Shorelines: Nuala Kennedy

The sea has been a constant in Nuala Kennedy’s life. She grew up and first began learning music in County Louth in Ireland’s east, not far from the Irish Sea. She has lived and traveled in other parts of the world with sea connections, from Scotland to Cape Breton to Spain to Australia and beyond.

In recent years Kennedy has been based near the coast of Clare, in the west of Ireland.

That sea connected life has presence in Kennedy’s album Shorelines.

The music on Shorelines tells stories of the sea, and draws on sea changes to tell human stories. So too the music, especially the songs, on Shorelines, offer stories of changes and of resilience in women’s lives.

As she was making those sea borne connections and choosing music for Shorelines, Kennedy was reflecting on her own life as woman, artist, wife, mother, and friend, and how changing circumstances require change. That had her considering the many ways resilience comes about in women’s lives That perspective too informs the music on Shorelines.

Shorelines is a title which reflects the shifts and changes in both coastal waters and the resilience of women. It is journey with a fine balance in tune and in song of original music and music drawn from traditional and contemporary sources.

Drawn from is one of the operative phrases, as Kennedy and the talented folk she’s invited along on this journey stay true to tradition while adding their own gifts to illuminate the stories they wish to tell.

Kennedy is a flute and whistle player, a singer, composer, and producer. Each of those aspects of her talent comes through clearly in Shorelines.

You will be well rewarded by following the path Kennedy has laid down through the nine tracks on the album, most of which are sets with tune and song in combination or comprising several tunes.

Several highlights:

The journey begins with the song Sally Sits Weeping, which finds a woman lamenting a false lover. Melody and variations of the verses have shown up in Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and North America; Kennedy has chosen a story which finds the woman weeping, true, but as the tale unfolds she “sets sails of silver” and heads in other directions.

On the recording this moves into Blue Devils’ Jig a lively original tune named for the melancholy Ishmael falls into in Moby Dick.

Saltwater and Flow are two lively original tunes which move gracefully into the song Cúcúín, sung in Irish. It’s a song Kennedy says that she often sings to her own young children, in which there’s a conversation between a mother cuckoo and her chicks. There’s another dimension, which aligns with aligns with the ideas that pull through the music on Shorelines. “In the Celtic tradition,” she points out, “cuckoos were considered to have toe ability to travel between worlds.”

Wake is an original tune “composed while meditating on the wake of a boat,” Kennedy writes. It is a reflective piece which points up her gentle power with the flute and the connections the musicians who join her bring as well, in this case especially Tara Breen on fiddle and Caoiminh Vallely on piano.

They move from Wake into a lively set called Sea Reels with original tunes inspired by Cape Breton bracketing a Scottish maritime reel, with Tony Byrne on guitar and Todd Sickafoose on double bass joining in.

Marguerite is a song which also references Atlantic Canada. Contemporary writer Scott Richardson drew on a true story from Newfoundland in 1542, which speaks of a woman facing circumstances which certainly tested her resilience.

Kennedy mentions that she first heard this song from Geraldine Hollett of the Newfoundland band The Once. That is how I first heard it as well. Kennedy brings her own gifts as a singer and storyteller to the tale, adding her own illumination to the powerful story. It also fits well with the intertwined themes of sea borne stories and ideas of resilience on Shorelines.

When you get to thinking about it, the story told in The Cavan Road leaves many things unexplained. It clearly has a happy ending though, which is why legendary flute player and singer Cathal McConnell taught it to Kennedy some years back when she asked for a song with just such an ending -- a rare thing in Irish love songs.

In addition to the musicians mentioned above, Moira Smiley and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, two artists whose work you’ve met here along the Music Road before, add subtle, interesting backing vocals to several of the songs.

There is more to explore, including a song suggested by Mick Moloney, an open ended version of a ‘died for love’ song, and tunes inspired by the coast of Clare.

Each of the tracks on Shorelines is worth your repeated listening. There’s more to discover each time in song, tune, and story, all offerd with top class musicianship.

You may also wish to see
Nuala Kennedy’s website, with details of her other recordings and her tour and teaching schedule
A short piece about one of Nuala’s earlier albums, The New Shoes
Learn about Day Is Come from The Alt, a trio in which Nuala joins up with John Doyle and Eamon O’Leary
Thar Toinn/Seaborne from Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Another one of those rare Irish love songs with happy ending, Carrick a Rede from Cathie Ryan and John Doyle
Learn a bit about the music of The Once, from Newfoundland

Photographs courtesy of the artist

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Saint Bridgid's day, and music

From Australia to Alaska, through all the counties that make up the island of Ireland, and across the world where Ireland's sons and daughters have made their homes, you will find churches, schools, hospitals, and children named after Saint Bridgid. Though she’s occasionally called Ireland’s second saint -- second to Saint Patrick, that is -- she is as strong is story and legend and as important to the history of Ireland -- and to the women of Ireland -- as Saint Patrick is.

She grew up in Louth, Ireland's smallest county. It is a place filled with mist and mystic landscapes, these days as much as it was in Bridgid’s firth century AD. It is a home of legends from Ireland’s ancient past, a fitting birthplace for a saint whose family included both Christians and followers of the old ways, and whose own legends as the patron of fire and of poetry would borrow from those ancient stories as well.

The first of February is the feast of Saint Bridgid. In Ireland this is marked as the beginning of spring, the turning toward light after winter’s darkness. While the weather in Ireland does not always go along with springtime ideas, there is a change in the light around the beginning of February, a welcome of bright days on the way.

For that reason, Kathleen Conneely’s recording Coming of Spring is a good one to enjoy at this season. The whistle is Conneely’s instrument, and she employs it beautifully through sets of reels and jigs, with a bit of hornpipe and slip jig thrown in, to share of the life and history of Ireland without speaking a word. Growing up in a family who brought their music over to England with them when they came from Ireland, Conneely has tradition in her family and in her heart, and the wisdom of all that comes through in her playing. All of the fourteen sets are well worth your listening -- and Conneely may have you dancing too if that’s your inclination. Standout tracks include the Bonnie Ann set of reels and the Rosemary Lane set of jigs.

There is wisdom in Cathie Ryan’s take on a hymn to Saint Bridgid, as well. On her album The Farthest Wave, she takes the ancient hymn Gabhaim Molta Brighde and has it both reach back across time and be fully present in today’s world by the clarity of her singing and the spare arrangement of the backing on accordion from Scotland’s Phil Cunningham.

you may also wish to see
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Music and Landscape: Ireland

Irish music often arises out of the landscape, and is cradled by it. A sense of home and family translated into images that give ways into singing and playing of home and family and love, perhaps.

I am writing this at a time of year, in early spring, when because of Saint Patrick's day people all over the world often think of the emerald isle, as it’s called. The landscape, though, often takes on aspects other than emerald , as it does here. These inspire just as many songs and tunes, too.




music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle
Music Road: now playing: Athena Tergis
Music Road: The Clancy Legacy
Music Road: Cherish The Ladies: A Star in the East

you may also wish to see
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.


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Tune In: Nuala Kennedy

When Nuala Kennedy came upon an old radio in a shop in her street in Edinburgh, she began to imagine what it would be like to turn the dial and hear the passing and unexpected sounds of the world, from opera to country swing to late night talk shows, sometimes crystal clear and sometimes fading away, Given that Kennedy is a musician, this soon provided the idea for an album. She's called it Tune in.

It ‘s a framework which invites, even requires, invention and adventure. Kennedy, a composer, singer, and flute player, takes to it all with good result, and a bit like the radio station tuning in different frequencies, she brings in musical friends to add their own notes and ideas in support, as well. Her companions on the trip include Norman Blake, Julian Sutton, Donald Hay, and Sua Lee, just to name a few.

Kennedy is an Irishwoman, now living in Scotland, who has traveled many places through her music. She draws on Irish traditional music for several tracks, including the Donegal Song Down by the Strand and the Fermanagh one The Blooming Star of Belle Isle. She adds in songs and tunes she’s learned on other parts of her musical journeys, and music she has written herself, often inspired by those travels. Especially notable among Kennedy’s own work here are All of These Days and and the Footsteps/Julian and Iwona’s set.

you may also wish to see
Nuala Kennedy's album Shorelines

Music Road: Shannon Heaton: Oil for the Chain

Music Road: Saturday Sessions: Brian Finnegan on writing tunes

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Saint Bridgid's day: music & legend

Fire, poetry, healing wells, and highlands -- that’s a good group of things to be involved with. Saint Bridgid of Ireland, whose feast we celebrate on 1 and 2 February, is said to have influence over all of those. Many stories which have grown up around the biography of the fifth century saint are likely later additions, and it's likely that attributes of the pagan goddess Brigid have been added to the saint’s reputation. She is, whatever you think about all that, a figure of power and source of solace through Irish history, and a woman who was known for both her common sense and her holiness during her lifetime. Her feast day is also marked as the day to start looking for the first stirrings of spring in Ireland, which considering the nature of Irish weather, is often more in promise than in fact.

She is known as Bridgid of Kildare, for the most prominent abbey she founded there. Bridgid was born, though, in Louth, a place where the landscape lends itself to legend and mystery. There are schools, churches, pipe bands, football teams, and children named in her honor from Australia to Alberta. Next time you visit the National Museum of History in Dublin, you might keep an eye out for the pair of Bridgid’s shoes they have there.

Gabhaim Molta Brighde is a hymn of thanks to the saint which has come down through the centuries. in honor of Saint Bridgid’s feast, I invite you to take a look at the work of these musicians

Mary Black: 25 years 25 songs

Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

reflections with Maura O'Connell

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

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If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.