Trad singer Ruth Clinton: ‘I got a little tired of certain tropes being repeated about women in songs’

Tradition Now, the now twice-yearly gathering of musicians, singers and dancers, has become an essential part of the trad and folk calendar. Adventurous in its programming, it has transformed the relationship between our traditional arts and the context in which they are performed. One of the most welcome innovations of Tradition Now is that it spreads into every nook of the National Concert Hall, with performances taking place not only in the main auditorium but also in the Kevin Barry room and in numerous other settings around the building. This makes for a welcome conviviality and informality, bridging the gap that can exist between artists and their audiences when music is transported to a concert hall setting.

Among the performers at this weekend’s two-day event is the artist and musician Ruth Clinton, who’ll be singing songs from her new book, This Fearless Maid II, accompanied by Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum, Sinéad Lynch of Clinton’s singing group Landless, and the fiddle player Consuelo Nerea Breschi. This collection complements Clinton’s first volume, from 2016, featuring songs from the Irish, English, Scottish and American folk canons that challenge gender stereotypes and patriarchal power.

“I had spent years attending singing sessions, learning and researching songs, and sometimes got a little tired of certain tropes being repeated about women in songs,” Clinton says. “A lot of the time when a woman is present – though not all the time by any means – she’s defined by her relationship to the man.”

For her first collection the songs “had to be either written by a woman or feature a woman protagonist or be from the perspective of a woman, and they had to be from before 1950 and written in Ireland, in English, because I don’t speak Irish very well. They couldn’t have any romance, which made it very challenging to actually find decent ones that are interesting historically. This time around I wanted to find songs that would be more singable. I think a lot of the ones I found for the first book had a lot of archaic language and would have been more like poetry.”

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Clinton spent hours delving into collections in the Irish Traditional Music Archive and researching songs at the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, and the Library of Congress, in the United States, for this second volume. She’s a founder of The Night before Larry Got Stretched, a monthly singing session at the Cobblestone pub in Dublin that welcomes singers of all experience and none.

“A singing session could be an intimidating environment when you’re starting out,” Clinton says, “because you feel like you’re surrounded by all these experienced singers, but we’re nothing but welcoming for all. There’s always been very inspiring women in this singing-circle world for us to learn from, like Rosie Stewart, and it’s great to see younger people too.

“With this work I’m very conscious that the language can be quite binary as well. Songs, especially older ones, document a time and reflect the time in which they’re written. But if we can get on board with the idea of challenging some gender stereotypes in lyrics, then it will contribute to an overall inclusiveness and equality that isn’t just for some women but for everybody.”

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The act of shining a light on historical biases is inherently powerful, Clinton believes. “When you bring consciousness to anything in life,” she says, “that’s when you know we can address what might have been absent in some way, or dysfunctional.”

Collaboration is at the heart of Clinton’s work as a singer and as a visual artist. She recently designed the cover of Niamh Bury’s solo debut album, Yellow Roses, and last year she curated Last of the Visioners, at the Model gallery, in Sligo, with her fellow artist Niamh Moriarty. The exhibition looked at how early 20th-century representations of Ireland have come to our consciousness. For Clinton, all aspects of her work form a natural whole and are amplified by the contributions of her collaborators.

“Everyone brings something different,” she says. “I love working with Cormac [MacDiarmada], because we play together as Poor Creature as well, so I think we’ve got a good symbiosis. Where I might have a song in mind, or a kernel of an idea, or a bit of a melodic idea, he’s really excellent at taking that and fleshing it out and adding a far more interesting rhythm than I would. So there’s always something that someone else can bring that’s going to enhance whatever ideas I have.”

Having many strings to her bow is a definite advantage, Clinton believes. “I get my best work done when I’m procrastinating from something else I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. “Fortunately for me, it all comes together. Everything enriches everything else.”

Tradition Now is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, from Friday, May 3rd, until Sunday, May 5th