The winners of this year's TG4 Gradam Ceoil awards are an interesting mix, including one American woman, who show where Irish music is now and where it is heading, writes SIOBHAN LONG
IRISH TRADITIONAL musicians and composers look to the annual TG4 Gradam Ceoil awards as a barometer, a measure of the state of the music today and a peep into what the future may hold. This year’s winners’ list is refreshingly eclectic and outward-looking, and includes two women who have opened up new ground in the fields of singing and composition.
Last year was a red-letter one for Chicago fiddler Liz Carroll, who bagged a Grammy nomination for Double Play, an album she recorded with guitarist John Doyle, and who also saw the publication of 185 of her own tunes under the aptly chosen title, Collected. But 2011 is already shaping up well too, with Carroll winning the Gradam Ceoil Traditional Composer of the Year award.
The roll-call of Gradam Ceoil winners rarely extends beyond the confines of Ireland, but this Midwesterner doesn’t preoccupy herself with musings on whether or not her American passport makes her an outsider.
“I like that I play well enough to be able to make records,” Carroll says modestly, with a broad smile. “But I really love it when I hear someone else play one of my tunes. So this news is just great. I am really thrilled about it. Of course, it’s not lost on me that I’m a Yank, but it’s nice that they looked across the water for this one.”
Carroll’s appetite for life is evidenced by the breadth of her interests (politics and sport jostle for space alongside music) and the sharpness of her wit.
She relished the sight of Lady Gaga at the Grammy awards ceremony, exiting stage left at frequent intervals to don a new ensemble, then teetering back to her seat. She makes no secret of her admiration for Lady Gaga, an artist who manages her public image so astutely.
And yet her deepest instincts draw Carroll back again and again to tune composition. It’s a form of expression that first found purchase when she was just nine years old, and an experience she describes beautifully in the sleeve notes of her 2000 album, Lost in the Loop, where she recalls the distinction she felt between creating and playing.
“I can remember that this felt very special, different from learning a tune, varying one or hearing one for the first time,” she writes. “I had a melody that had come to me, and it didn’t exist anywhere else. I was at once the first person to hear it, to vary it, to learn it and ultimately to perform it. I can’t tell you how exciting that was.”
There was one minor detail Carroll omitted from the sleeve notes which merits mention now, at a safe distance from the original event.
“I can remember,” she says, smiling, “that when I figured out how to put notes on a sheet, I went in and raided my parents’ liquor cabinet. I poured myself a shot of whiskey, which I think I must have seen them do. It was part of what I saw as the ceremony of it all!”
WITH ALBUMS, TUNE books and Grammy nominations abounding, Carroll dismisses any suggestion that she’s on a rollercoaster. “It looks like I’m doing a lot,” she quips, “but there’s way too much time with cups of tea and the feet up on the table!”
Veteran composer that she is, can she distil the process to a point where she knows what marks a good tune out from a weak one? “It’s got an almost fantastic logic,” she says. “It makes sense. So whether that’s a complicated or simple way of getting there, it’s got to be logical. When I find a tune that works, I find myself smiling at the logic in it.”
Carroll goes on to lilt a well-known, delicate old tune called Tell Her I Am, and concludes: "That is genius. It's just perfect."
The 2011 Gradam Ceoil Traditional Singer of the Year is Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, who also plays flute and sings with Danú.
A natural multi-tasker, the many strings to her bow include working as a TV presenter with TG4 and teaching traditional singing in the University of Limerick's Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Her voice is an impressive contralto, which has been maturing over the course of recent albums with Danú, on the collaboration Dual(2008) and on her 2006 solo recording, Daybreak: Fáinne An Lae.
Nic Amhlaoibh laughs almost sheepishly as she admits that she didn’t see herself in the running for a Gradam Ceoil award, for reasons of age as much as anything else.
“I thought I was too young to be nominated,” she says. “But then when I think of past winners like Iarla and Dara Bán Mac Donnchadha, I realise what an incredible honour it is.”
Nic Amhlaoibh’s loyalty is to the song repertoire of Munster. A native of Dun Chaoin in west Co Kerry, but now living in Murroe in Co Limerick, she is unequivocal in her belief that a singer is most comfortable when tackling songs from the home place.
“West Kerry and the Munster Gaeltachts share a lot of songs anyway, especially with Na Déise ,” she says.
“But for some reason we don’t share many songs with the Muscraí Gaeltacht in Cork. I don’t really understand that. It’s as if it’s been bypassed somehow. So I was a little bit apprehensive about taking on An Cóisir, but the Irish is so similar and the styles aren’t a million miles away from one another either.”
Songs in Irish from further afield, however, pose challenges that she’s loath to take on. “The truth is that I don’t think I could do a Connemara song justice,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to ‘imitate’ the style, because there’s a falsehood to that too.”
Ironically, Nic Amhlaoibh feels far less tethered by songs in English, in which, she admits, geography isn’t nearly as limiting. “Growing up in west Kerry, there was never a limitation on what you’d sing in English,” she says.
“I loved the way sean-nós wasn’t this precious artefact. It was a living, breathing part of a very vibrant culture. You weren’t singing in Irish for the Irish language’s sake. I never felt that I was a ‘sean-nós singer’, I’ve always just felt that I am ‘a singer’. It’s simply the music that I grew up with, that’s closest to my heart. I’m not from 100 years ago, and I’m not going to pretend to be, but obviously sean-nós has been the foundation for me.”
Although sean-nós songs are often distinguished by the strength of their lyrical lines, Nic Amhlaoibh is often drawn first to a melody rather than a lyric. This may have something to do with the fact that she’s a flute player too.
“I always find myself falling in love with the melody first and foremost,” she says. “That’s what grabs my attention. Of course the lyrics have to be interesting as well, and I’m a sucker for a beautiful love song. I want to learn a few more songs about historical events though, and maybe even a few songs with a bit of craic in them, because I have far too many heartbroken songs!”
For more, see lizcarroll.com or muireann.ie. To see Liz Carroll perform in the White House for President Obama, search for “Liz Carroll and John Doyle” on youtube.com. To see Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh perform, search for her name in youtube.com
And the Gradam goes to . . .
Gradam Saoil/Lifetime Achievement Award: Ben Lennon
Gradam na gCeoltóirí/ Musicians' Award: Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
Cumadóir Ceoil/Traditional Composer of the Year: Liz Carroll
Amhránaí/Traditional Singer of the Year: Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Ceoltóir Óg/Young Traditional Musician of the Year: Pádraig Keane
Gradam TG4 Traditional Musician of the Year: Noel Hill
The 2011 TG4 Gradam Ceoil awards ceremony and concert will take place at Wexford Opera House on Saturday, April 2 and will be broadcast on TG4 on Easter Sunday, April 24, at 9.30pm
