Cara Dillon

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #132 (October/November 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Cara Dillon

Contemporizing the Tradition

by Kerry Dexter

In recent years, Irish singer Cara Dillon has seen her recording of the traditional song "Black Is the Color" win a top folk award from the BBC and hit high on the trance music charts in a dance remix. Though she comes from a strong background in traditional Irish music, Dillon often adds contemporary arrangements to folk songs and writes songs in a contemporary vein as well, so she took this turn of events in stride. In her own work and in the collaborations she's chosen, Dillon frequently crosses the borders of musical styles, but it is to the Irish tradition that she returns as the basis for her understanding of and respect for music.

"I'm from a very small town in County Derry, in the northwest of Ireland, and basically, where I'm from, music -- traditional music -- is a way of life," Dillon said of her hometown of Dungevin. "It's the main town between Derry and Belfast, but you kind of blink, and you'll miss it!

"Everyone is encouraged from when they're knee high to play an instrument and to sing, to learn the local songs of the town there, and the local history and the legends of the town. So from a very early age I was encouraged to sing and play instruments, and so music just became my life. Some of my family members are musical, and lots of my friends at school were musical. You know, I think nowadays with young people growing up, folk music can seem to be a bit uncool, but when I was growing up, it was just the done thing."

Growing up near Derry influenced Dillon. It is a city that has been the site of important historical events from earliest times up through the Troubles of the 1970s and which is known as much for the walls that date from the 1600s as its murals dating from the 1970s . "Derry has seen so much, it's like the walls can speak, you know. It's one of those places that's quite magical, when you start to read and hear about all that's happened there. But the most wonderful thing about a town like Derry is that people are so proud of their culture, because it's been threatened for such a long time. So now there's this lovely tradition where people have passed songs along with great passion.

[cover #132]