Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh

Interview with Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh of Altan
before their concert in the Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney, Ireland.
Eoin Ó Carra lives in Killarney, Ireland.

Interview and Photos by Eoin Ó Carra

Mairéad, the first time I heard you was 20 years ago, as a backing group on a record by Albert Fry, the singer from Belfast. When did you actually become Altan?

It’s hard to say because it evolved gradually. I think one of the first gigs we did was Listowel Writer’s Week, that was around 1981, it was a one-off gig with Mark Kelly and Ciarán Curran and then out of that there was a lot of gigs we got. So I suppose really it was around the early ‘80s.

At that stage Altan consisted of just yourself and Frankie Kennedy, but you have had lots of different musicians as guests on your albums. Did that make it difficult to establish your own style as a group?

No, the style kind of was there before we were there because we’re from Donegal and the music that we play is Donegal music. So actually the style was there, but with the band, then, we put an awful lot of work into the backing, so it was the interplay between the bouzouki and the guitar and that’s where, maybe, the band’s ‘sound’ comes from. The tunes that we play are traditional, and it’s enhanced by the backing. I’d say it’s the backing that makes us a little bit different from other groups.

Mairéad , Altan will always be associated with the name of Frankie Kennedy, God rest his soul. Can you tell me what his passing has meant to the group? If that is possible.

Well, it’s very hard …a loss is always very hard on any band or on any person. We just decided to continue – nobody actually spoke about it. Are we going to stop or are we going to continue. It was kind of understood. We never spoke either about replacing him because it was understood that we wouldn’t. So we went out with a sort of a ‘void’ in the sound and a void in ourselves but I think we’ve become better people because of the loss – it gives you a perspective, trivial things become very trivial and important things become the norm.

Besides the people you learnt from directly, such as your own father and Dinny McLaughlin, what other musicians and singers have influenced you most?

Well, of course my father would be the first person to influence me, and Dinny as well. But there was a great singer next door to me, Jimmy Dinny was his name – Jimmy Dinny Ó Gallchóir and he was married to an aunt of mine and he was just a lovely, lovely man. He used to come in from the fields, he was a farmer, and he would just start singing about what he was doing, so he made the songs real to me – they weren’t just in books. It was a living tradition and it brought home to me how songs can be – rather than be in a sort of museum piece, it can be just some part of your life. So it was an extension of his life every day. He would just come in out of the fields, and have his tea and start singing a song. It was a natural progression and I always aspired to be somebody like him.

What about musicians and singers from other genres?

I love every type of music, I listen to everything from classical to country music to blue grass to – recently I started listening a lot to – well, not recently, but through Frankie Kennedy I listened a lot to blues and jazz. When I go to America, on nights off I would go to listen to real jazz music and good blues music. I think it’s an extension of my musical education. And I always love the raw bar from an area, you know … If it’s Irish music, you play it as it comes from the heart, and the same with blues or jazz or any other type of music. I think it’s unpretentious when it’s like that.

Looking at your touring schedule for the month of March alone, it looks absolutely brutal. Do you find it exhausting? And is it possible to keep giving your all, night after night?

Yea, it’s possible to give your all night after night, because the audience gives you energy that you think you don’t have until you stand in front of them. I don’t mind touring at all because you may be tired during the day but as soon as you go on that stage, it’s like – it’s like a surge of energy that comes into you. And it’s not really maybe yourself that’s playing, it’s just – you’re taken off into another world completely. I think it’s a great spiritual thing, you know, without being high-falutin about it. It uplifts people, both the musicians and the audience. And it can only do people good!

What proportion of your year is spent touring?

A lot of the year is spent touring. The last few years I think we’ve been out of the country or touring maybe seven, eight months, nine months. We go a lot to America, I think that’s our biggest market. We go there maybe twice or three times a year. Japan has opened up for us, we’ve been there three or four times, we’re going back there now, in June, I think – no, May! And then Europe has always been a big market for traditional music or Irish folk music especially. Germany is amazing, and the U.K. of course, but America would be our biggest market.

Does that touring schedule make it very difficult to assemble material for the next album?

Sometimes, I suppose, but the material that we usually play has been lurking there for a long time. Like for instance on the new album, I sing a song called ‘Tiocfaidh an Samhradh’ – I’ve known that song for years, but I didn’t maybe think of it for the band until now. But it wasn’t a matter of learning it, it was a matter of focusing in on it and singing it, cause a lot of these songs are just lying in there. Of course you have to research a lot for tunes, and songs as well and we’re very lucky that the well isn’t dry yet. A lot of the older people that give us tunes and songs are still alive or we have tapes of them and they’re still a great inspiration. Even listening to old tapes of Johnny Doherty – it has a freshness about it that other music never has because he just played – he was such a virtuoso player, first of all, but to me it sounds like futuristic music, because he’s so fresh – the music is so fresh, his mind is so fresh and honest.

How do you gather material? Is it a gradual process as you go along, or is it a 3 or 4 week brainstorming session?

Well, we all get together, it’s a sort of a democratic thing, where we just throw everything into the middle of the table, root about, and throw loads of stuff out again and assemble all the tunes together. But with Irish music it’s so easy to get good tunes, just in a selection especially, it has to be interesting for the listener, especially the people that haven’t heard it before – you have to make it balanced, you have to make it not the same. So if you’re playing a selection of three tunes, it has to be – you have to think about the key-changes and rhythm changes and make it interesting for people who’ve never heard it. So what we try to do is, maybe, to widen the audience without us compromising too much, but hopefully with the selections or with the tunes that we choose, that it will – ah , you know ‘spreag’ – I’m trying to think, and I’m thinking in Irish – inspire them.

Groups like the Chieftains, once purely traditional, have started to wander into all sorts of other areas of music. Do you see Altan ever going this route?

Not really, because the Chieftains, they’ve started that ‘genre’ of whatever they’re doing. It gives them a wider audience, it’s brought them to a wider audience, and maybe has helped to pave the way for us, to come along and actually not have to go that route, just to be ourselves. They’ve paved the way for so many people over the years, you know, they’re showing everyone the way. But when you go to their live concerts, they don’t have all these guests, they don’t have the Van Morrisons and the others, they play pure traditional music. I think the world of them. But for the record sales, yeah, they’re very smart, they’re getting all the big names. And why not?

Altan is virtually a pure Donegal group. Do you think this makes your sound unique?

Obviously it does because Donegal tunes are very distinct, and because of its isolation, I suppose, it was so inaccessible so that made that the ‘accents’ of the tunes remained very, very solid and there was a big influence from Scotland because of the cross-immigration, so that has given us our sound, without us trying to make it anyway different. And then, of course, as I was telling you earlier on, with the backing, it enhances what that sound is, maybe colours it and shades it a bit, emphasizes it for the listener, you know.

Do you think the music of Ulster in general has got a fair crack of the whip, as far as recognition is concerned, over the years?

I think so. Maybe earlier on it didn’t. Ulster wasn’t known as a musical place, like County Clare would or County Kerry, or County Galway, even. But in recent years, I think people have …. I think there’s a different focus every generation, focus on different things and it seems to be the music of Donegal, maybe fifteen years to ten years ago was the focus, because people were just discovering it. And that was nice for us, because it helped our careers. But it meant a lot to the musicians who were playing, without any thanks, for years. And I’m sure people don’t play music to get thanks, you know, you play it to express yourself, but it’s nice to get a little bit of recognition. And it reinforces their ‘féin-mhuinín’ – yes, self-confidence, it builds them up and maybe keeps them playing. Because a lot of people were losing interest in their own music, because there was nobody to listen to it, there was no feedback. But now there is feedback, and it’s not overpowering, but people are getting a little bit of recognition and thanks for what they’ve done. Really, in the long run, that’s not what the music is about at all, but it’s nice that they do.

Are you already working on your next album?

No, we’re not, we’re not, that’s a big NO!

Your best moment in the entertainment world?

There’s been a few great moments. In the band, I’d say one of the best moments was when we signed to Virgin Records International. It just kind of gave us a recognition that, you know, because we’re playing a minority music and we got an international deal with such a big company. It kind of showed us that we were going the right way, for the wider audience, without compromise, and that there was backing, people ready to back us to do that. It was a vote of confidence to Irish music, and especially being on the main Virgin label, not their subsidiary label, it gave it an extra vote of confidence. Saying you’re on the main label, which means we want you on the mainstream, which was a big, big plus for us.

On a personal note, I think one of my favourite, best moments in entertainment was meeting Yehudi Menuhin, although I didn’t know who he was, I was too young to even know. My father reassured me that he was the best fiddler in the world, and I was saying "Well, I never heard of him!". But in retrospect I really am glad that I met him, he was very nice. And he actually got very interested in the songs, and the melodies of Donegal songs, so he sent me a tape to make him a tape of the melodies. And I still didn’t know who he was! But then in later years, when I got more of a musical education, I realised who I was talking to all that time! I hadn’t a clue really at the time. But that was nice, too, because I wasn’t in awe of him.

Your most embarrassing moment (onstage?)

Oh, yes, there was one night, one very bad moment. Being a lady, you know, I’m very vain so I had to wear a very fancy dress one night. I had a very fine, crocheted top on, and I went on stage, and I put my fiddle under my crocheted top, and my bow, and I sang a song. And out of that we were supposed to go slickly into a set of reels. And of course, Mairéad got totally entangled, and there were boys coming out with scissors and I was saying "You’re not allowed to use the scissors!". Ciaran Tourish had to stop the whole show and untangle me. It took a few minutes, but, you know, five minutes felt like five hours to me. That was in Milwaukee about, oh it must be seven, eight years ago. I was never as embarrassed. I tell you, I didn’t wear any more crocheted tops.

Your ambitions for the future, both personally and for the group?

To continue. My ambition for the group is to continue and to be happy. When it stops being fun, we’ll stop. To know to stop when it’s not fun for us any more. And I think we’re all very sensible and long enough in the tooth now, to know when. But I can’t see it happening because we’re together, now, for so long and the group is my family, you know. I have my ‘family’ family, but this is really my family. They’re the nicest people you could travel with. I actually never distinguish me being a girl and they being men, because we just feel equal. If we ever split up, I’ll have very good friends, anyway, forever.

Does it strike you as unusual that a woman is actually the lead person, the obvious lead person in a group that is otherwise completely male?

Well, I don’t look at myself as the lead person, I look at myself as part of the group, but I’d say the reason that people presume I’m the lead person is that, well, first, I’m a founding member and secondly, I’m the only female. But I always find that amusing, because I never look at myself as the leader, and the boys don’t look at me as the leader either. We all like to blend in. It’s fine, if people want to speak to us, I’m ready to talk anytime. I just feel we have a very equal and democratic band, and that’s what keeps us going I think. Nobody is any higher than any other, so there’s no hierarchy. That’s important, because it lets everybody be themselves.