Q&A by Brad Balfour
When Irish director Luke McManus recently debuted “North Circular,” his current full-length doc feature, at DCTV’s downtown Firehouse Cinema, he brought along with him Dublin-based singer Annie Hughes. The 30-something performed two songs acapella before post-screening audiences during the Q&As. She was hailed for the quality of her voice and presence. A new talent was unveiled with the chance to garner audiences on her own.
Apparently, there’s a growing community of millennials and younger who are not only re-discovering traditional Irish music, but performing it with a fresh ear for sounds and approaches. As the film detailed, there’s a fervent musical community hanging out in the clubs north of the Liffey River that divides and defines many neighborhoods in Dublin. While there are many performing variations of contemporary pop music, they’re often buttressed by traditional instruments such as the harp and fiddle. Even a mega-star like Hozier makes songs with melodies tinged by traditional influences.
But thanks to this film which offers another side to life in modern Dublin — fraught with problems of homelessness and struggle — it also spotlighted several unseen talents including Hughes. Her performance was so striking — along with her involvement in the burgeoning revival of traditional Irish music — that it prompted the following Q&A. And Hughes is just the tip of the iceberg of the range of musical talents populating contemporary Dublin.
Q: The movie does a great job of bringing two sides of Irish music together — modern and traditional — while exposing some local talent to a much wider audience, including yourself.
Annie Hughes: I think it does too.
Q: So explain who you are and what you’re doing.
Annie Hughes: I’m born and raised in Dublin and I’m involved in traditional Irish singing mainly in Dublin. So I’m involved in various groups like “The Night Before Larry Got Stretched” which is a young singer collective. It’s based in Cobblestone Pub in the Sony Butter area of Dublin. Also the An Goilin Singers Club based on Parnell Square in the Teacher’s Club. So I would be pretty involved in these singing clubs. And I’ve been doing it now for a few years.
Q: And you brought along your husband?
Michael Steen: I’m originally from a suburb of Detroit, Michigan but I live in Dublin with Annie. I’m a singer and researcher interested in traditional Irish song.
Q: Most importantly, what brings you to New York is that you’re involved with this film, North Circular, which has highlighted the whole community of traditional Irish singers living north of the Liffey. Tell me a little bit about your experience in that?
AH: The song that you hear me singing in the film, “North Circular,” is “The Blackbird of Avondale.” There’s been a great buzz around traditional Irish songs in the north inner city, particularly around the Cobblestone area and that’s featured in the film as well. There’s loads of great songs and singers heard in the film.One thing I think is especially great about what the film showcases is that you’ve got a bunch of young people who are really getting into these old songs. I get the sense that with some aspects of traditional Irish culture and heritage — our songs, dances and music — it’s this cultural thing that’s maybe stuck in some time in the past. But it’s very much a living tradition. And you see these young people are taking it forward. We’re dipping into the rich well of singers and songs that came before us. It’s being sung in a similar way, but also in a contemporary way. It’s very cool to see that all throughout the film.
Q: And how did you discover it?
AH: I discovered it in a roundabout way. I found myself hanging out in places like Walch’s or the Cobblestone. And the Teacher’s Club where the An Goilin singers are in attendance every week. You hear it through the grapevine. It’s a great thing about traditional Irish singing because that aspect of an oral tradition is being passed down from person to person. There’s some of that still present and now we have a lot more recordings. There’s a lot more ways in which we can discover songs and singers these days. I just heard about it through talking to various people and living in and around the city. You learn about it.
Q: You’ve always done music because you have the acumen to make it. That’s incredible. But was the music that you were doing when you were younger more conventional? Or did your musical expression come out by discovering this tradition?
AH: There are a lot of people who are exposed to traditional Irish singing from a very early age because it comes down to them through their families. I had a slightly different experience with it. I studied music in university, but that would have been mostly rooted in classical music. While at university I got involved with Gregorian PlainChant. For me, that was actually my first experience of unaccompanied singing. And i an unusual way, that got me interested in other styles of unaccompanied singing like sean-nos or traditional Irish ballad singing. I got into it a little bit later when I was in my 20s. That’s when that kind of singing started to pique my interest.When I was growing up living in Dublin, it might not have been the coolest thing to do — learning and singing traditional Irish songs. But these sort of ballad booms have happened in the past. We saw it in the 60s. Even in the 70s, you had these great collectors — people like Tom Mulley, really important. We owe a lot to collectors like Tom. He was a Dublin man who collected about 20,000 songs that were recorded. He was very fearful even in the 70s that we were going to lose a lot of the songs that had been passed down orally. After the Dubliners and the big players like Luke Kelly, there may have been a bit of a lull in singing Irish ballads. Now it’s picked up again. I think there’s this great momentum behind it. Again, you’ve got all of these young people really interested in it and it’s cool. It’s safe to say it’s cool.
Q: Were you speaking Gaelic as part of growing up or did you acquire your Gaelic knowledge after the fact?
AH: I didn’t attend a Gaelscoil but I did learn Irish in school. That’s compulsory for anyone growing up in Ireland, going to primary school and secondary school. I then started to travel a bit in my 20s and I wanted to see the rest of the world. My interest in continuing to learn the Irish language and keeping it up maybe fell by the wayside a bit. But finding my voice in traditional Irish songs has been a huge inspiration to getting back into learning Irish and keeping it up, keeping on top of it.
Q: You’ve sung the song “The Blackbird of Avondale.” But what other songs do you feel are benchmark songs that you sing and that you would recommend to people in general?
AH: It’s always really interesting to learn about a singer’s repertoire, where people get their inspiration from and why they sing the songs that they sing. I get inspiration from a couple of different places in relation to my family. My dad is from Wexford. My mom is from Meath. One of the other songs that I really enjoy singing is “The Streams of Bunclody.” I enjoy singing it mostly because my dad is from Bunclody. He asked me a couple of years ago if I would learn it and it’s a really beautiful song. I’d say that one of the best versions of it is — and it’s the most well-known version — would be Luke Kelly’s. He has an extraordinary voice and is a legend of traditional Irish songs. I sing some songs in Irish as well. A song that I’m learning at the moment that’s very well-known is “Eleanor A Run.” There’s loads of great versions of that. I’d say my favorite would be Roisin Elsafty’s. She’s from Connemara and is a fantastic singer. If you want to get into Sean-nos singing, I’d say some of the great Sean-nos singers from Connemara are a great place to start.
Q: Sean-nos is very interesting, structurally because it’s not the traditional song structures that we think of as pop music globally or even in Ireland. It’s more like singing a poem in a way. How would you describe it?
AH: That’s a great description of it. Sean-nos singing probably is quite unusual in a lot of ways in that you’ve got one singer. It’s unaccompanied. There’s lots and lots of ornamentation. It’s more of a poem. You don’t have your standard verses and choruses. It’s kind of a long dialogue and you sit and listen to everything that this one person has to say.
Q: You two got connected because of music. Talk a bit about how that music connection brought you together? A lot of it has to do with Irish music.
MS: Annie and I met through the initial traditional singing weekend during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was in the northernmost peninsula on the island of Ireland up in Donegal. They have an incredible, traditional singing weekend, primarily songs in English but songs in Irish as well and songs in other languages. People come from all around the world. We met through that community of singers.
Q: Now you’re working on a project that’s dealing with Irish music too.
MS: I have a particular interest in the singing tradition of West Cork. There was a singer and fiddle player from that area called Jon O’Connell who primarily sang in English but had a great store of songs from the local community, which is a very rich area for songs and poetry. I’ve been assembling recordings from various archives around the world, from private collections and the National Folklore collection of Ireland, assembling it into a comprehensive book about his life and the songs in his repertoire. I’m getting the recordings out so that people can enjoy his beautiful singing.
Q: Annie, you work with the National Archive as well? Does that allow you an opportunity to do work with music, too? Or is that a separate effort? Is that what allows you to delve deeper into it?
AH: In some ways, they’re kind of adjacent in terms of my interests. When I was in university, I studied music and Irish history, as well. I got my master’s in Irish history. That interest and background got me working with the National Archives of Ireland. At the same time, my interest in Irish history has fed into the songs that I sing and my interest in learning about them and where they come from.
Q: Now that you’ve experienced having some of your music being recorded for the film, do you hope to make a record or a more developed production?
AH: A record is always on my mind. It’s something that I often think long and hard about. I’m thinking about it all the time and it’ll happen. I need to decide on how it’s going to be, what it will look and sound like. But for me, making a record — it’s really about contributing to this Irish song community. I feel grateful to be a part of it — a huge part of being at these singing sessions isn’t just singing. It’s about listening as well.
Q: Do you find that this film has been reviving it further in Ireland itself beyond just Dublin?
AH: A lot of people will say what is this all about — a revival? There are people all over the country of Ireland who have been playing this music, singing these songs. But I think in Dublin, in the city, we’re getting to see what’s being called a revival. This film is a great reflection of that, especially the scenes that we see regarding The Cobblestone and saving it. Through those marches, you really get to see just how important this aspect of Irish culture and heritage is to people in places like this in the inner city, places that are these havens for Irish musicians and traditional Irish singers. They’re important. Unfortunately, they’re few and far between. There’s not that many bars, not that many people who own bars who are willing to allow these musicians to come in and take over in a sense. I think that this film is a good representation of how important it is.
Q: While it’s traditional, it’s also forward thinking in that it’s the bohemian and outlier culture that always pushes the country forward. In going back to the tradition, you’re pushing things forward.
AH: That’s a good way of putting it. There’s something a bit rebellious about it. I think that’s why Irish people like it so much. We’re known for our rebellious nature, I think.
Q: Are you going to work with some instrumentation? Where’s that violin? We need to see that harp.
AH: It’s an interesting thing because quite often we have those two things separate. You’ve got your tunes and you go to your sessions where you’ve got the players — fiddlers, pipers, the flutists. And you’ve got all of these people who are making great music. We’ve got the tune sessions and then, quite often, you’ve got unaccompanied singing as another kind of entity. It’s another space for a kind of music to be created. I certainly would consider it, as it happens. My husband is a great guitar player. So I might have to rope him into some accompaniment, I think.