Shadows Of Humor And Sorrow

Every silver lining has a very dark cloud behind it. That includes the shimmer of Irish wit, music, acting, and literature. Irish arts light up the world. But they come with a shadow.

"Everyone knows the Irish are off the charts with creativity," says Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Susan McKeown, whose CD Singing in the Dark launches at Symphony Space in New York City on Saturday the 30th, before beginning an East Coast tour (see details at www.susanmckeown.com). "Everybody knows Bono, the Cranberries, Barry Fitzgerald. People know an Irish person might have a joke or a song or a sad story or poem - I wouldn't be surprised if our creativity is a result of all of these things we've gone through."

You can hear shadows of humor and sorrow in her haunting vocal deliveries, and small expressions that cross her pale face and dark eyes when she sings.

In this album the music ranges from jazz to baroque to pop to Irish trad - some composed by Susan, some by friends. The lyrics are all by great poets, who have looked deep into their own dark shadows.

Susan's seventh solo album explores connections between creativity and mental illness. The "lyricists" include John Dowland; George Gordon, Lord Byron; Anne Sexton, Gwendolyn Brooks and Leonard Cohen.

Singing in the Dark has been in the making at least seven years, on and off, for a long time - seven years, in fact. And to Susan, it's a project that's long overdue. And it's particularly needed now, when a the rate of suicide in Ireland by young men ages 15-24 has reached epidemic states. "Nobody seems clear on why, or how to address it, apart from talking about it," Susan says. And this album talks about it musically and directly, too: "In the very beginning, it was just noticing how I was always fascinated by dark songs. I've always been drawn to them, though I'm a very upbeat person. I was in the studio with Linda Thompson a few years ago, and I remember saying, 'I'm starting to get sick of darkness,' and she said, 'I know but what else is there?'" Susan laughs.

Dublin born, she's a New Yorker now, and in addition to this project, has recently completed Songs from the East Village, with her daughter's school, a world music album to benefit her daughter's school and was interviewed about it for NPR (The New York segment was pre-empted for a pledge drive, but you can hear it online here: http://www.irelandhouse.as.nyu.edu/object/ne.singinginthedark).

You might think the timing of these two releases suggests Susan has been deliberately involving herself in public service, but it's more a strand of her approach to the power of music.

"I'm fascinated by how music can move you through a mood," she says. "Particularly dark or ruminative stuff - I'm fascinated by how you come away from it wanting to do something. It makes me want to be creative."

At first she thought she would make an album of dark songs. She was drawn to the sixteenth-century Irish court poet John Dowland's "In Darkness Let Me Dwell."

While visiting Natalie Merchant she described the semi-formed project - and Merchant suggested she read Kay Jamison's book Touched by Fire. (Merchant released her own CD based of poetry set to music last year; hers was children's poetry).

"I thought, god, this is what I'm going to do! It's an exploration of poets who suffered with manic-depression, mental illness, or had it in the family. It was a perfect subject to explore in these songs. In my own life, I go through periods where I'm down or elated. I've known a lot of people close to me seem to really suffer, and nothing I could say would take them from that place. I wanted to know why that is. I wanted to learn more."

"Artists and writers are more likely than most to suffer from and be treated for depression and bipolar disorder (manic-depression);" Jamison writes in the booklet to McKeown's CD. And more likely to have died at their own hands.

But, she writes, this is changing as public awareness increases and treatments which alleviate the darkness without sacrificing creativity.

While researching the project McKeown read poems by people who had suffered from substance abuse or mental illness, and began to create an archive.

That includes artists she wanted on the album. Cillian Vallely from Lúnasa appears, as does her daughter Roisin's piano teacher Sonelius Smith, who she hadn't realized was a well-known jazz musician from the 70s.

Others appearing and/or composing include Lorin Sklamberg, Steve Cooney, Lisa Gutkin, Stefan Amidon, Shazad Ismaily.

The first recording session was made with Steve Cooney on Achill Island in Mayo, during the festival of Lúnasa 2008 - the last in September 2010. "Two or three pieces I wrote right at the end. I wanted to stay open to including musicians - that was how I discovered this musician who played with Tom Waits! I thought who's this guy, what's he doing, it's really interesting. Shazad Ismaily; I saw him on YouTube. It turns out his mother's in the mental health field."

And as the project progressed she found a way to partner with mental health organizations who have as their aim to break the pattern of not talking about it. This project benefits the National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI), the Mood Disorder Support Group, and Bring Change 2 Mind.

And talking about it, quite literally, will happen at Symphony Space, in an unusual entr-acte.

The Irish Arts Center, in collaboration with New York Public Library: Live from the NYPL, and Glucksman Ireland House - NYU, present, along with the orgainiations above.

Kay Redfield Jamison will be Susan's guest, and the event is hosted by "Live from the New York Public Library's" Paul Holdengraber.

"I don't use the word 'excited' a lot, because I'm Irish, but I'm very excited! The concert will bring together practically all of the musicians on the album, and the discussion will happen after the first set. Then we'll resume the second set."

The conversation part actually begins before the concert, at a symposium earlier that day, featuring Susan, Angela Bourke, and Patrick Tracey, at Glucksman Ireland House (see http://www.irelandhouse.as.nyu.edu/object/ne.singinginthedark or call (212) 998-3950 for information).

"When I came up with this idea, I couldn't believe it hadn't happened before! But anytime I searched on Amazon for music and mania, all I came up with was Leonard Cohen."

Cohen also appears on the album. "It felt like a glaringly obvious one that nobody had done. Benefit albums have been made to Save the Whales and the Environment but not on mental health.

"Suicide in Ireland has gotten worse. People are surprised that even during the Boom, when things were going well, it got worse. And now that the Boom is over, it's not starting to decline. Everybody's searching for ways to address this issue. Ireland is in the top 4 or 5 rates of suicide in Europe. I don't think there's a school child in Ireland in secondary school who doesn't know somebody who died by that means. It's shocking. 14-year-old kids!

"When I was in secondary school, I was not aware of anyone of my generation talking about anyone even attempting it. I did have one good friend whose father died by that means, and there was all sorts of strange behavior in community afterwards. It was secret and not talked about. There was no place for them to share grief and talk about it. When you look at the history of medicalization of mood as a result of traumatic experience, I question why are we locking people up, and not finding better ways to help our own?"

Some issues have been haunting the Irish for a long, long time. The oldest lyric on the album is "Mad Sweeney"-thought to be over a thousand years old.

The epic poem of a king cursed to live among the trees as a bird, it can be viewed as the story of a man who is cut off, can't connect with his family or friends, can't have an intimate relationship with a woman. "Seamus Heaney allowed me to use a line of his translation, 'I need woods for consolation.' It's only in nature Sweeney can find comfort and calm. He can't figure out his place in society." All too haunting for contemporary Ireland whose shift even in the past 20 years away from agriculture to industry has been steep.

Letting the project linger in her own head for so many years helped it find its shape.

Melodies might come in strange ways - even in dreams, which is particularly appropriate for an album seeking to explore the recesses of creativity.

She knew she wanted to included "The Nameless One" by James Clarence Mangan for a long time, but it wasn't until she saw a clip of piper Sean McKiernan that she remembered that she'd woken up with the melody in her head for the chorus.

"Mangan's writing set him free," Susan said of the author of "My Dark Rosaleen" who died of complications of alcoholism in 1849. "Our rate of alcoholism can be tied in to other things - perhaps it's people self-medicating."

But if alcohol is a coping mechanism, so are the arts.

Singing in the Dark sheds some very warm light in that darkness.