BackTo Reviews

THE IRISH TIMES, Weekend Review, Saturday, June 28 2003
Carrier of the flame

Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola is far from being a stereotypical traditional
singer, writes Siobhán Long

The Aran Islands have produced more than their share of artist, most of them literary.
But although they have never had a shortage of songs, few locals have had the impact of
Lasairfhíona Ní Chonaola in the past year. It has taken her just one outing to the studio, to
make her début CD, An Raicín Álainn, to dispel all manner of myths associated with traditional
singing.Far from being a finger-in-the-ear singer, Ní Chonaola takes possession of the songs
handed down to her with the alacrity and comfort of a singer who’s not even on conversational
terms with the hang-ups of a generation reared to believe that sean-nós was a wry joke
played by islanders bent on recreating the delights of root-canal treatment for unsuspecting
listens gathered round the session. And then there are her own songs. Tales with a tincture of
the magic realism of Central and South America. Gemstones that reveal layer upon layer of
riches compacted beneath deceptively simple surfaces.She may be a graduate of Celtic studies,
with enough history and genealogy tuckedbeneath her belt to fuel a gabháil of songs, but
Ní Chonaola, a native of Inishere, is a carrier of the flame from as far back as the cradle
when singing held a place only usurped in other parts of the country by the all-consuming
television.“Since I was a child I was always singing”, she says, “and there’s a great tradition
of singing on the islands. The singer was respected. When somebody sang people were quiet.
The singer and the song were equal. So I came from that tradition. There was more emphasis
on the song than on music, though that has changed since.There are plenty of young
musicians playing now.”Ní Chonaola isn’t afraid to strip the songs bare, sometimes pairing
voice with bodhrán and nothing else, as she does on Bean Pháidín.

“There’s nothing like the bodhrán and the voice”, she says. “They’re the two oldest
instruments we have. You can imagine people long, long ago. Johnny MacDonagh (the bodhrán
player) is brilliant. He has a great ear for listening to the singer, because there’s a language
going on other than the words of the song. There’s something special, something beyond.
Music reaches people in a way that maybe words don’t. It’s at a higher level,”For Roundstone
Ní Chonaola plans to bring more than a knapsackful of songs. At Errisbeg House on Wednesday
she’ll be joined by her father, the Inishmaan writer and poet Dara Ó Conaola.“My father
is going to read some of his poetry, and I’ll be singing some songs,” she says, “but we’ve
set up a project called Dán Aille, an Aran project with a visual artist called Sean Ó Flaithearta,
which we’ll be performing in other places. We were thinking that people like John Millington
Synge and [George] Petrie have come to the islands looking for creativity, so it’s the first
time that we islanders are looking at our own culture and bringing something to the people.
”Ní Chonaola hasn’t been shy when it comes to bring the music to non-Irish–speaking audience,
either, as is evident by her appearance in the 10 most promising folk and trad acts in last year’s
Hot Press readers’ poll. Her debut CD was also voted on the top 10 debut albums of 2002. Proof,
if she needed it, that the music can traverse generations as well as linguistic codes with ease.
“I was singing in the Town Hall in Galway recently, and in the audience there were a lot French,
Italian, Japanese, Germans and Spanish, and they were all very happy with the songs. Somehow,
when I was recording the album, I had a load of songs, but all of the songs that made it on to the
album were Irish. It just seemed right. It’s what I speak. It’s my everyday language. It just seemed
like a natural progression.”She has few fears of being boxed into a category of someone else’s
choosing. Sean-nós may strike fear in the hearts of some, but Ní Chonaola refuses to be dragged
into arguments about a genre in which she feels at ease. “On the islands there were just songs,”
she says. “We just sang songs. We didn’t call them sean-nós. I came from a sean-nós
background, but I live in the modern time, too, so there are inevitably influences there.
“I come from a creative family: on my father’s side there was writing and music, and on my
mother’s side there was art and sculpture, so it’s natural for me to created, and it’s important
for people who are creative to try out new idea. It’s natural. And on the CD there’s oldness but
there’s also newness. And I like to push the boundaries – for myself, because I feel
comfortable with it.