This year's Temple Bar Tradfest is richly diverse, and features everything from a celebration of Donegal fiddler Johnny Doherty to a children's céilí and an exploration of the 1916 leaders and their words. Dervish, Lúnasa, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill jostle for space across a five-day roster that will put January well and truly to bed.
In the midst of this melee is a mix of headlining acts who happen to be women. In 2016 that shouldn’t be remarkable, but in truth, traditional music is heavily male-dominated: fewer than 25 per cent of the traditional albums reviewed in The Ticket in the past year were released by female artists.
The raft of superb female musicians at this year's Tradfest include Maura O'Connell, The Whileaways, Michelle Mulcahy, Karen Tweed, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Julie Fowlis, Heidi Talbot and Aoife O'Donovan. For a music that is so rooted in our history and that has enjoyed considerable gains in popularity in recent decades, is gender an issue?
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Julie Fowlis is a renowned Hebridean singer, piper and TV presenter who has enjoyed enormous success with her band over the past 15 years. She is sanguine about the challenges that can sometimes face women artists.
“There have been incidents over the years which serve as a stark reminder that I’m a woman in a very male-dominated industry,” she says. “On a positive note, I think it’s great to see so many talented women on the Temple Bar Tradfest programme, and they’re there based on merit and talent. That’s really inspiring. In the time that I’ve been involved with music, the number of women involved in all aspects of the industry has gone up, and that includes things like sound engineering and lighting as well as performance. So that’s all really encouraging.”
Fowlis’s encounters with the gender barrier have occurred largely in the context of festival bookings. “I recall one festival where my agent rang up, and they said, ‘No, we have enough women on the bill.’ I didn’t take any offence, but it shows you the mindset that has existed. I think that’s changing, though.”
Double standard
Aoife O’Donovan, lead singer with Crooked Still and now a solo singer-songwriter, has had similar experiences.
“One thing we all run into as women is that oftentimes festivals will say, ‘Well, you know, we only have one slot for female singer-songwriters’. It certainly seems when you look at [festival] programmes, you mightn’t necessarily notice it because you just see a list of bands. Nobody describes a band with all guys as a ‘guy band’, but if you have a band that just happens to have three women [who are] badass instrumentalists and singers, people feel the need to comment that it’s a ‘chick band’ or a ‘girl band’. It’s a very interesting double standard where people think an audience can’t handle more than one woman on a programme.”
For O'Donovan, who released her second solo album, In the Magic Hour, last week, change is afoot. "This summer I was playing the Edmonton Folk Festival, and the Saturday night programme just happened to feature one great female artist after another. They didn't make a thing of it, they just did it, and I think that's what I want to start happening."
O'Donovan suggests gender is less of an issue in folk and traditional music circles here than in the world of American bluegrass, which is dominated by "band after band of testosterone-driven music", and that's "despite the fact that there are some fantastic [female] bluegrass musicians out there including Alison Krauss, Dale Ann Bradley and Della Mae".
Heidi Talbot has experienced the gamut of the live scene while touring for six years with Cherish the Ladies, an all-female US-based group, and now fronting her own band. “We were like a family and we all looked out for each other. Now, it’s definitely different: the car is much messier and there’s not much gossip.”
Talbot's experience generally hasn't been coloured by gender issues. "To be honest, no, it never really crosses my mind. I've always just wanted to keep things interesting and I've always been lucky in that I've got to work with a whole range of different artists like Idlewild, Tim O'Brien, Eddi Reader and Sophia Karlsson. "
A love of collaboration
One thing all three musicians share is a love of collaboration. Talbot feels that, particularly as a solo artist, collaborations help to ensure she doesn’t get stuck in her own comfort zone, which would surely be the death knell of creativity.
“When you start to write, you can find yourself asking: does this song sound a bit like that song? But when you play it for someone else, they can say, ‘That’s great, why don’t we change that chord there?’ and it becomes a whole other thing. At times, of course, you can feel quite vulnerable, but it’s a good feeling: you’re putting yourself out there. You come away quite excited with all these new ideas to work on.”
Aoife O’Donovan’s second solo album is, she says, preoccupied with the life cycle and the impact the choices we make have on our paths in life. “Don’t be afraid of criticism and don’t be afraid of editing until you’ve got something that works,” she says.
“It’s important to try writing with other people or have a songwriters’ group where you can show your work and receive criticism. It’s important to learn how to take other people’s criticism and to learn how to apply it. You can take into account what other people think but then re-establish your own opinion of it.
“In a wider sense, I think it’s about empowering yourself with what you’re doing to be as good as you can be, and not feel the barriers of gender.”
- Temple Bar Tradfest runs until January 31st. templebartrad.com
TEMPLE BAR TRADFEST: FIVE SHOWS TO CATCH
Bilingua - The Music of Eithne Ní Uallacháin: A celebration of the life and musical legacy of this late, magnificent singer from Lá Lugh. Tonight, St Patrick's Cathedral.
Martin Hayes - Digging Deeper: As well as his regular partner in music, Dennis Cahill, Hayes will be joined by multi-instrumentalist and composer Doug Wieselman, who has collaborated with everyone from John Lurie to Antony and the Johnsons. Friday, St Patrick's Cathedral.
Karen Tweed and Timo Alakatila: Irrepressible English accordionist and composer Tweed and Finnish pianist Alakatila weave paths through their own melody lines. Friday, City Hall.
Children's open trad session: One for the over-sixes. The Ark, Saturday and Sunday.
Teddy Thompson: He might be the scion of Richard and Linda Thompson but Teddy is more of a country boy at heart. Button Factory, Thursday.
