The Listening Project does what it says on the tin. It’s an apt name. Partly because of where the listening takes place: the Skibbereen Town Hall. “It is not a pub environment,” says one of the organisers, Robin Foley “When people are playing you can hear a pin drop so you get to fully immerse yourself.” The Hall has got quite a history behind it, having been constructed in the 1860s. Meat market on the ground floor, theatre above, and even a roller-skating rink in the early 20th century. Occupied by British soldiers during the War of Independence, it later housed the library. That old building was gutted by fire in 1955, leaving only a shell. 

The Town Hall was completely rebuilt and expanded. It was last renovated three years ago (new entrance with lots of glass, new toilets and heating system). And yet it still has a somewhat old-fashioned theatre vibe. Wooden floor, high “classic” stage with long red curtains, a balcony. An environment that is suitable for all sorts of cheerful entertainment – from line dancing to world music – albeit with a classy, cultural undertone. The effect is reinforced when The Listening Project is in town, as the seating is rearranged so it circles the artists, who play under the soft glow of house lamps with small Persian carpets underfoot.

Robin Foley (an artist and designer who also sells prints at the Skibbereen market) and co-organiser Brian Granaghan (a teacher with a background in visual art) did think long and hard before launching the concert series. Adamant that they wanted the Town Hall as a venue, they eventually succeeded. Deciding which musicians to invite is also a lengthy process. “We communicate with the artists a good bit. Depending on who we reach out to, we might be building relationships in the long term. It takes up a lot of time and energy in the background to get people to come here, organise their accommodation, their travel arrangements. All because Skibbereen is so tucked away, really far from everywhere.”

Robin and Brian met as their kids were going to the same national school. They started talking about music. Enthusiastically. Although each plays an instrument – guitar (Brian) and tenor banjo (Robin) – the conversation revolved more around listening. Genres, albums, bands, artists of their liking.

“We discovered that our tastes are very similar,” shares Robin. “In the sense that both of us are fascinated by where traditional meets experimental music. That is happening more and more across Ireland. There’s so much great stuff around.”

Their events always feature combinations of two or more different ensembles or artists. “It’s not a matter of headliners and support acts. That’s not how we run. The band before is as good as the act after, they’re on an equal footing.”

A prime example is the Listening Project concert on October 10. The first act is a collaboration of two solo artists, the multi-instrumentalists Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin (concertina, séan-nos) and Ultan O’Brien (fiddle, viola). So far, they’ve collaborated on two albums. ‘Solas an Lae – The Light of the Day’ (2020) and ‘The Deepest Breath’ (2022). Eoghan is a powerful and award-winning singer-songwriter, both in Irish and English, who hails from a musical Irish-speaking family. He is a passionate political activist and formidable poet, based in Dublin, albeit with Connemara roots. His lyrics may pack an emotional punch (‘Ringing That Bell’) or be melodic and wordless (‘Máirseáil na Sióg, The Fairies’ March’). Ultan O’Brien is not the only musician he plays with (‘The Deepest Breath’ has a cast of ten) but their “songs and strings bounce off one another … the human voice and the fiddle are often thought of as musical cousins,” as he wrote on Bandcamp. 

Ultan, based in Clare, is a composer and improviser with a background in traditional music. He released a solo album, ‘Dancing the Line’, in 2025. It contains traditional folk elements (such as a slow air) as well as drones, soundscapes, collages, voice clips, animal-ish sounds, ultra-short and longish songs. O’Brien plays with dancers and creates experimental films around music compositions that are screened in prestigious venues all over Europe. In other words, he’s a breath of fresh air, claiming his artistic freedom. The next band on October 10 is MacBóchra, from Cork, featuring Brendan Duffin, Angelique Everett, Colin Marge and Brian Leach. Bilingual, they use various disciplines to develop and realise their projects (in collaboration with Strive Theatre): dance, experimental theatre, music, poetry, medieval literature, video and are steeped in Irish mythology, history and traditions. “We take our name from the shape-shifting salmon, eagle, hawk and oldest seanchaí Fintan mac Bóchra. Our band explores tradition as a force living on and remembered in different forms … A shared journey with the audience. Our music features arrangements for two bodhráns, tin whistles, tiompán, voices, hammer dulcimer, sean nós, dance and electronics, exploring territory that is informed by Irish traditional music yet distinctive in its own right,” it says on their website. 

In February, they performed a fairy fort folk opera, Goll, at the Briery Gap in Macroom. Their follow-up project, Seachrán Sí (led astray by fairies), is announced as an exploration of stories and beliefs concerning ‘The Stray Sod – An Fóidín Meara’. It uses photography as well as information from the National Folklore Collection: “​It is said that if you walk on the graves of soldiers at night you will step on a ‘stray sod’ and you will be walking round the field all night.” MacBóchra’s music can be found on Bandcamp. Not surprisingly, it is slightly haunting, in a good way. Very rhythmical; the two bodhráns and tiompán create excitement. The jaw harp brings suspense. The vocals, harmonies, whistle, dulcimer, and guitar add sweetness while the words create visual images (often borrowed from nature) that border on magic.

The Listening Project will continue to host bi-monthly sessions in the Town Hall. On December 19 and 20, they are launching the winter homecoming series with concerts by Shimmer Boy, Muiris, Trá Pháidín, Rita Lynn, DJackulate, plus a choir. 

“The idea of homecoming is about people coming back for Christmas, having been away or abroad. It’s nice that we can use the town hall for this purpose,” says Robin.

Coincidentally, October 10 is World Mental Health Day and this specific concert is in collaboration with the West Cork Feel Good Festival, which also focuses on the Irish language and heritage, on creativity, and on lifting people’s spirits. For further updates keep an eye on the website, www.thelisteningproject.ie and social media, www.instagram.com/listening.project.skibb/  

On September 1, the Clonakilty Community Arts Centre (CCAC) was given the keys to No. 8 Kent Street, a council building situated opposite the Old Mill Library. CCAC has been granted six months at No. 8 under an inaugural ‘meanwhile use’ scheme being trialled by Cork County Council. It is intended as a lifeline whilst CCAC searches for a more permanent residence. Its presence on Kent Street is more than that, however: it is a glimpse of what a permanent community arts centre – even a small one – might look like and the impact it might have on the social and economic wellbeing of the town.

In its first week of operation at the new address, CCAC has partnered with the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, hosting LOWmountain on September 19, launched its Autumn Members Exhibition, hosted Clonakilty Open Mic (first Sunday of the month), the CAT (Clonakilty Artists Together) collective and welcomed approximately 200 visitors though its doors. Looking forward, an exhibition of student work from St. Joseph’s NS is planned, a printmaking showcase is in the pipeline and a programme of classes is taking shape.

Six months is a small window for arts programming, but it is one the community should embrace: if you have an arts event-book launch, poetry reading, acoustic gig, exhibition, micro-theatre–a workshop you wish to run, or if you need rehearsal space, then email the team at CCAC: ccac2013@gmail.com. Conversely, if you are an arts lover, or simply curious, please come and check out the exhibitions, workshops and events on offer, details of which can be found at clonarts.ie. The more this is used and benefited from, the stronger the case for a permanent centre.

On the flip side of the above is the reality that the doors will once again close if a more permanent space is not found. CCAC is therefore appealing to property owners in Clonakilty, who have vacant space, to consider a longer period of ‘meanwhile use’ for the benefit of the town. Meanwhile use is a little like house sitting: the idea is that occupancy prevents dereliction, stimulates social and economic activity, thus maintaining property value. Tenures for meanwhile use do not need to be open-ended, they can be negotiated, or set in stone – as with No. 8 Kent St. for a short period only. The value to the community is enormous, as it is usually non-profits or creatives who fill the space. If you have ideas regarding this, please get in touch with the team: ccac2013@gmail.com.

Looking forward to seeing you at No. 8 Kent Street!

Colours crisp as daylight, edges seamlessly rendered. The prints on show at the Blue House Gallery in August breathed out the colour mantras of 20th century modernism. Edges both hard and soft, prismatic primaries, diffused tertiaries, colour field teasing landscape, landscape teasing colour field. Through various media, including carborundum, screen print, aquatint and etching, the three printmakers in the exhibition both complemented and contrasted each other in a way that was pleasing and energising.

Shane O’Driscoll’s signature hard-edge shapes – printed typically on a light ground, were softened by Yoko Akino’s stylised aquatint-etchings, which render landscape with a beguiling simplicity and delicacy. O’Driscoll’s and Akino’s work stood in marked contrast to the soft, atmospheric carborundum prints of Elke Thonnes, and it is this contrast which gave the exhibition some charge.

Thonnes achieves a remarkable degree of subtlety in carborundum, both in tone and texture, leaving the viewer feeling the presence of a moment, where the image is at once a simulacra of nature and not–a paradox that sings of multiple things at once, not unlike the work of that master of the post-expressionist sublime, Michael McSwiney. Her work titled ‘Soft Days II’ is a case in point: where the grey-blue of the clouds spray and drift, and the earthy oranges deckle and intermingle through the ground of the ultramarine, the sensation of earth and sky is effortless, loose and vivid. One delights in the feeling of the work as print, as much as in the evocation of the sublime vista.

Where Thonnes brings to mind McSwiney (who in turn riffs off Anselm Kiefer), O’Driscoll echoes a lineage that goes back to Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Elsworth Kelly and Yaacov Agam, to name a few. With his preference for a pared back simplicity, O’Driscoll has more in common with Elsworth Kelly than the others, particularly with works such as Kelly’s ‘Blue and Orange and Green’ from 1964-65. O’Driscoll’s print ‘The Magician’ has something of this quality. It is a refreshing moment in his oeuvre, partly due to the use of an experimental, non-uniform ink, which softens the hardness of the shapes, and partly because the circle motifs, which often dominate, are absent. The colours are also more subdued, giving the work a tender feeling; it would be interesting to see more developed in this line.

The work of Kyoto-born Yoko Akino hovers somewhere between O’Driscoll’s and Thonnes’. It is both hard and soft, both geometric and organic. The use of aquatint generates gentle shifts in tone, whilst the hard ground etching leaves a trace of parallel linear rhythms, which appear to be Akino’s forte. Such rhythms sometimes evoke Akino’s Japanese heritage, recalling woodblock style renderings, such as in the clouds of her work, ‘Between Acts.’ Any stylisation or geometry is softened here by being hand drawn. ‘Even if Nobody Hears’ is, perhaps, the most successful of this grouping: a cerulean skellig rises out of an ultramarine sea, the stylised waves ascending with it, like so many eagle heads crowding around the peaks. Delineated in gold ink, the waves accentuate Akino’s predominately blue palette, which again contrasts with the high key colours of O’Driscoll and the wider range of Thonnes.

Colour. Colour freed from its mimetic restraints sings, and in print it sings so sweetly. Crisp and hallowed it conjures birdsong, crystal in its purity. It is energising to think of lineages, to see visual echoes, to sense the spirit of many artists through one. The Blue House Gallery has, here, staged a sensitive exhibition, highlighting the work of some outstanding practitioners. The variety of media, the dance between mimesis and abstraction, and the shifting colour temperatures, all served to deliver something both intimate and resonant. One left the gallery feeling, to paraphrase Thonnes, ‘softer,’ quieter, more gentle.

After a scorching summer, Clonakilty Film Club invites us to cosy autumn nights indoors with a carefully chosen selection from the best that world cinema offers. The club opens its autumn season on Tuesday September 22 with ‘Primavera’, an astounding feature debut by acclaimed opera director Damiano Michieletto. ‘Primavera’ is a fictionalised account of Antonio Vivaldi’s time as resident composer and violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, where he composed most of his major works, told from the perspective of one of his most talented female students.

18th Century, Venice: The Ospedale della Pietà is a refuge for orphaned and abandoned children. Here, girls study music, and the most talented among them are placed in a special orchestra renowned as one of the best in the world. This orchestra performs for Venetian high society and wealthy patrons of the orphanage. While their showcases raise money for the orphanage, they also help secure marriage proposals for the women.

Among this orchestra is 20-year-old Cecilia, an extraordinary violinist betrothed to a wealthy soldier upon his return from battle abroad. Though music has opened her mind, the doors of the orphanage remain closed until she is married. Her world is disrupted when a wind of spring awakens something within her: the arrival of a new teacher, composer, and maestro di violino, Antonio Vivaldi. His mentorship forever changes her, allowing her to envision a different future and embrace her art.

Michieletto’s film is an exceptional example of centreing a woman’s story in a historically patriarchal society, modernising a tale never previously told.

All are welcome. The film starts at 8.30pm (doors open at 8.20pm). Admission €10, cash at the door.

Clonakilty Film Club will screen its second film of the season on October 6. The full Autumn line-up will appear in the October issue of West Cork People. You can also follow Clonakilty Film Club on Facebook for updates.

Music is in Martin Vallely’s bloodline. However, while his wider family is very well-known in the traditional Irish music world, his own talent lay dormant for a long time writes Moze Jacobs.

“In my immediate family there is hardly any music. Just one of my seven siblings plays some guitar. So I started really late. I had no idea I could play.”

Vallely is an anglicised Irish name with deep roots in Ulster, specifically Co Armagh. Its county town, Armagh, is the birthplace of Martin’s best-known musical family members. Such as the legendary Brian Vallely and his wife Eithne, prolific musicians and teachers who founded the Armagh Pipers Club in 1966 in order to “revive and promote traditional Irish music and uilleann piping”. Tragically, Eithne (81), originally from Co Donegal, died in August after being hit by a truck while walking. Their five children and ten grandchildren are all musicians, renowned for playing traditional Irish or classical music to a high standard on an eclectic array of instruments. There is also Fintan Vallely, a first cousin who is a respected flute player, university lecturer, author, ethnomusicologist and erstwhile music critic for The Irish Times.  

Martin Vallely, modest to a T, takes no credit for the famous connection. Nor did it influence his musical development or career. “I’m only a second or third cousin. There is no direct lineage.” He was born in Belfast, currently lives near Clonakilty, but grew up in Cork from the age of ten, when his large family was forced to leave Northern Ireland “because of the troubles. A sectarian situation. I don’t want to say too much about it. Basically, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time and moved to the South. Cork has been very good to us. We became an integral part of the community.” 

The city was also where he found his musical feet, albeit on a stop-start trajectory. “In the first year of secondary school we had a great music teacher who was very encouraging. I vaguely remember starting on the piano but unfortunately, he left and was never replaced. Therefore, it all stopped until, as a 21-year-old, I was sharing a flat in Cork with Martin Kelleher, a brilliant bass player. He was writing songs on a guitar and needed bass lines. He literally handed me an instrument and told me to play a single note. I did. He taught me another one. Within two weeks, I could play bass. Then a singer moved into the same flat, and a second songwriter. We found a drummer and ended up with a band. This was in the early 1980s. Way before Cork became the rave capital of the world. Our style was post-punk, Indie, new wave. The singer, John Campbell, thought he was David Bowie.”

Martin Vallely’s band was called Boat People (a reference to the people trying to escape the Asian countries devastated by the Vietnam War). It was the first of many musical ensembles he would be involved with down the years, in a variety of countries and situations. “Later I had some brushes with fame in a Cork band called Soon, when I had been playing bass for four years. The other musicians were Tony O’Sullivan, Giordai O’Laoghaire, Con O’Donovan. We got together and produced amazing music. That band should have become famous! People still talk about it. We clicked, there was chemistry, we were young and stupid.

“They were hailed as an adventurous musical outfit”, recorded seven studio tracks, appeared on RTE radio and TV. Everybody said we’d go somewhere. Great players, bad advice. So it didn’t happen.”

 His biography shows a dazzling range of (musical and other) activities and job titles: Record and video producer, session musician, arranger, composer, songwriter, film soundtrack composer, bandleader, teacher, performer. He found paid work as a bass player in Germany, Holland, France, Spain. As a singer-songwriter, he recorded two albums with original material and transitioned into a full-fledged jazz musician. “Jazz offers a wider, more interesting canvas.” With the Martin Vallely Quartet he released a series of critically-acclaimed Jazz CDs featuring his own compositions, while touring extensively. He took up the saxophone in addition to the bass, obtained a BA, then an MA at the MTU Cork School of Music. As if that wasn’t enough, he became a film director, “after following a sign for a filmmaker course on a balmy summer’s evening in Cork.

“I thought, oh, I’d love to try that. So I did.”

He directed six short fiction films; some were shown at festivals. “I enjoyed the experience and assimilated so much knowledge. It was even more fulfilling than music. You’re looking at ten different skills that you’ve got to be working on almost simultaneously.”

This year, as the Brett/Vallely Conspiracy, he released his sixth CD, ‘Two Heads Are Better Than One’, featuring jazz standards, on which he plays tenor sax and bass together with long-term collaborators Josephine Smith (vocals), Justin Brett (piano/keyboards), David Christy Jones (drums/percussion). 

The latter two also participate in his latest project, a community big band in Clonakilty, now called Seo Linn. Roughly ten members (there’s room for more). Some are professional musicians, others have a day job, everyone strives for professionalism. Vallely is very pleased with the result. After rehearsing for four months, their debut in front of an audience of thousands during the Clonakilty Street Festival in June was really well-received. “Not pure jazz but I’m doing jazzy arrangements of all the songs, including ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘Moon Dance’, ‘Conscious Love’ (a reggae tune that I composed).”

A second gig, in Ár-n-Áit (Skibbereen), is booked for Sunday afternoon, September 20. 

Another project close to his heart is the Clonakilty Men’s Shed Choir that he has led since September 2024. Coincidentally, it also performed at the Street Carnival this year. Martin entered them for last year’s RTÉ Choirs for Christmas competition. A recording is online at RTÉ Lyric FM. In-between, they poignantly sang at the funeral of the late, much-missed Tommy O’Donovan, which brought Clonakilty to a stand-still. “He was the founding Chairman of Clonakilty Men’s Shed and one of the choir’s original members. He enjoyed getting the guys together. And he loved singing for its own sake. He had a lovely voice. He is missed.”

Martin Vallely plays with the Dave Desmond Jazz Trio on September 5 and conducts the Seo Linn Big Band on September 20 (Ár-n-Áit, Skibbereen). Each month, the Clonakilty Men’s Shed sings for the residents of the Convent Hospital and around Christmas in aid of St. Vincent de Paul.

Early last November, a beautiful black woman named Xania Monet made world history. Sort of. Her song, ‘How Was I Supposed to Know?’ entered the US Adult R&B Airplay chart at no. 30 and also charted no. 20 on Hot R&B Songs, which ranks the 25 most popular contemporary R&B tracks. It came with relatable live action videos. Scenes of love, neglect and romantic heartbreak playing out across various generations. A drunken father. An abusive boyfriend. And a poignant lyric, written from the point of view of a daughter who is remarkably perceptive when it comes to understanding her own unresolved trauma. “Mama did her best but she can’t teach/What it feels like when a father speaks/So I took every “I love you” too deep/Even when they meant it only for a week. […] Unpacking daddy wounds from every kiss.”

Xania’s voice sounds soulful but also…overly smooth. No wonder. Monet’s claim to fame is that she was the first AI being to enter a US radio chart. Listeners accepted her as a real person. She has a ‘creator’, the poet Telisha Jones, who writes Xania’s lyrics, generates her music, and sees her as an avatar. She got a multi-million contract but also a lot of pushback from human artists and sections of the music industry, which consider this to be an ominous milestone. 

AI has since made inroads into many genres. Up to and including the traditional Appalachian music. AI itself describes it as, “raw, historical, deeply rooted … a rich, living blend of Anglo-Celtic folk ballads, African American blues, and West African rhythms that evolved organically on front porches and in the coal camps of the American mountains”. But maybe it is simply blind to the human factor. 

The latter will be strongly represented “in the flesh” at DeBarra’s Folk Club on September 16, the first night of the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, when the remarkable Leah Song, “Appalachian storyteller, song-catcher, and cultural bridge-builder” will take to the stage. Best known as one of the frontwomen, alongside her sister, Chloe Smith, of ‘Rising Appalachia’. Not the only ensemble from that slightly mystical region with women in the driving seat, whether as instrumentalists, or singers, or both. There were the iconic Coon Creek Girls, an all-girl bluegrass string band which was rather famous in the 1930s and 1940s and hailed from the Appalachian foothills of Eastern Kentucky. (Appalachia stretches across 13 US states and is roughly 6.3 times larger than Ireland). Contemporary women’s bands with Appalachian roots include the Grammy-nominated outfit Della Mae (formed in Boston), the sedately-dressed Sister Sadie (formed in Nashville, a non-Appalachian part of Tennessee), and the Grammy-winning Aoife O’Donovan, whose father grew up in Ardfield near Clonakilty before emigrating to Boston. Her shows in West Cork are mostly sold out. In the US, she’s part of the trio ‘I’m With Her’. It was formed at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado in 2014 but is not on the twangy, hard-nosed, lonesome side of the bluegrass vocal landscape. Neither is Rising Appalachia. The band’s harmonies are wonderful, vulnerable, sweet, sometimes soaring to great multidimensional heights. 

Now an internationally touring folk ensemble, it started on the sisters’ back porch in Atlanta (Georgia), where they grew up. They also spent seven years in New Orleans where they deliberately moved a year after Hurricane Katrina pounced to help rebuild community. “Both are fabulous, wonderful, diverse, wild Southern cultural hubs,” explains Leah Song. They love busking on urban streets but always seem to have at least one foot in nature. As they write on their website: “In Appalachia, farmers still practice the ancestral tradition of companion planting. Corn grows tall as a trellis, beans climb the corn, and squash provides the ground cover. Rising Appalachia cultivates a similar symbiosis in their music, where Southern folk traditions, New Orleans swamp culture, and Atlanta’s street spirit strengthen each other.” 

Leah does the interview from her cabin near Asheville, North Carolina, “right behind a protected 43-acre forest. I’m only here part-time as my life is pretty global. It’s a place that is very rooted in traditional culture, music, craft, and song so I go here to refill my cup. I’m standing underneath a huge oak tree right now. Southern Appalachia is one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions on Earth. You get a whole lot of wildlife. Bears, owls, foxes. Yes, it’s under threat from the current administration; everything is. Two years ago it was devastated by Hurricane Helene, the second-deadliest US hurricane of the last 50 years. We lost about a hundred thousand trees and there were some very scary fatalities. Although there was a silver lining. It did encourage the community to get more self-reliant and interconnected. It now has very strong grassroots underground education and advocacy groups.” 

Born to a sculptor (father) and fiddler (mother), the sisters have always been fully immersed in music and other art forms. “The gospel music of our mother, the folklore of our father. All steeped in Southern Appalachian culture. However, our mother started learning the Irish fiddle when we were five years old. She brought us over to Ireland often, to study the fiddle traditions but only found out she had Irish lineage 10 years ago. As an Irish fiddler pointed out to her, there really is a close kinship; you can trace the Appalachian song lines directly to different counties and regions in the Celtic Isles. One of my first trips back to Ireland after many years was when we were still in recovery from storm Helene. I decided that I really needed to be in community with folks who have a long history of survival and of art and music being the tools of handling hardship.” 

Before alighting on the guitar festival, where she will sing and play claw-hammer banjo, bodhrán, and guitar alongside fellow Rising Appalachian star David Brown, Leah Song will embark on an extraordinary 11-day journey across East Clare and West Cork, curated by Wild Routes Ireland (Tara De Róiste and Chris Gambatesa). It includes visits to Ballydehob (Kilcoe Studios, Levis Corner House), heritage foods with Max Jones (somewhere in West Cork), somatics and songs with Leah Song. Plus storytelling, coracle weaving, strawcraft and other crafts taught by different experts. It is connected to the slow music movement (see her Tedx Talk). “It is about building longer, slower relationships. Going slow and then fast again. This tour is a homecoming of sorts. A rooted experience where music is just one part of the exchanges between culture and story and place.”

www.leahsongmusic.com

www.clonguitarfest.com

In my early twenties I developed a compositional structure which I consider to be a visual equivalent to a musical fugue. As a structure it is modular and capable, theoretically at least, of infinite extension. The temptation was then (and still is) to see how long I could make it. What I discovered in doing so was that anything more than a 3:1 ratio (length to height) is too much for the human gaze to take in at once. My largest fugue painting – conceived in egg tempera as an abstract icon – is 4 x 1.5 metres (length by height), which sits well upon the eye. As a corollary to this I have also created fugue sequences in print, and produced them as concertina books. The longest of these is 200 x 11 cm; in ratio terms this equals 18:1, length by height. It is not meant to be seen all at once, though it can be, and such is the case of the great friezes–essentially story boards – conceived throughout history, variously in marble, mosaic, textile and fresco.

One of these, the Bayeux Tapestry, is now on show in the British Museum, and measures 7000 x 50 cm (70 m x 0.5 m), a ratio of 140:1. It is an extraordinary feat of embroidery, of storytelling through coloured woollen yarn. Despite its name it is not a woven tapestry at all, but nine, joined, embroidered lengths of linen, depicting the Norman conquest of England, itself culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Most likely commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux for his half-brother, William the Conqueror, the work is thought to have been undertaken in Canterbury, England, in the 1070s by women needleworkers, who were famed throughout Europe, their fine needlework known as ‘Opus Anglicanum’ (English work).

Embroidered in eight or more colours, with a dominant indigo and red ochre palette, the tapestry reflects the dominant dyes in use at the time of its creation: madder for the reds, weld for the yellows and woad for the blues. In addition, un-dyed wools were used for whites and tans, whilst for dark browns and blacks organic materials like oak galls (ball-like growths on oak trees) would have been utilised (just as for oak gall ink).

One can imagine those fine craftswomen at work, embroidering the Norman ships en route to England on a wavy linen sea, or again, stitching into being the Norman knights on horseback, spears raised, cutting through the stitched Anglo Saxon resistance. Such fine, delicate work, employed to record the brutal violence of male conquest! One can imagine the silence of the workshop, a senior needleworker squinting in the light, being ribbed by another; or a visit, perhaps, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, both postulated as possible composers of the work. A smile as the abbot looks down, the hands of a young needleworker momentarily stilled by his gaze. He moves on and her hands resume stitching an outline, perhaps of a horse, using wool dyed in madder. She is employing stem stitch (or back stitch), whilst beside her an older needleworker (let’s call her Gisela) is couching–laying thread side by side–before securing the thread with a fine perpendicular stitch; this to fill the form of a horse in grey-blue. Underneath the finely stitched hooves, Gisela has embroidered a slain soldier, his head separated from his body.

There is a slim register above the horse’s heads, where the younger craftswoman (let’s call her Marian) has outlined a bird, also in madder-dyed wool. This register is populated by many symbolic animals in a style reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon book illumination, which anyone familiar with the Book of Kells will recognise. Perhaps our Marian knew similar illuminated manuscripts? Certainly the composer of the tapestry did (the abbot of St. Augustine’s at the time had previously headed a scriptorium).

How long did it take these craftswomen to fulfil this commission from their conquerors? It is impossible to say, however seventy metres and fifty-eight scenes later the embroidered tapestry left their careful hands to travel over the channel, presumably to Bayeux Cathedral in Normandy, where it is first recorded in an inventory of 1476. Scholars have since suggested that it was made to fit the south, west and north arcades of the nave, which, if true, would make some sense. In such a setting the faithful could follow the story of the conquest around the church, much as they would follow the story of Christ through the Stations of the Cross.

Great friezes – storyboards in essence – have been, since ancient times, one of the primary means of myth-building, of forging and controlling the narrative of nations, kingdoms, empires. The compositions of such, unless compartmentalised into ‘stories’ (such as with Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Basilica of St. Francis) are often subordinate to the flow of the narrative. It is impossible to take in such an image at a glance. Instead one follows it, walks a symbolic pilgrimage from scene to scene. Such is the case with this marvel from Bayeux.

I am thinking once more about my fugues, those infernal, ghostlike repetitions which rise and fall in my consciousness. Perhaps it is time to return to them, perhaps a four metre concertina book, doubling my previous effort? Or a cycle of paintings, which flow unbroken on the walls, around a room, a secular chapel of colour? I can feel it, a continuous exposition, like a Gregorian chant, seductive in its soft and unifying rhythm. The Bayeux Tapestry, by contrast, is jagged and graphic, a portrayal of carnage. Its figures disturb the silence, haunt the centuries, and will for as long as its fibres last.

James will be giving a seminar on the work of the contemporary Italian painter, Roberto Ferri, on Thursday, August 6, 7:30-8:30pm. Limited spaces. Bookings via: www.clonarts.ie

On a recent trip to Antwerp my intrepid partner and I found ourselves in hardhats traversing the city’s historic canals. But for flash lights we were in darkness, walking in a line along a canal bed, for the waterways, known as ‘ruien,’ had been vaulted over, enclosed, for many hundreds of years. We were effectively walking underneath the city, traversing the route that canal barges may have once taken, passing under what once would have been bridges and sluice gates.

Being a book-hound, I later found a wonderful tome with photographs of the ruien from the 1800s. There, in sepia, standing tall in the openings of the ruien, were ships, slim one-masters huddled hull to hull along the canal walls; and larger three-masters docked along the Jordaenskai, the quay breasting the River Scheldt. The photographs also showed, amongst the tall ships in the Willemdok, the tall, dark flues of steam ships, for this was the age when both the new and the old mingled together, as famously depicted in William Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire.’

Turner’s painting of 1839, set across the channel on a pearlescent River Thames, shows England’s gallant old warship being towed by a dark-flued tugboat. The warship was at the end of its life, a metaphor for what would soon be the end of the ‘age of sail,’ as the industrial revolution powered ahead. 

Just as steam power revolutionised shipping, the birth of photography began to revolutionise the way that we see. The photographs reproduced in my fortuitous find stand in stark contrast to Turner’s painting. They are not regarded as great works of art, but as traces of moments frozen by a mechanical device. They are the work of a new technology, of a mechanical eye, that would soon vie with the painter’s hand for supremacy in the realm of simulacra, in the realm of reproduction.

Photographs from the 1800s always feel ghostly: stevedores at work rolling barrels along the quay of the Brouwersvliet (the Brewers Canal), passengers and sailors grouped at the Willemdok, boys wading into the Margueriedok at low tide. The latter are seen in a photograph from 1897, and one cannot help but wonder at the lives they lived. For where a painting of the same may have been in some way staged, edited or invented, our attention taken by the brushstrokes and the whimsy of the painter, there can be no doubt in the photograph, of a moment frozen in time, of the hesitancy of one boy and the daring of another, at the light and shadow of a particular time of day, of the longboats, half in the water, beside them. Who were those boys? What lives did they live? Did they survive the Great War? Did they survive the month? Did they know the legend of ‘Lange Wapper,’ the trickster who would lead one into the waters?

‘Lange Wapper’ is a mythic figure in Antwerp, a shape-shifting trickster of the canals who would lure drunks into the murky waters late at night. A sculpture of the trickster graces the forecourt of the Steen, Antwerp’s ancient fortress facing the Scheldt. As in the photographs of the boys, there is no changing the sculpture’s shape. The ‘real’ Lange Wapper is the spirit of calamity, a legend forged, perhaps, to warn a populace against the treachery of Antwerp’s ruien, the malign spirit of the hungry waters that could cut lives unexpectedly short.

Old photographs haunt; they beg stories of past lives. That is not to say that old paintings don’t; in many cases they are far more alive. The main difference is that paintings are hybrid creatures: they tell us as much about the painter as about their subject, bearing as they do the visceral trace of the painter’s hand. A good example here is ‘A view of the Koolvliet’ (the Coal Canal) from 1875, by Jan Michiel Ruyten, which predates a photograph of the same canal from 1881. Working from life, Ruyten had no way of ‘freezing’ his figures; they are approximations, evocations, rendered with deft economy, giving us an authentic flavour of the life of the canal. The photograph, however, is tantalisingly free of that trace, one step removed from human touch, giving it the aura of time embalmed, at once alluring and distant, at once full of life and the knowledge of its passing.

The dialogue between photography, sculpture and painting, has in our own time, of course, a rich history. Think of Any Warhol’s famous screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, of Gerhard Richter’s series of blurred photo realist paintings. Perhaps most moving of all are Anselm Kiefer’s multitude of lead books, the ‘pages’ of which are endowed with photographic prints, seared and emulsified into the lead. Such ‘books’ Kiefer has, over the years, forged into installations: as mobile library shelves, as sculptural stacks, as the ‘cargo’ of lead model ships, which in turn are attached to monolithic canvases. Through the likes of Kiefer the contemporary artist has swallowed the photograph just as the whale swallowed Jonah, only for it to come out again as something new, an artefact transformed. And so here we are again with the ships; this time they are Kiefer’s: lead effigies of WWII, just as Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ was an effigy of Waterloo.

Like a swallowtail butterfly, David Geraghty has been slowly and steadily unfolding his wings as a solo artist. His first album, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ saw the light of day almost 20 years ago. Until then, since the mid-1990s, he had been in bands, “with a collective song-writing ethos”. No-one was credited individually. His first ‘real’ band was Juniper, founded by a group of secondary school students in Co Kildare that included Damien Rice. Geraghty was a friend and joined them around 1995. At that time, record contracts for unproven bands were not completely unheard of and Juniper signed a six-album deal with Polygram in 1997. Having earlier released two EPs, they recorded two singles that entered the Irish Top 20. However, disagreements with the record company over the choice of songs caused Rice (who went on to have a glowing solo career as a major singer-songwriter and folk artist) to quit. The rest of Juniper – David Geraghty (guitar, vocals, keys, percussion, banjo, piano, harmonica), Paul Noonan (lead vocals, guitar, percussion, keys), and Dominic Phillips (bass, vocals) – rebranded themselves as Bell X1 in 1999. And they remain the core members to this day, operating as a (song-writing) team, with additional musicians joining for gigs and recordings. 

Bell X1 has maintained a successful presence in Ireland and continues to do so. A multi-platinum selling Indie band with ‘a huge status’ in Ireland, they are also quite popular internationally, especially in the UK and the US. Partly as their music was used as a soundtrack for emotionally charged scenes in popular TV series such as Grey’s Anatomy and The OC. Bell X1 was the first-ever Irish act to headline at Malahide Castle (Co Dublin). It performs at festivals, including Electric Picnic, and large venues across Ireland, including sold-out slots at Croke Park supporting Ed Sheeran in 2015. Intermittently, they sometimes accepted invitations to act as the opening act for massive global bands such as U2, Tori Amos, Hall and Oates. It says on their website that they “treat these megastar opening slots as exclusive, landmark events rather than a regular touring habit”. Over the past 27 years, Bell X1 has released eight studio albums. Six were nominated for major awards (Best Irish Band/Album/Live Performance). The ninth album, Good Bones, was recorded this spring in upstate New York. A first single has been released, ‘But First, Love’. When the full album will be available is as yet unknown. 

The name Bell X1 was inspired by a 1979 book, ‘The Right Stuff’ by Tom Wolfe, which features the Bell X-1 – the historic aircraft that broke the sound barrier in 1947. David Geraghty: “We were looking for a band name at the time, and I think we just kind of went, let’s go with that, it’s kind of cool.” And slightly eccentric, with a technical ‘vibe’ (like naming a band U2 after an American reconnaissance aircraft). It also rhymes with how Bell X1 has navigated its career. Musically, it has often reinvented itself, like the art rock bands of old, experimenting with styles, techniques, accessibility. 

Geraghty’s individual journey was equally eclectic and impulsive. His first two solo albums, ‘Kill Your Darlings’ (2007) and ‘The Victory Dance’ (2009), were recorded under his own name, beautifully accompanied by his vocalist wife, Clare Finglass. Then he switched gears. “After two albums, I moved away from music under my own name. It felt like the right thing to do but in hindsight, I’m kind of sorry I did. Later, I released Inherit (2014) and Monomania (2019) under a different moniker, Join me in the Pines,” he explains during an online interview in June. The next day he will be playing an almost sold-out Live at the Marquee gig in Cork City with Bell X1, which will also play headline gigs at Iveagh Gardens (Dublin) and the Big Top (part of the Galway International Arts Festival) on July 11 and 18. “Expect soaring melodies, sharp lyrics and unmistakable chemistry,” says the festival blurb.

Geraghty has solo gigs lined up in West Cork, Ballincollig, Clonmel, Donegal and at Electric Picnic on August 27. He is due to release his fifth solo album on September 18. As himself. Fittingly so. David Geraghty and music go back a long way. “It’s how my parents met. My dad and a few buddies were in a ballad group. He played banjo and bass guitar. Around the time of the folk revival (Dylan covers and The Mammas and The Papas) they tried to jump on the bandwagon and needed a singer. My mum answered the ad. The rest is history.” He grew up with two siblings in Leixlip (Kildare); the only one that went into music. “It was obvious from a very young age that this guy was not gonna do anything else. Dad taught me guitar chords and my mum printed out lyrics. I was listening to people like Springsteen. I always had an ear for a strong melody and good lyrics. When I was very young, I was really wild. I would have broken space and time if someone had given me Red Bull. Borderline! But aged 12, 13 I calmed down and when we had a family sing-song I’d usually be asked to do something.”

He has a wonderful voice, intense and emotional but suffers from nerves when performing. “I do, actually. I think I took on board the admonishments to “sit down, behave, be quiet” that I heard for years. It had a psychological effect. Lots of self-doubt. After COVID, I had to throw myself into playing music live. Feeling the fear, doing it anyway. Now I’m really glad I did. Especially with the new album coming up.” It is called Komorebi. “A Japanese word describing sunlight leaking through trees. I envisage the forest clearing as nature’s little stage, waiting for something to happen, whether wildlife or human.” He laughs. “I asked ChatGPT, What should I do as a nervous performer? Just for the crack, I wasn’t expecting any insightful human response. But there was one interesting comment: “Your performance during the gig and the song you’re singing might be exactly what somebody in the audience needs at that moment.”  And I went, Jesus, you know what, I never even thought about this. I’m so busy trying to prove something to myself. I never asked, “How is this benefiting somebody else?”

David Geraghty performs: 

July 2 – Connolly’s of Leap; July 3 – The White Horse, Ballincollig; 

July 9 – Clonmel Junction Festival ; 

August 27 – Electric Picnic.

“If it scares you, you should probably do it,” Éidín Griffin tells Mary O’Brien, laughing. It’s an outlook that has served Éidín well throughout her 53 years, during which time she has taken more than a few leaps into the unknown across two continents, with humour always as her compass. From Ireland to South Africa and back again, Éidín’s adventures have been anything but ordinary. She now lives in Kinsale where, as well as discovering her sea legs and a peculiar penchant for pirates, she has become a fixture in the local arts and creative community.

Éidín will take on the rather swashbuckling form of Captain Lavinia Silverwood in her latest escapade. Together with her salty crew of melodious female pirates, aka the Shanty Aunties, (Pearl Periwinkle, Burgundy Swift and assorted unexpected guests), Éidín (Captain Lavinia Silverwood) will launch her ‘Sea Shanties and Salty Tales’ performance at this year’s Kinsale Arts Festival at Black’s Brewery on Saturday, July 11. If you miss meeting her pirate persona (described by Éidín as posh, slightly narcissistic and not quite as clever as she thinks) on land, this participatory show, promising plenty of shenanigans, will repeat throughout the summer aboard the ‘Spirit of Kinsale’ in collaboration with Kinsale Harbour Cruises.

Éidín first landed in Kinsale in 2019 after spending 25 years in South Africa. What began as a gap year for her younger self – then a 19-year-old student with a work permit and the promise of a job at a small alternative hotel – turned into a much longer adventure, during which time she ran her own horse trail business, studied and taught permaculture and even dipped her toe, or rather jumped feet-first into stand-up comedy in her mid-twenties “I was back and forth between Ireland and South Africa for a while, so I did a few comedy stints in Dublin, at the Ha’penny Bridge Inn and International Bar, before performing at 500-seater venues in Johannesburg,” she shares. “That was some jump from a crowd of 30 in Dublin.”

After being fortunate enough to train under permaculture founder Bill Mollison at the farm where she lived in South Africa – “He told us to just go out and ‘do’ permaculture,” she says – the determined young woman succeeded in building her own home with the help of her community, a mix of internationals and locals who traded skills with each other, up in the mountains near Lesotho at a place called Rustler’s Valley. “Big sky and big wildlife country…lots of sandstone ridges, water dams and grasslands, kind of like Montana,” describes Éidín. The result was a charming little thatched house made from sod and cow dung and whatever materials she could find. With the help of a small credit union loan the DIY-er equipped her home with a gravity-fed water system, two small solar panels, and a solar shower made from corrugated iron painted black. “It was pretty basic, not necessarily comfortable or level or any of those things…I had no money, no skills, and no idea whatsoever,” she shares. After the house burned down in 2008, she moved to KwaZulu-Natal where she helped install outdoor classrooms, food gardens, libraries and taught permaculture skills at schools and communities.

Life got in the way of her comedic career when Éidín became pregnant. “Casinos don’t really mix with life in the countryside and a young child,” she explains.

Jump forward to 2019 and, after deciding to embrace her greys, the Wicklow native moved home for a fresh start. As her permaculture qualifications weren’t recognised in Ireland, Éidín researched her options and enrolled in the Sustainable Horticulture course at Kinsale College just before the Covid pandemic. So started a whole other chapter in her life.

Never one to shy from a challenge, Éidín lived on a boat for a while in the marina in Kinsale. While she admits being a ‘liveaboard’ wasn’t easy or comfortable in all weathers, she says she enjoyed living on the edge. “The seals popping up, herons hunting, and jellyfish floating past…your life is tide based and it changes your perspective around time.”

Around this time she decided to study art at Kinsale College, gaining a newfound confidence after selling one of her larger sculptures. “It’s really interesting to start again at something later in life,” she says. She also put pen to paper, basing her first play ‘Fierce Awkward’ on the vaccine divide and resulting friendship fractures during the pandemic. Her most recent project ‘Captain Wagtail’, an all-female, bawdy comedy play following infamous Cork-born pirate Anne Bonny, was well-received at the West Cork Fit-Up Festival and most recently at the Cork Fringe Festival.

The call of the sea is strong by the coast and it wasn’t long before Éidín tried her hand at sailing, something her late father had excelled at before his untimely death. “He took sailing up later in life too…after my mother’s death,” shares Éidín, who was just nine-years-old when she lost her mother to cancer and eleven when her father died suddenly from a heart attack on a sailing trip to the Jersey Islands. That shy little girl way back when was raised by her five older siblings. “I think I talked myself into being brave,” she admits.

“Initially it was the connection to her father that attracted Éidín to sailing, but later, somewhere off the Old Head, with the wind in her hair and the boat surrounded by wildlife, the realisation hit that that this was something she was doing for herself.

The novice sailor got the chance to test her mettle, during what she describes as “an epic, scary journey”, battling a south-westerly gale off the Waterford coast. “I was terrified and exhausted and remember bargaining with God,” she says. After making it to Dunmore East, a rested Éidín went back out the following morning with skipper Lisa Murphy and crew Mel Richter. “I came to the realisation that there’s no out, only in, when it comes to sailing and you have to trust your skipper and your crew,” she says. She has since sailed to Scotland and Norway. “I wouldn’t say I’m a good sailor, but I’m definitely enthusiastic,” she says with a laugh.

In the short time she’s been in Kinsale, Éidín has set up a seed bank at Kinsale library, taught Skills for Life workshops on seed saving and gardening and been granted the Arts Council Agility Award three times to develop her practice.

Most recently, after completing an MA in Arts and Engagement, the artist, gardener and writer is looking forward to having more time to commit to her playwriting and artistic endeavours. “There’s definitely a one-woman show in me and I have a story that’s been brewing for the past 20 years around my family surname,” she shares.

A self-described extroverted introvert, when she’s not playacting on the social circuits or working in the community, Éidín enjoys her more solitary roles of gardener and writer.

While it’s hard to imagine her sitting still, in the spirit of the best ideas coming from the most unexpected of places, she says she spends “a lot of time rummaging around in the hedgerows and staring off into space!”

Follow Éidín’s adventures at www.rebelseed.ie.

It is one of life’s ironies that in the digital age shipping holds the key to human survival. Without shipping there is no oil. Without oil there is no transport. Without transport shelves are not stocked. On another level, traversing the sea is the last resort of the truly desperate. In Australia I came of age with ‘the boat people’ filling newspaper headlines and dominating elections. How was the government going to stop the boats? How would they stop poor refugees giving all they had to board leaky vessels in Indonesia, in order to make the crossing to the promised land? Implicit in the headlines and the election promises was the idea that people generally agreed with ‘stopping the boats.’ It was an invasion after all. People smugglers were making a mint, and those poor refugees were dying at sea. Many of us, of course, did not believe that years of incarceration was the appropriate response of a civilised, humanist society. For that was the government’s answer: to deter through detention. And yet the boats kept coming.

In 1979, Odd Nerdrum–back when he was still concerned with contemporary events–painted ‘Refugees at Sea,’ a monumental canvas (roughly 3x5m) which shone a Neo-Baroque light on the plight of the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ fleeing their country. It is an extraordinary work–a powerful grouping of figures, lit from the left by a setting sun; to paint it was a challenge for the young Norwegian painter to not only rise to the contemporary moment, but also to test his metal against the greats of the Western figurative tradition. 

Throughout the 1970s Caravaggio and Rembrandt were Nerdrum’s great exemplars. By 1979 he had already painted two monumental groupings which resonated his Baroque masters: ‘The Arrest’ (1976) and ‘The Murder of Andreas Baader’ (1978). ‘Refugees at Sea’ was larger, more complex, more ambitious; an apotheosis of a decade of Caravaggio-inspired compositions, which allowed him to crest a technical wave of mastery he had not previously achieved. If a large part of Nerdrum’s motivation was to see if he could equal his masters from the past, then he certainly achieved his aim. Ironically, however, ‘Refugees at Sea,’ ‘The Arrest’ and ‘The Murder of Andreas Baader’ did not rise to the contemporary moment; all critics could see was a regressive return to the 17th century, to an outmoded way of painting; his neo-Baroque mode served to take the punch out of the very human drama he conveyed. This did not stop the Modern Art Museum in Oslo, however, from purchasing his paintings.

Such a critical reception was not the case for Jacob Jordaens, who painted ‘The Ferry Boat to Antwerp’ (1623), nor for Theodore Gericault, whose ‘Raft of the Medusa’ (1819) stands as Nerdrum’s most powerful antecedent. The former was possibly Nerdrum’s starting point, having had access to it at the State Art Museum in Copenhagen, whilst the latter must surely be seen as an important exemplar with its Caravaggio-inspired figures and composition. Indeed’The Raft of the Medusa’ is a towering masterpiece of the Western tradition, its historical and metaphorical import underscored by its size (5x7m), which itself would have been a challenge to Nerdrum.

The Medusa was a French frigate, a ship of state which foundered, and thus became for many an allegory of the Restoration (of the French monarchy), following the fall of Bonaparte. The ship, which was carrying the new French governor of Senegal, along with a secret mission to restart the slave trade, was wrecked en route to Africa on 2 July 1816. Of the 400 on board, 250 were granted places in the life boats, the remaining 150 having to make do with a raft lashed together from parts of the wreckage. Of these only 15 survived.

Both as a metaphor for the failure of the state, and an account of human tragedy, ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ is almost without parallel. Nerdrum’s work, by contrast, lacking the specificity of Gericault’s narrative, is tinged with a sense of social conscience and hope; a work more-or-less of social realism in which the down-trodden are made heroic. For where in Gericault’s work most are dead or dying, in Nerdrums’s the majority look with anticipation towards the rising (or setting) sun. Nerdrum would later repudiate his ‘Refugees at Sea,’ stating: “I will never make another picture like that, because not a single individual on board the fleet can guarantee for the quality I gave them. I transformed all of them to heroes, to beautiful saints seeking the good. But I have now come to a different conclusion. I do not think that man is good, but that he can become good… The idea was naive.”

Whatever Nerdrum’s thoughts on his work, ‘Refugees at Sea’ remains a historical touchstone and a powerful painting which resonates on an emotional, metaphorical and aesthetic level. It represents not only the plight of ‘boat people’ (however romanticised), but a continuity of the Western figurative tradition, a Neo-Baroque bridge to Gericault and Caravaggio. It is also a turning point in Nerdrum’s oeuvre. The sun set in “Refugees at Sea,’ not only on the Vietnamese people painted into his drama, but on his ‘social realist’ phase altogether.

Reflecting on this work, one cannot help but think of the recent aid convoys to Gaza, the many refugees who have braved the Mediterranean and the English channel, not to mention the hazardous journey from Indonesia to Australia. It may be the digital age, but it is the vast expanse of the sea that connects us, that is both conveyer and barrier, that is at once a source of hope and despair. Against its perilous nature even the strongest of ships can founder. The sea shows us at our most courageous, and at our most vulnerable; at our most generous and most fearful. Detention, incarceration and expulsion will never make people less desperate. The boats will keep coming as long as there is a sea.

Camilla Griehsel has everything on board to be a diva. And in several senses of the word she is one. Exceptionally talented, a highly accomplished performer, she’s had her brushes with fame and fortune, brief or enduring. But the word ‘diva’ also has negative connotations and those do not apply to her at all writes Moze Jacobs. The Swedish singer is a musician, actress, (song)writer, mother, colleague, friend, and all-round sound person who has lived in West Cork for 23 years. 

Born in Stockholm, Camilla grew up in a loving family where music was part of normal life. “My mom played some piano and sang songs with us when we were small. No one really had any musical ambitions but my parents would encourage me to sing.” She describes her inner experiences beautifully on the inside cover of the 2-CD set of her album Mamasongue: Source (2023), a semi-live recording of what started as a 2-hour show across West Cork plus Dublin, Cork (Everyman, Opera House) between 2018 and 2024: 

“I have been aware of (…) the powerful role that music plays in our lives since I was a five-year-old girl singing to a room filled with adults. I saw tears in their eyes and understood then that music has the power to touch the deepest parts of our beings. When we listen to music with open hearts and minds we become present to the moment and captive to our feelings. If we experience this together we join a network that transcends all (…) cultural barriers and is united by a musical language that goes beyond words into pure sound. This network elevates us from being isolated individuals to being part of a shared consciousness that we might call family, community, benevolence, or love.”

In resonance with the spirit of these words, ‘Mamasongue’ is both her own artistic project and the outcome of a highly creative collective process. It features songs, as well as musicians, from across the world: Niwel Tsumbu  (guitarist, singer, composer), originally from the Congo, resident in Ireland since 2004. Donegal-born Éamonn Cagney (percussion, vocals, composer) is known as Ireland’s foremost hand-drum percussionist. Concorde Nkabinde (bassist, vocals, composer, arranger), an award-winning jazz musician born in Soweto (Johannesburg, South Africa) has worked with many great musicians and is prominent in South Africa’s music scene. Rory McCarthy (piano, keyboards, vocals, composer) hails from Cork. The first song on the first CD opens with a rhythm that is intimately familiar to everyone on earth from before life started. It stretches across an intricate tapestry of music and vocals. And overlaid by Camilla’s crystal clear voice: “The first music I ever heard was my mother’s heartbeat (…). The music of our ancestors. The music of creation. This bitter earth, what fruit it bears (…).What good is a love that no one shares? It be so cold (…) yet someone may answer my call. And this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all. True believer, a long way from home.”

At least six or seven languages can be heard on Mamasongue (English, Irish, Swedish, Lingala, Zulu, Spanish, Aquitanian). “I love the different languages,” shares Camilla. “Not that I can do them perfectly, but I become like a different singer in Spanish. Or Zulu. As if all my Swedish inhibitions are gone.”

When Camilla was 10, she was invited to audition for a renowned music school, “like a normal school but with more music added.” It opened doors to many different genres. “Choir singing. Or performing as a soloist in church. I loved that.” She joined a barbershop group, went busking with three friends in Stockholm’s old town, became a jazz singer, sang for tourists in Gran Canaria and in Switzerland. “Singing in a piano bar at night and skiing all day. Living my best life.” 

Suddenly, aged 24, she got headhunted to replace the singer of a 1980s Scandinavian pop band, One 2 Many, followed by a brief period of almost instant chart success in Europe and the US. It turned out to be not to her liking. “To be honest, I found it all quite embarrassing. The glitzy limousines, everyone wanting to interview me, recording next door to the Bee Gees in London. Whereas all I’d done is sing 10 songs that I didn’t even write anything. It really wasn’t my thing and it made me lose a lot of confidence, initially.”

At the same time, it spurred her to fulfill a long-held dream: to sing opera. “It also led to me meeting my husband on a boat on the Thames, doing promotion. We were with the same record company.” By that time, Colin Vearncombe (stage name: Black), a serious singer-songwriter from Liverpool, had already had a major hit, ‘Wonderful Life’, originally released in 1986. A bittersweet song, it celebrates the magic and beauty of life from a perspective of utter loneliness.

“On that boat, our eyes met and both of us felt, ‘Oh my God, who is that?’” shares Camilla. “And then we were friends for a very, very long time. Nothing happened for nine months. It was lovely to get to know someone for that long. But he proposed soon enough. Out of the blue. I had to take an hour to think about it.” They married in 1990. 

In 2003, with their three young sons, they moved to Schull where a flourishing collaboration started with the band Interference, founded and led by Fergus O’Farrell, a close neighbour. It sprouted an offshoot called Dogtail Soup (from a line in one of Colin’s songs, ‘Cold Chicken Skin’, originally coined for Game of Thrones) and attracted many other brilliant musicians, including Glen Hansard and Liam Ó Maonlaí. 

Then tragedy struck. In January 2016, on his way to Cork airport, Colin Vearncombe was involved in a two-car collision on an icy road. He remained in a coma for 16 days. Camilla had to make the decision to turn the machine off. “Horrendous. I speak about grief a lot. And yes, it’s painful. Like having a large chunk of ice inside your body. But I’ve been chipping away at it. Bit by bit, it melts. He’s still in the living room a lot of the time and when I have something to talk about, I go there.”

It turned out to be an intense conflation of life and death. Her uncle died the next day. Within a week, the magnificent Fergus O’Farrell finally succumbed to muscular dystrophy, aged 48, not as previously predicted, before he reached 20. In the aftermath, Camilla’s mother also died. “A long time ago we decided together that, whoever dies first, we’ll both look at the moon if we want to reconnect. It really is a comfort. I feel her a lot. Yet around Colin’s death, our son Max became a father. So there’s life, too.”

The Dogtail Soup Trio (Camilla Griehsel, Maurice Seezer, Paul Tiernan plus potential guests) play Levis’ (Ballydehob) on June 7 and Prim’s Bookshop (Kinsale) on June 9, with more dates to come in August. Camilla Griehsel plays eight concerts with Barefoot Baroque in July. See next month’s gig list for more details. The documentary ‘Breaking Out: The Remarkable Life of Fergus O’Farrell’ can be purchased or rented on YouTube.