Ireland's Music: Thar Toinn/ Seaborne from Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

The sea, especially the sea in the west of Ireland, has always been part of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s life. So has Gaelic. Music has, as well. It is natural, then then that she should bring these things together in her six song project Thar Toinn/Seaborne.

Nic Amhlaoibh plays flutes and whistles, and sings. Those are talents she often put to use in her thirteen years as lead singer with the top traditional band Danu, and in collaboration with other artists as well. She has traveled the world with her music. but it is to west Kerry, to the Dingle peninsula, that she returned to build her own career as a solo artist, and to raise her family.

For all that it is somewhat shorter than a full album, Nic Amhlaoibh makes the most of that concentrated form. There are stories told in Irish and in English, as well as one in Scottish Gaelic, with narratives drawn from truth, legend, and maybe a bit of both. The arrangements serve to enhance Nic Amhlaoibh’s choices in how she presents the lyrics. She has one of the best voices around, and that’s illuminated with a musical and poetic intelligence which makes her performances last well beyond first hearing. All that is present as part of what’s going on here.

One of Nic Amhloaibh’s gifts is saying much by saying little, in both story and style. That holds true whether she is telling a story of a faithless lover in Blackwaterside, venturing into Scottish Gaelic to sing a Cape Breton song of a woman whose sweetheart is lost on the sea, offering a west Kerry song wishing good luck and safe home to fisher folk, or telling a story of looking back at a well loved place in Ireland which may have been written by a man who survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Nic Amhlaoibh bookends these pieces with a song written by a friend who was both poet and boatman, and a song which may have come across the water from the singing of fairies.

The opener to Thar Toinn is Faoiseamh Faoistine, with words written by Danny Sheehy and music from Gerry O’Beirne. The song urges and encourages the listener to connect with land and sea. As Nic Amhlaoibh writes in her sleeve notes, Sheehy’s words also encourage listener to seek solace there.

Many years ago, a fisherman from the Blasket Islands heard the music of Port Na Bpucai one night while out on the sea. Perhaps it was wind, perhaps whale song, but then again, those fairies... it is after all a story fo a woman taken across the sea by fairies. It is also the song from which the title of the album comes.

For this arrangement of Port Na Bpucai Nic Amhlaoibh is joined by Billy Mag Fhlionn, who plays the Yaybahar, an acoustic instrument with which adds an otherworldly sound fitting for the song’s story. Mag Fhlionn built the Yaybahar himself after a concept by Gorkem Sen.

Others join in to support Nic Amhlaoibh through the album, too. Scottish singer Julie Fowlis adds her voice to the Cape Breton song,. Among others who sit in are Donal O’Connor, Gerry O’Beirne, Niamh Varian-Berry, and Donogh Hennessy.

It is, however, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s voice, vision, and connection with the waters which center Thar Toinn/Seaborne. It is a gathering of songs which invite repeated listening to explore the many facets of that vision and connection.

You may also wish to see
Seeing Ireland: 3 Music videos
Foxglove and Fuschia, another album from Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
About the album Buan from Danu
About the album Alterum from Julie Fowlis.

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Ghosts and stories

Halloween is coming up, and it is certainly a time of year when imagination, shared or individual, plays a part.

Someone asked me the other day if I knew any songs about ghosts.

There are whole genres of ghost lover songs in folk traditions, no doubt at least in part a consequence of times not that long past when a person would set out on a journey -- down the road or across the sea -- and never be heard from again. The Bay of Biscay and She Moved Through The Fair come to mind. There are other ghosts in song too, usually of folk who have come to a bad end at some one else’s hand.

There are ghost trains and ghost ships, not to mention ghost cattle herds. The spookiest song with ghosts in it, to me, is called Greenwood Side, also known as Cruel Mother. Details vary through the traditions and I'll let you seek out the story on your own if you've a mind to, but the last verse of the way I learned it always got to me as a kid because of the years of things the woman in the song had to face as punishment for murder (the ghosts of those she murdered were the ones who let her in on this stuff, too). As an adult I’ve thought, on a more hopeful note, that this woman has great faith in the power of forgiveness.

The verse goes

...I’ll be seven years a bird in the wood
seven years a fish in the flood
seven years the tongue in the warning bell
and God save me from the flames of hell.

Update: Gretchen Peters has released a fine version of that song mentioned above. I learned it first from from the singing of Ian and Sylvia Tyson.

Then there's the story told in Wind And Rain (a fine way to hear it is sung in Gaelic and English by Julie Fowlis and Eddi Reader on Julie's album Uam)in which the murdered one's bones turn into a fiddle.

About those ghost cattle herds? Johnny Cash knew about those.

There are other ways to consider the unknown and scarier parts of life in song, though
To take a turn to another train of thought, take a look at

A song which came out of another sort of reflection in a graveyard, Audience Of Souls:

Another way to look at uncertainty, and to celebrate another season: season of grace

A different thought about Ghost Trains

[The photograph, of a twelfth century ruin in Ireland, is copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting that]

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Creative practice: the music of what happens

There is an old folk tale from the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology, in which the Fianna-Finn are talking of music. "What is the finest music in the world?" asked Fionn of his son, Oisin. "The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," he answered. They went around the room, and each told what music they believed to be finest. One said the belling of a stag across the water, another the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, and others believed the finest music to be the sound of a lark, the laughter of a girl, and the whisper of a loved one. "They are good sounds all," said Fionn. "Tell us," one of them asked him, "what do you think?" "The music of what happens," said Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."
-Cathie Ryan


The Music of What Happens



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Music Road: late summer: two for the road

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

creative practice: natural world

Sometimes what happens (see the post below) is landscape.




Music, especially Irish music, is often rooted in and expressed through connection to landscape and the natural world. here are several views to think on.

Creative practice: curragh, storms

Several posts back, we started talking about the curragh, that Celitc v ersion of the hero's journey, where one sets out with only the smallest of boats to cross the sea. Any sea journey runs into storms, of all sorts, and their aftermaths. As does, when you think of it, any creative project.

Alison Brown has a tune inspired by legendary small boat sailor St. Brendan on her album Replay

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creative practice: curragh, part two

what appears afar off in the distance may at times be closer that it seems. sometimes, however, still takes a while to reach.