Title

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #134 (February/March 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

Mixing It Up

by Kerry Dexter

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh was looking out the window of her dad's house in Dun Chaoin. "We get the best sunsets here," she said, "just gorgeous sunsets."

Dun Chaoin is about as far west in Ireland as you can go, in Kerry on the tip of the Dingle Peninsula in southwestern Ireland; it's an area known for its rugged beauty, deep connection with history, and vibrant music scene. It's also an area where Irish is spoken as much as, if not more than English, and music in both languages flourishes.

Growing up there has offered Nic Amhlaoibh a deep well of musical background as she builds and balances the elements of her life in 21st-century music. At present that includes being the lead singer with the top traditional band Danú, touring in support of her first solo recording, hosting television programs for TG4, the Irish language television network, teaching in the traditional music course at the University of Limerick, and a variety of other projects such as playing shows with friend Julie Fowlis and being a guest artist on the Irish Christmas in America tour with the band Téada. "I don't think there ever was a start, really," she said. "There was always just music all around."

At first, her family lived on Innisheer in the Arran Islands, and then at Cape Clear. They settled in Dun Chaoin by the time Nic Amhlaoibh was nine. "My father's a traditional fiddler, and where I grew up everyone just played, and I went to sessions in pubs from a really young age. And I was playing tunes, masses and masses of tunes," she said. She was playing those tunes on the whistle and the flute, instruments she still plays with Danú and in her solo gigs. "My father tried to get me to learn the fiddle for a long time, but I was really bad at it, and I didn't like to hear myself. Bad fiddle playing is harsh on the ears!"

She learned both songs and tunes from the musicians in her community. "From the get-go, I was playing and singing. I never did any competitions or anything like that, but I did join the National Folk Theatre for a couple of years because that's in Kerry here. And I studied classical piano for a long time, and my mother and father had this great friend called Peg Ryan, from Limerick, who lent me a flute, and I took lessons for a while," Nic Amhlaoibh said.

"But I was always playing in sessions, and then just gradually and naturally I started performing. Initially it was just a couple of sessions for a few quid in the summer, and then maybe a bit of a bigger show for tourists here in Dingle, and then it'd be, 'Let's do a little tour with this,' and then somebody else might ask me to do something else, and it just grew and grew until I ended up in the band with the guys. So it was really just a natural progression. There was never the thought to go professional with it, though. I never thought I actually could," she said. "But then once the guys offered me the gig to go full time in the band with Danú, I totally went for it, because it was what I really wanted to do!"

[cover #134]