >>
Julie Fowlis, Britain's folksinger of the year, happens to sing in Scots Gaelic. Her latest project, Dual, though, embraces the Irish Gaelic singing of kindred spirit Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh. Colin Irwin supplies the superlatives.
Two thousand years ago, the Celts were everywhere. Depending on which history books you read, they roamed through Europe fighting and partying in equal measure, leaving an enduring cultural stamp on every territory through which they rampaged.
It goes on. The word Celtic may now have been appropriated to describe any sort of prettified New Age harp music with a vaguely Irish twinge, but the connections that bind the Celtic nations are real enough. Ireland may be the central core of the Celtic tradition, but shovel on the Isle of Man, the Highlands of Scotland, areas of Wales, Cornwall in the southwest of England, Brittany in France and Galicia in Spain and-yes, why not-a bit of Cape Breton, too, and watch the Celtic sparks fly. That would be a party to remember.
Gaelic, the language of the Celts, survives, too, albeit in various forms. In Scotland, Gaelic is spoken by 58,000 people-about one per cent of the population-but mainly grouped in the Western Isles (formerly known as the Outer Hebrides); but they're a passionate one per cent and getting increasingly so by the day. In Ireland, where there have been more conscious efforts to protect the language and culture, there are more than half a million people fluent in the Irish version of Gaelic, predominantly grouped in the Gaeltacht areas of Cennemara, Donegal, Waterford, and Cork.
Once, of course, the two cultures were joined at the hip and two of the shiniest lights of both traditional music cultures-Julie Fowlis from remote North Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, originally from Inis Oirr, one of Ireland's Aran islands-have linked up to unite them once more in song with their new project, Dual. They may be separated by many miles of land and sea, not to mention the remorseless march of history, but Julie and Muireann have uncannily simlilar backgrounds and stories. Roughly the same age (29, not that it's any of your business!), they were both raised in remote environments where their respective versions of Gaelic were still effectively their communities' first language. Both are superb singers, engaging personalitites and gifted instrumentalists fronting successful bands. Despite becoming one of the U.K.'s most popular solo artists (she was folksinger of the year at the 2008 BBC Folk Awards) and achieveing mainstream success despite-or maybe because of-an almost exclusively Scots Gaelic repertoire, Julie remains a member of the band Dochas, where she gets to exercise her underrated talents on the whistle, melodeon and bagpipes.
Muireann (pronounced Mwi-ren), a former member of the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, is adept on flute, whistle and keyboards, but her wonderful singing wasn't widely discovered until she joined one of Ireland's top bands, Danu, seducing everyone with her sumptuous vocals on their award-winning 2003 album The Road Less Travelled. Her solo album, Daybreak: Fáinne an Lae in 2006, had reviewers and audiences alike rolling on their backs kicking their legs in the air in delight, and she has also emerged as a credible TV presenter (and even here there are parallels with Fowlis, who's also started a sideline as a radio presenter for BBC Scotland).
The two kindred spirits met in 2004, hit it off instantly, first sang together at the Tønder Music Festival in Denmark, and Dual, a beautifully sensitive amalgamation of the two Gaelic traditions, is the logical result. Both an album and touring project, Dual (a word for twining and inheritance in both languages) also features Danu's intuitive fiddle/bouzouki player, Éamon Doorley (who also happens to be Julie's husband), and guitarist Ross Martin.
"We all just love playing together," says Julie. "Obviously our opportunities of getting together are limited because of all the other things we do, but working together just feels so natural. We started off doing informal things, just small concerts in rural areas that we organized ourselves, and it worked so well we decided to take it a step farther."
"It just feels so right. There's this great distance between the Hebrides and Ireland, but the two languages are very close in lots of ways. At one time they would have been the same, there just happens to have been this divergence 300 years ago. The cultures have very much stayed the same and once you get past the initial stumbling blocks of the words and ideas, there are great similarities. When you're raised on an island you always believe you're by yourselves-it wasn't until I was in my teens that I realized there was a Gaelic language over there related to our own and there are so many connections between the peoples of the Hebrides and the west of Ireland."
Musically they hit it off right away, too. The album encompasses a gorgeous love song by the Kerry poet Eoghain Ruadh Ó Súilleabháin, another by Sean Ó Duinnshleibhre commemorating an 1880 boat race won by Great Blasket islanders, various representation of North Uist culture and a variety of tunes where they instinctively find common ground.
"The album is shared ideas and shared music, it's as simple as that," says Julie. "We just bounced ideas off each other. I might come up with a song and one of the others would say, 'Oh, I know an Irish tune similar to that,' and it would go on like that. Somtimes we wouldn't know where a tune was from at all. It was great fun and we ended up with material for another three albums. And when we play live together it feels very special."
Meanwhile Julie is looking forward to kicking off her forthcoming tour with a concert at St. James Theatre in Vancouver on Feb. 20. "I came to Canada with Dochas three years ago and it was great. We did festivals in Vancouver and Calgary and had such a warm welcome wherever we went I can't wait to get back."
She's so busy playing around the world in different lineups she could be forgiven if she ever goes on stage wondering where she is and with whom she's playing tonight. This, after all, is the artist who had an airplay hit single recently with a Scots Gaelic language version of the Beatles' Blackbird.
"Oh, I love it all," she says. "I still can't quite believe I'm doing this. None of it was ever planned. It's all happened by accident. We're not trying to be anything we're not and it's always a surprise that people are so interested. But it's very honest music and I just think people are looking for far more than what they usually hear on the radio. Touring around, I see natural parallels in places like Brittany and Galicia, and it's interesting to see how their cultures have or haven't stood the test of time. We don't easily fit into any musical category-not even Scottish folk music-but like frado singers from Portugal or traditional musicians from Sweden, what we do is part of a bigger picture. I feel very privileged." 12/01/08 >> go there
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