Sean-nós, Sean-nua… Sean-nós Nua?
-- -Bent Sørensen, Aalborg University, Denmark
This paper examines the dynamics between old and new ways in Irish music.
The traditional unaccompanied song in Gaelic nowadays known as sean-nós, or
the old style, is not the most commercially viable type of music in an age with
little patience for longish laments without vibrant beats or obscene lyrics. What
then might be the sean-nua, or new style that is more befitting for today’s
audience? Paradoxically the answer might lie in looking backward while at the
same time looking forward.
Some of Ireland’s biggest names in contemporary popular music have been
enamoured of the idea of crossing old with new, creating hybrid forms that
would at once contain the wisdom of the old style and yet yield some authority in
the marketplace. Such position taking in the field of traditional as well as the
field of contemporary music (to borrow terms from Pierre Bourdieu) can be seen
as an attempt by these artists to take over the existing cultural capital in older
songs and pieces of music (looking backward to tradition) and incorporating it
into and thereby enhancing their own contemporary cultural capital. One such,
already consecrated artist is Van Morrison, who in biographies is routinely
introduced as a sean-nós man, as also in the following quote by Paul Durcan,
comparing Morrison to Patrick Kavanagh:
Both Northerners—solid ground boys. Both primarily jazzmen, bluesmen,
sean nós. Both concerned with the mystic—how to live with it, by it, in it;
how to transform it; how to reveal it. Both troubadours. Both very ordinary
blokes. Both drumlin men—rolling hills men.
Critics generally praised Morrison’s 1988 collaboration with the Chieftains, Irish
Heartbeat, and saw Morrison as revitalized by the largely traditional material, or
by the mere proximity to the exuberant performers in his ‘backing band.’
However, some Northern Irish newspapers were highly critical of Morrison’s
vocal antics, however, and Brian Hinton quotes a review in the Belfast Telegraph
1
claiming that if Patrick Kavanagh had lived to hear this interpretation there
would have been “trouble in the Dublin pubs” (269). The same newspaper
reckons that upon hearing Morrison’s version of “My Lagan Love” – were he to
sing this at a Belfast party – “people would leave early” (270). It is hard not to
ascribe this reaction to a feeling of betrayal that the native Belfast son has gone
more Irish than the Irish south of the border, collaborating with The Chieftains
and picking a green Celtic design for the record cover just to rub it in. Bourdieu
would analyse this as the Belfast Telegraph calling Morrison out on trying to
trespass on a field in which he has insufficient credentials. The Telegraph is thus
acting as a reverse gatekeeper, trying to keep Morrison out of a field over which
the Telegraph obviously has no control.
The tour in support of the album drew rave reviews from the English press: “You
have just watched genius culminate, pass the utmost,” wrote the Melody Maker.
Irish Heartbeat, while by no means Morrison’s first foray into Irish mythology
(that would be Veedon Fleece from 1974, or even portions of Astral Weeks from
1968), proved to be the first true example of a successful meeting between Irish
traditional songs and a jazz/r&b-influenced vocalist, sparking a number of other
Chieftains records all with a hybrid rock and world music feel to them (Another
Country (1992), The Long Black Veil (1995), Tears of Stone (1999) – to mention
but a few), featuring popular Irish, British, American and third world vocalists.
A decade ago the once popular Sinead O’Connor (remember “Nothing Compares
2 U”?) attempted a comeback with an album titled Sean-nós Nua, on which she,
self-confessedly, ‘sexed-up’ traditional Irish songs, some even sung in Gaelic,
much as Van Morrison had done 15 years earlier. In her case it was seen as a
more cynical attempt to revitalise a career that had fallen on hard times,
involving as it did constant confrontations with several aspects of traditional
Irish culture, such as Catholicism and its conservative stance on female sexuality
and abortion rights. In contemporary reviews, Mark Richardson for instance
wrote in Pitchfork in early 2003: ”As much as I hate to admit it, it's odd hearing
Sinead singing songs that seem removed from her direct experience.” O’Connor’s
often virulent attacks on the Catholic institutions (for instance tearing up a
2
picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992 and blaming him for
child abuse within the Church) had not exactly endeared her to an audience that
might be tempted by a traditionalist repertoire (Q Magazine was particularly
dismissive: “The results, while respectfully chocolate box pretty, make Enya
seem like a bomb-making radical”), yet O’Connor’s recording of ballads and
songs in both English and Gaelic seems a sincere expression of belief in the value
and relevance of these songs to a contemporary audience, and to her personally.
Sadly, even generally positive reviews such as the one in Rolling Stone could not
resist the Enya comparison: ”She's better off right now borrowing other
songwriters' notions of mysticism and melodrama. [Some tracks are] slow and
stately enough to suggest a grab for the Enya market.” (Milo Miles, September
2002). Robert L. Doerschuk writes in the All Music Guide that a ballad such as
“Peggy Gordon”, ”evokes misty pictures of mystic Eire by drenching strings,
acoustic guitars, and her own voice in the kind of echo normally associated with
whale songs.” O’Connor’s album is thus irrevocably trapped in the clichéd
reception much Celtic music receives from the British and American music press.
The gatekeepers of the music press would much rather see O’Connor stay in her
limited post-punk, angry feminist music field.
I shall proceed in due course to look specifically at examples from these two
albums where the vocal stylings of these singers resemble the sean-nós in its
canonical meaning, yet are examples of boundaries of Irish time and place being
transcended in the songs’ hybrid musical style, lending new meaning to both
sean-nós and nua.
First, though, I would like to address the themes of the conference: authority and
wisdom. In the case of songs and performance the concept of authority might at
first glance seem irrelevant, especially as with traditional works the authorship
of the original is often lost in time, yet we often as critics find ourselves using the
term authoritative about a specific artist’s version of a well-known piece. In this
usage what is implied is two-fold: both that the version in question cannot be
improved on at present, and that the version follows the traditions regarding
performance practice, whether that relates to lyrics, musical arrangement, or
3
quality of performance in comparison to previous efforts by other artists. The
authoritativeness of a performance or recording thereof, thus has a temporal
aspect in that the adjective locates the song vis-à-vis the past (improves upon it,
or usurps the authority/cultural capital of older practitioners) and also achieves
a present state-of-the-art level. The authority can be conferred onto the new
state-of-the-art version by various agencies. As I have already hinted at, the
marketplace is one possible site of authority: if it sells it is in some ways bound
to set the standard for what is to come, because familiarity that comes with
success and fame guarantees that new generations will be forced to relate to the
best-selling product. However, in Bourdieu’s sense of gatekeeping as an
important part of canon formation and transmission of cultural capital, it is more
commonly the critics who confer the status of authority to a specific cultural
product, and thus build a lineage for a song or piece of music in this case. This
immediately relates back to my introductory remarks concerning tradition and
renewal: a contemporary sean-nós must know the tradition, and its authority will
weigh upon him or her, yet he/she must also dare to transcend the tradition and
set a new level of excellence, i.e. be a sean-nós nua.
As regards wisdom, the traditional is often seen as implicitly carrying with it as
part of its cultural capital an element of ‘the wisdom of old’. Certainly the
etymology of the word wisdom teaches us that ‘knowing/gnosis’ is an integral
part of it, so the wisdom of tradition could here be defined ad hoc as the
knowledge of where a song has been, where it comes from – but also, crucially,
where it can be taken in the present. Wisdom therefore also is time-bound, with
both past and present alignments, again anchored to the elements of tradition
and renewal. The formidable authority of a performance of a well-known
standard or classic song or tune can occasionally deter newer artists from trying
out their hand at besting the old stand-out version. Critics can then have
occasion to question the ‘wisdom’ of the new wannabe artist in daring to engage
with a sacrosanct version, or, more often, simply deem it folly on the artist’s part
to dare this. As we shall see in the cases of Morrison and O’Connor these
concepts have very much been in play. I have previously written extensively on
the song On Raglan Road and its remediations, but will just mention it briefly
4
here as a case in point. When Van Morrison recorded this song with The
Chieftains on Irish Heartbeat, some critics were vocal in denouncing Morrison’s
tampering with a song that was ‘owned’ by Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, whose
version was deemed authoritative by many – and still is. Yet Morrison did dare,
and the ensuing recording for newer generations has replaced Kelly’s as the
authoritative one, although the debate over the respective excellence of the
performances is not yet over, as I have shown in my article on the use of the song
in recent films such as Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges.
Turning now to the tradition of unaccompanied singing in an Irish context, seannós singing is defined as follows by Abigail Gilmore in the Continuum
Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World:
It refers to a singing style that belongs to the Irish tradition, where the
voice is unaccompanied by an instrument and any accompaniment by other
singers is in unison. The melodies are learned aurally by imitation rather
than from notation or a tutor. It can be melismatic, in which additional
notes embellish the main notes and intervallic, in which changes or
additions are made to the intervals between the main notes.
As we shall hear, Van Morrison does not really deviate from the definition as far
as his vocal work is concerned, although on the record Irish Heartbeat, he is of
course accompanied by the full instrumental line-up of The Chieftains,
augmented by a rock style drum set, played by Morrison himself. His vocal style
is however, excessively melismatic in comparison to the stiffer tradition of Irish
singers, obviously inspired by a range of black American traditions from blues
and jazz, up to and including scat singing (as defined by Alyn Shipton in the same
source as: “a style of wordless jazz singing in which meaningless syllables are
sung as part of an improvised melodic line. It allows the voice to assume the role
of an instrument to be used as if it were an instrument engaged in improvised
solos.”) By introducing scat techniques Morrison thus already breaks the frame
of sean-nós singing as unaccompanied by allowing his voice to function as an
instrument, soloing. It is however, also possible to see Morrison’s use of vocalise
5
as more akin to traditional Gaelic vocal techniques such as keening or lilting. As
for the play with intervalling, both Morrison and O’Connor practise this
excessively too, compared to the Irish tradition. Morrison again borrowing from
blues, r&b, and jazz; O’Connor borrowing a syncopated reggae beat, as well as
aggressive vocal rhythm scans for her sean-nós nua.
Both O’Connor and Morrison have chosen to include both Gaelic and English
language lyrics on their records, although in Morrison’s case only a single song is
in Gaelic, and that only halfway so, as Morrison sings the English version of the
song “Tá Mo Chleamhnas Déanta”, where Kevin Conneff alternates with the
verses in Gaelic. The other nine tracks (two of which are Morrison originals) are
in English throughout. O’Connor includes two Gaelic lyrics out of thirteen tracks
all told. This slant towards the Anglophone songs, of course reflects the singers’
lack of familiarity with the Irish language first-hand (not surprising in the case of
Morrison who comes from a Protestant Belfast background). O’Connor does
come from a Catholic background, specifically a broken home in County Dublin
(her father was middle class – an engineer turned barrister), and has learned
Irish in school, but her troubled childhood and youth may well have prevented
her from gaining fluency in the Gaelic tongue, as she was in and out of a number
schools, including a stint in the Grianán Training Centre run by the Sisters of Our
Lady of Charity. She does not seem to ever use Gaelic conversationally, but her
pronunciation of song lyrics in Gaelic seems relatively unforced and natural.
The dominance of Anglophone lyrics in the two singers’ practice, of course runs
directly counter to the core of the sean-nós tradition, although practitioners of
that style have also often included English lyric pieces in their repertoire when it
suited them. The conflict between a preference for English or Gaelic lyrics also
reflects, as Christopher J. Smith points out, a greater musical and cultural
“tension between the two camps: the Gaelic-speaking or Gaelic-oriented pipers,
fiddlers, flutists, and sean-nós singers of the rural South and West, and the
English-speaking and English-oriented banjoists, guitarists, and harmonizing
choral singers of the urban ‘Ballad Boom’” (such as The Dubliners, The Clancy
Brothers and Tommy Makem, Planxty and The Chieftains).
6
As Irish music became globalized (as I examined in the case of Christy Moore in
my paper here in Falun last year), the prevalent image of Irish music became the
Anglophone, fully orchestrated one, not the purist sean-nós strand. It would lead
too far to fully recount the developments in folk music and popular culture that
frame this victory for the Anglophone version of Irishness, but suffice it to say
that the advent of the folk singer-songwriter, part of whose persona it is that he
pens his own work (the archetype here being Bob Dylan), helped push tastes
away from traditionalism towards topical and political songs. The radical politics
of the youth movements of the 60s and 70s furthered this development, as did
the radicalization of the Anglo-Irish conflict in the specific Irish context.
In the second half of this paper I wish to look at two examples of recordings of
traditional material by Morrison and O’Connor and analyse to what extent what
they do with the material can be said to constitute cases of sean-nòs nua. Both
Morrison and O’Connor have covered the same repertoire to some extent
through their careers (“She Moved Through the Fair” and “On Raglan Road”, for
instance), but the two records we are concerned with today overlap on two
tracks only: the Scottish children’s song “I’ll Tell Me Ma”, and the Irish ballad “My
Lagan Love”, the latter of which I shall analyse comparatively. First, I want to
focus on one of O’Connor’s Gaelic tracks, however: “Óró sé do bheatha 'bhaile”.
This song has a long history, beginning as a ‘hauling home’ song (used to mark
the end of a married couple’s honeymoon), continuing with its inscription in a
Jacobite tradition with verses welcoming Bonnie Prince Charlie home to Ireland,
and culminating with Irish Nationalist Patrick Pearse adding new verses to it,
leading it to being used extensively by rebels during the Easter Rising and during
the Irish War of Independence. When sung in the sean-nós style later in the 20th
C., the song therefore takes on shades of a lament for the fallen in those conflicts
and for the unrealised potential of Irish freedom in many contexts. A
performance by Darach Ó Catháin, singing the Pearse version, (recorded in
Sandycove in 1980) for instance bears this out clearly, while still remaining
completely traditional within the limited vocal styling range of sean-nós. [VID]
7
A contemporary folk arrangement of the song, such as the one by Mary Black
from 2005 shows that striking a middle ground between sean-nós and the ‘new
balladeer’ folk tradition is possible. Black sings with traditional Gaelic
accompaniment, including harp, fiddle, uilleann pipes and her own bodhran
playing – yet there is also an acoustic guitar, a piano and a stand-up bass in
evidence, pulling the mix towards the singer-songwriter folk tradition of
instrumentation. The band is allowed an instrumental break after two of the
three stanzas. The vocal performance is kept simple, with little melisma use.
Rather Black limits herself to a minor amount of intervalling, sustaining for
emphasis the final word of every stanza’s third line, for instance “méirleach”, as
well as the very last repetition of the chorus. The band provides back-up vocals,
but restrict their harmonizing to the last line of the chorus as well. This is neither
sean-nós, nor sean-nua, but is a version in conformity with the emerging Celtic
performance canon, post-1970s.
O’Connor’s version is considerably longer than the two previous ones. Black
takes two minutes, whereas Ó Catháin uses even less, but O’Connor’s runs to
three minutes and twenty seconds. The mid-tempo progression chosen lends
itself well to a laid-back reggae inspired lilt. There is time for extended
instrumental bridges between stanzas, and one hears dub effects and other
Jamaican musical influences. The tune is introduced by a tin whistle-carried runthrough of the chorus, without vocals. O’Connor then sings the three stanzas of
the Patrick Pearse version of the lyrics, after which the instrumental coda (with
some soloing) ends the performance. The instrumentation is a hybrid, featuring
the already mentioned tin whistle, plus fiddle, and button accordion on the
‘Gaelic side’, as it were and drums, keyboards, electric violin, acoustic guitar and
stand-up bass on the ‘contemporary side’. Echo effects in the mix, and sustain
effects in O’Connor’s vocal style emphasize the combative aspects of the lyrics, as
does O’Connor’s restless march-like jog in the accompanying video. [VID] Here
we see fully the sean-nós nua strategy O’Connor uses throughout her album:
danceable tempi, choruses that are already familiar and militant in politics – be
they nationalist or sexual, and a powerful physical presence signalled by voice
8
and body working together as in a standard music video. No sitting about on
uncomfortable chairs, looking down to the floor or into the off-camera distance,
as evinced in so many sean-nós videos on Gaelic-language Irish TV, not any of the
pub-like or homey settings often preferred by folk groups such as Mary Black’s.
Turning now to “My Lagan Love”, Van Morrison and The Chieftains’ version
starts with an 80 second instrumental introduction of the song’s theme, followed
by the verses sung by Morrison over an instrumental drone, interrupted by harp
chords, and eventually a complementary flute voice harmonizing with his vocals.
The vocals are melismatic throughout, but not excessively so until the closing
phrase is reached: “The song of heart’s desire” at the 4-minute mark. This phrase
is repeated as a riff in an extended coda for an astonishing 70 seconds to end the
track. After two intelligible repetitions of the line, Morrison’s vocals become a
wordless scat or keen, ending with a snarling drone as the melody dies down.
[AUD] This hyper-dramatization of the outcome of the doomed love affair
between a mortal man and a leánan sídhe (fairy lover) described in the lyrics is of
course unthinkable in a straight sean-nós rendition of the song.
The song must have appealed to Morrison on a number of levels, both with
regards to lyrics (it uses what seems to be his preferred tragic mould, similarly
to “Carrickfergus,” “Raglan Road” and “She Moved Through The Fair”, all
included on the record) which reference the river that runs through Belfast
town, and in regards to melody where, sung in slow ballad tempo, it is a fine
vehicle for an extended improvised coda. In a BBC radio interview quoted by
Hinton Paddy Malone of The Chieftains has stated that Morrison’s vocal
techniques are close to a style of singing that can still be heard in remote pockets
of Connemara and Donegal (where around 1900 Joseph Campbell supposedly
found the air that he later set words to). Malone continues: “At the end of a song,
he just rattles on. You don’t know when he’s going to stop, he doesn’t know when
he is going to stop, depends on what’s in him at the time.” (274)
As this is an Anglophone ballad one must already bend the definition of sean-nós
somewhat to find traditional versions, but a recent one by Tony Cuckson from
9
the 2011 Words and Harps Day will suffice in this context. [VID] Cuckson sings
without vibrato, with regulated intervalling, and almost without melisma as well
(of course his voice is unschooled, and realizing this, he does not attempt any
sustained vocal stunts at all). He delivers the song in slightly over 3 minutes
total, despite fitting in three stanzas (Cuckson mixes the first half of stanza four
with the second half of stanza two in Campbell’s version to form a new third
stanza) to Morrison’s two (Morrison only sings stanzas one and three out of
Campbell’s five). Cuckson’s version tells a slightly different story because of the
re-ordered stanzas, but one is still never in doubt as to the sad ending of the
relation described. The excesses of Morrison’s version are completely absent, as
Cuckson favours simplicity of delivery and understatement of emotion.
O’Connor starts her version with a brief vocalise over plucked strings. The
vocalise recurs between stanzas as well, and is repeated in the coda, over the
electric violin solo that commences at the 4-minute mark and extends till coda at
4:40. When her vocals commence the lyrics, there is an excess of echo in the mix,
and oddly intrusive percussive electronics punctuate the song. A syncopated
reggae beat sets in for the last two lines of the first stanza, and the rhythm locks
the performance in step and disallows the extensive use of intervalling that can
be found in some sean-nós singing (a rare exception is on the word “desire,”
which Morrison used in extreme intervalling acrobatics, extending the word
almost infinitely, whereas O’Connor deliberately shortens it almost to one
syllable). The vocal style is dramatic, and underscored by gestures in the
accompanying video track, but relatively free of melismatic fireworks, preferring
O’Connor’s trademark sustain techniques instead. Lyrically a clear influence
from the Morrison version can be detected, as O’Connor also only sings stanzas
one and three. The gender dynamics of the lyrics are of course subverted as
O’Connor retains the female gender of the Lagan love, hinting at her oftenrepeated homo- or bisexual preferences. [VID]
The mix attained is thus complex compared to Morrison’s performance: the
instrumentation is much more global, and barely discernably Irish (acoustic
guitar, acoustic double bass, electric violin, acoustic percussion and drum kit,
10
plus keyboards and electronic percussion effects form the line-up, augmented by
a vaguely Celtic-sounding female vocal chorus), whereas The Chieftains provide
straight-up Celtic instrumentation for Morrison (who refrains from using drums
on this track), and of course no harmony vocals. On the other hand, O’Connor’s
vocals are almost unadorned with melisma (an exception is on the word
“bogwood”), and in comparison with Morrison’s seem sparse and traditionalistic.
Compared with Cuckson’s singing, they do however contain striking emphases
on certain phrases, for instance on the words “fire” and “life.” O’Connor with this
fine performance truly clears a new path between tradition and authority, and of
the nearly 300 available versions of “My Lagan Love” (on iTunes alone) hers is a
stand-out sean-nós nua original.
11
Performances:
Sean-nós:
Darach Ó Catháin: Óró sé do bheatha 'bhaile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AFRCWg_kOc
Traditional folk treatment:
Mary Black: Óró sé do bheatha 'bhaile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VqEtpOdhTE
Sean-nós Nua:
Sinead O’Connor: Óró sé do bheatha 'bhaile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sje2VYw99A
--Sean-nós:
Tony Cuckson: My Lagan Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaFvOohor1E
Van Morrison hybrid: My Lagan Love
http://i12bent.tumblr.com/post/37477923883/the-paper-i-am-almostfinished-writing-while-here
Sean-nós Nua:
Sinead O’Connor: My Lagan Love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-dAlYrioGA
12
Bibliography:
Anonymous: Folk and Traditional Song Lyrics: “My Lagan Love“
(http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/folk-song-lyrics/My_Lagan_Love.htm)
Anonymous: “Sinéad O'Connor - Sean-Nós Nua” in Q Magazine, November 2002,
109
Bourdieu, Pierre: The Field of Cultural Production, Columbia University Press,
1993
Doerschuk, Robert L.: “Sinéad O'Connor - Sean-Nós Nua” in All-Music Guide
http://www.allmusic.com/album/sean-n%C3%B3s-nua-mw0000661934
Durcan, Paul: "A Celebration of Van Morrison" in Magill (May 1988), 56
Gilmore, Abigail: “Sean-nós” in The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of
the World (eds. David Horn, et al.), Continuum 2003
Hinton, Brian: Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison, Sanctuary Publishing
1997/2000
Miles, Milo: “Sinéad O'Connor - Sean-Nós Nua” in Rolling Stone, September 25,
2002
Richardson, Mark: “Sinéad O'Connor - Sean-Nós Nua” in Pitchfork, January 15,
2003 (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5942-sean-nos-nua/)
Shipton, Alyn: “Scat” in The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the
World (eds. David Horn, et al.), Continuum 2003
Smith, Christopher J.: “Irish Traditional Music on Audio Recordings: A Core
Historical Collection”, in Journal of American Folklore (Summer 2012), 343-358
13