Giving new life to old songs

With an Irish and Egyptian background, singer Róisín Elsafty 's theatrical sean-nos has an indelible Arabic influence, writes Siobhán Long

In some quarters, fears are harboured that traditional music is a dying breed; that its audience is an ageing one, that its ear is firmly cocked to the past rather than to the present, never mind the future. The Temple Bar Trad Festival, now in its third year, is bucking that trend with brio.

Having doubled its programme last year, embracing concerts, workshops, a photo exhibition, storytelling and a comprehensive children's programme, it finds itself in the happy position of attracting an audience, 80 per cent of whom are in the 19 to 44 age group. With only 5 per cent student concert goers, it would appear that Temple Bar Trad is fast proving itself to have a magnetic attraction for people who might not usually find themselves ambling about Dublin's cultural quarter in the late evening, and proof positive that the appetite for traditional music in the beating heart of the city is every bit as healthy as it is in the furthest corners of counties Clare, Kerry or Donegal.

The festival is a confluence of the intensely local (Connaught fiddle and flute duo John McEvoy and John Wynne, Down singer Sinéad Caher) and the irrepressibly global (in the shape of Mozaik, featuring Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, American old time fiddler Bruce Molsky, Hungarian renaissance man and multi-instrumentalist Nikola Parov, and Dutch guitarist fiddler and mandolin player Rens van der Zalm).

This year's programme is heavily populated by female artists, including Kerry fiddler Niamh Ní Charra, Dublin singer Susan McKeown, Scottish singer Julie Fowlis and Connemara sean-nós singer Róisín Elsafty.

With a doctorate in biochemistry, Elsafty has enjoyed a flourishing relationship with both the arts and science. She's already toured extensively with Dónal Lunny and Máirtín O'Connor, cutting her teeth on a global stage, where she could meld her sean-nós repertoire with sympathetic arrangements, under Lunny's careful direction.

Growing up in a household where singing was every bit as much the lingua franca as the Irish language was, Elsafty saw little difference between sharing a song with her mother, sean-nós singer Treasa Ní Cheannabháin, and performing on stage at feiseanna or in neighbours' kitchens, with people who shared her appetite for a good melody line.

Connemara too, was a hotbed of sean nós, with singers such as Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, Dara Bán Mac Donnchadha and Seán, Josie and Johnnie Sheáin Jeaic and Meataí Joe Sheamais all forging reputations not only at home but internationally, as singers of raw and magnificent intensity.

"I've been singing since I can remember," Róisín smiles, "and some of my earliest memories are of rattling around in my grandfather's house and listening to my mom singing, her voice filling the house. Her voice was very sweet and very high, and she taught me little songs that I simply loved."

Moving to Castlebar, where Elsafty went to school, she already had the beginnings of sean nós, with An Sagairtín featuring strongly in her nascent repertoire. Treasa Ní Cheannabháin was and still is her linchpin when it comes to learning new songs, and ensuring that she captures every nuance of a newly discovered song.

"I still go to my mom," Elsafty is quick to clarify, "and she's still my main source. I'll always go to her to make sure that my pronunciation is right, that my grammar is right, and that I understand everything that I'm singing, because some of the old songs have some beautiful poetry, with words and turns of phrase that we don't have any more. So it's a great way to learn Irish as well. If you think of some of the big sean-nós songs like Dónal Óg, they go right back to the 1600s. It's no different to Shakespeare: that English isn't the English that's spoken today either."

Always drawn first to the music, Elsafty sometimes has to wrestle with the lyric before deciding whether to tackle it herself. Language is a powerful tool, and some sean-nós songs use language to tell tales of bludgeoning aggression, striking notes that can alienate the singer before they ever reach an audience.

"The music draws me in," Elsafty explains, "and there have been songs that I've taken a fancy to, because of the melody, but when I listened to the lyric, I might discover that they're talking about a murder or something. Some songs can be very masculine, others can be anti-women, and they just wouldn't sit right with me."

ELSAFTY'S BACKGROUND HAS inevitably shaped her music. Her mother met her Egyptian stepfather when Róisín was very young, and anyone with even a hint of cynicism about the influence of nurture over nature need only give a cursory listen to Elsafty's singing to hear the indelible Arabic influence amid her theatrical sean-nós style.

"My dad's very important to me," Elsafty says, "and I love him very much, but my parents met in Denmark, after I was born, in the 1980s. I have his name, and I'm very proud to have that Egyptian connection. I do think that there's an Arabic tinge in my music all right, even though I don't speak a lot of it. Something that Egypt has, that Ireland has been lacking, is the broadcast of satellite TV programmes.

"Daddy had satellite Mediterranean channels coming into the house back in Castlebar in the 1980s, and that included old black and white films and musicals. I can remember seeing an Egyptian singer, Oum Kalsoum, who was a megastar in the Arab world, performing on television back then. She was really the Elvis Presley of the Arab world.

"I thought of her a lot when Dónal Lunny asked me to sing the big sean-nós song, Coinleach Glas An Fhómhair with an orchestra. Sean-nós with music, in the sean-nós community, is a big no no. Dónal assured me that the orchestra wouldn't be leading me: I would lead them. I thought of Oum Kalsoum, this big lady, dressed beautifully, on a big stage with a massive orchestra behind her: maybe five foot behind her. I remember how she would sing a love song: she would sing a line, and whatever she was doing in terms of ornamentation, there would be a huge reaction from her audience. She would smile, and she'd stop, and she'd repeat the line, and the orchestra would follow her. Daddy told me that this could go on for 20 minutes or half an hour, and the orchestra would have to take her cue from her. I felt that this was a big connection for me, when it came to singing sean nós within an orchestral setting." Elsafty sees other threads uniting Irish and African traditional song too.

The independent film-maker Bob Quinn's book, Atlantean, traced traditional Irish song back to north Africa, while noting other shared cultural traditions: from boat-building to linguistic similarities.

"I can remember seeing a programme exploring the common ground between dancers and drummers," she says, "and of course it's well known that north Africans travelled as far as Spain. Even mammy's name, Ní Cheannabháin, was originally 'Ceannadubhabhána' which means 'the ones with the black heads': this name was changed when the settlers from the Spanish Armada wanted to integrate more readily, so they dropped the 'dubha' from their names. So I've always felt that there was a Spanish/north African link there anyway."

ELSAFTY'S SOLO DEBUT CD, Má Bhíonn Tú Liom, Bí Liom, released last year, was a snapshot of a singer in thrall to the music of her home place, though not intimidated by it. As far as she is concerned, the songs, while sacred, will only live and breathe in the voices of singers who love them. Far from fixing them in aspic, Elsafty believes that every song will find new life through its singer. Songs are for singing and inhabiting, not for preserving in formaldehyde, she suggests.

"If you leave the music aside, and just hear me doing my 'sean-nós-y' thing," she says, "you'll probably get the odd sceptical eyebrow being raised, and people saying that 'She's not singing sean nós the way it should be sung, she's very theatrical.' I think I've always been that way. I always look for my audience and try to draw them in. I can't just sing a sean-nós song as if I was telling a story, without the embellishments. There are some singers who are comfortable doing that, and some who aren't - and I think I'm just one of those - an actress who loves connecting with her audience."

Temple Bar Trad Festival runs from Jan 23 to 27. Full concert details on www.templebartrad.com