Clare native Fiona Tyndall will share a selection of tracks with the people of Clare to celebrate Ennis Trad Week.
Fiona released her latest album, Éinín an Cheóil (Birdsong) in September 17. The album is a meaningful and musically rich tribute to her late father, Irish traditional singer, music collector, and teacher Buadhach Tóibín.
“He was a lovely singer, he loved the Irish language,” Fiona told The Clare Echo. “Over the course of his life, if he came across a song that he liked, he wrote it down. He collected over 200 songs in Irish, and they’re all handwritten in his own handwriting. So, it’s a lovely collection to have.”
Following her father’s passing, Tyndall came into possession of this unique, hand-bound manuscript. Written in old Irish script and accompanied in many cases by tonic solfa notation denoting the melody of the tune, the collection reflects Buadhach’s dedication not only to preserving music but to passing it on. “It was just such a lovely thing to do, because I felt very close to him, having this book with me.”
The album draws directly from her father’s manuscript, featuring a selection of songs Fiona learned growing up. She spent many childhood summers at Coláiste Eoghain Uí Comhraidhe in Carrigaholt, where her father taught Irish song to students from across the country.
The collection has now become the foundation for Éinín an Cheóil, an album recorded at Oakley Studios in Blackrock, Dublin, and Shorefire Studios in Longbranch, New Jersey, with full production by long-time collaborator Brendan Hayes and final mixing and mastering by BAZ Studios in Portumna, Co. Galway.
Fiona explained that the production process was very collaborative, with plenty of in-studio experimentation. She worked with a number of talented Irish musicians who helped her create a new version of her father’s original collection. The musicians featured on the album are fiddle players Fergal Scahill and Kieran Munnelly, guitarists Seán Whelan and Tim Edey, bassist James Blennerhassett, and Clare concertina player Mary MacNamara. Fiona is also joined by her daughters, Aisling and Caoimhe, who each lend their voices to separate tracks.
“There were some days when I walked into the studio with a blank slate. Literally with a blank slate. I don’t recommend it for anyone. It’s not something you should do. But I walked in and we sat down, and we either started to think about the song, talk about the song, talk about the timing, and then maybe I jumped to a completely different song. And by the end of the day, it was lovely working through the process. It was like magic — you just walked out of the studio with something you never thought that you were going to have.”
Through collaboration with producers and other musicians, the original tunes have been altered and reshaped to create fresh interpretations while staying rooted in tradition.
The title track, Éinín an Cheóil, is a children’s song Fiona originally learned from her father and sang as a child. “One of the songs, the title of the song, is called Éinín an Cheóil. And that is a children’s song, really. I learned it from my dad in a different way. I learned it in the minor key — he passed it down to me that way. But when we were chit-chatting about the song, we changed it up to the major key to make it happier. Because birds are always chirping and singing, and there’s always a lovely, happy feeling about them. So we decided to make the song a little bit happier, and then we decided to add a chorus — a new chorus to it. So the song is entirely different, really, from the way I learned it. Good or bad, but it’s really nice. It’s kind of a new song that came from an old song.”
A digital archive of Buadhach Tóibín’s handwritten songbook will soon be made available through the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in Dublin. This will allow people across Ireland and around the world to access and explore over 200 traditional Irish songs collected by Fiona’s father. The archive helps preserve these valuable songs and makes them easier to share with new generations of musicians and fans.
Making it publicly available, Fiona says, will allow singers, researchers, and lovers of Irish music anywhere in the world to connect with a body of work that might otherwise have remained hidden in a private collection.
“I think it’s great. Anything like that should be available to anybody, to everybody,” she says of the plans to make a digital archive of her father’s songbook available through the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in Dublin, shortly before the album’s official release.
Fiona will perform a selection of music from Éinín an Cheóil on Friday, November 7, in glór, ahead of the Ennis Trad Fest celebrations. She will also launch the album in her hometown of Ennis during this year’s festival. “It’s always lovely to go to Ennis, and it’ll be really special to launch this album in the town I grew up in. It’ll be very special to launch the album in County Clare.” She is set to perform on Saturday, November 8, in The Copper Jug, with one of her daughters, showcasing new music from the album.
Looking ahead, Fiona hopes to keep the project alive. “I would love to continue the project. I’d love to start again and do a part two. I mean, it’s ambitious and it certainly would take an awful lot of time. But I’m so happy with this album that I think that I would really like to do another one.”
