SONGS, PIPES and polkas are the lingua franca of Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh. Fowlis's Hebridean upbringing saw her immersed in both singing and piping from an early age, while Nic Amhlaoibh's west Kerry home places a premium on having a repertoire that's equal parts big songs and feisty polkas and slides. It's a heady combination, but one that works, as the pair's new album, Dual, illustrates, with bouzouki, fiddle and guitar accompaniment from Éamon Doorley and Ross Martin.
"Playing a polka on a set of bagpipes is probably a hanging offence at home," says Julie Fowlis, "but we just thought we'd go for it and see what happens. So far so good, because there haven't been any injuries yet." Both Fowlis and Nic Amhlaoibh have forged reputations as musicians and singers with a heady mix of ambition and vision. As well as playing pipes and whistle and being in possession of a fine voice, Fowlis fronts her own band and has released two critically acclaimed albums, Mar a Thá Mo Chridhe and Cuilidh,and is BBC Radio 2's Folk Singer of the Year 2008. Nic Amhlaoibh plays flute and sings with Danú, teaches on the University of Limerick's traditional music programmes and has a burgeoning career as a TV presenter on TG4 to wrestle with.
The pair's paths crossed a number of years ago, when Fowlis first met Éamon Doorley (now her husband), a bouzouki player with Danú. Cutting their teeth informally at Denmark's Tønder Festival four years ago, where Nic Amhlaoibh and Fowlis performed together, they recognised the spark that has now ignited their joint recording venture, Dual. The title, meaning to interlace or to braid, is an apt one. It also means "inheritance" and mirrors the pair's interest in exploring the historical and musical links between Scotland and Ireland, as well as the differences that characterise their respective musical personalities.
This is music literally from the edge. Fowlis and Nic Amhlaoibh were both raised on islands: Fowlis on the Outer Hebrides island of Uist and Nic Amhlaoibh initially on Inis Oírr and then, from the age of nine, in Dún Chaoin in west Kerry. Both places are on the outer edges of Europe, and in both a minority language is spoken. Far from imbuing them with a sense of isolation or of being outsiders, their geographical and linguistic inheritance has been the spur that led to both pursuing successful and idiosyncratic careers in music.
Intercepting Nic Amhlaoibh on the mobile phone as she treks the 1,000km from Fort St John in British Columbia to Kamloops, where she's currently on tour, it's clear that she's not someone who shies away from a challenge.
The connections between Scotland and west Kerry are rife, Nic Amhlaoibh realised as Dual evolved.
"There had been Scottish coastguards stationed in west Kerry because they were Gaelic speaking, and so they brought their Scottish marches with them, which Kerry people changed into polkas. All kinds of connections cropped up once we began to delve into them for Dual," she says.
FOWLIS WAS ALMOST relieved to find herself in the company of someone who shared so much musically and culturally with her. "It was so enlightening and refreshing to find this whole other community ¨ who are the same as us," she says. "When you grow up speaking a minority language, and you live in a rural area, there's a feeling of being on the edge and of fighting to keep something alive. The fact is, you are in the minority and then to find out this whole other group of people who are historically connected was a great feeling."
Some of us may be more conversant with the musical links between Scotland and Donegal and Northern Ireland. The Bothy Band, Altan, Paul Brady and Capercaillie have all served up genteel reminders of those cross currents.
Links between Scotland and west Kerry are not as readily explored, at least on recordings. Dual closes with a spellbinding song, A Riogain Uasail, said to be composed by the poet Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill as a response to an earlier and famous song of his, Mo Ghile Meár, long associated with west Kerry. The songs refer to the defeat of Charles Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
"It's such a beautiful song," Fowlis says, "and it was so good to sing a song with such strong connections to west Kerry, and with Culloden just a stone's throw from Inverness, where I live now. It's something that's very real for both of us. One thing that I felt on this album was that we didn't have to try to create some link. It was there all along, and once we started, we realised we could have kept going forever just researching those links the exchanging our songs."
Fowlis's love of "port béil" or Scottish "mouth music" finds full flight on Dual's opening track, Dá Bhfaigheann Mo Rogha de Thriúr Acu, where she and Nic Amhlaoibh intertwine their playful vocals against a beautifully measured backdrop of bouzouki and whistle. Fowlis's mouth music has a certain gentle, rap-like quality, at play in the field of syllables tumbling over one another, their rhythms both child-like and unfettered by even the slightest hint of a weighty inheritance.
"Port béil is considered a real art in Scotland, "to be sung with a real style and rhythm, and I think Muireann really enjoyed mixing that with her experience," she says. "She has a great voice, but she found that it was almost like a new way of singing, because of the speed and rhythms involved.
"It's quite a challenge, physically, to sing these kinds of songs. Muireann used to say to me, 'where do you find all the oxygen to sing these songs?' But to be honest, it was a wonderful challenge for both of us."
Dual is out now on Machair Records
