THOUGH still only 32, Iarla O Lionaird, the star of the Afro Celt Sound, has been singing publicly for the guts of 20 years. Critically feted as a child prodigy, O Lionaird was recorded from the age of seven onwards. But it wasn't until the release of Aisling Ceoil (Gael Linn) in 1993, which he recorded in collaboration with Tony McMahon and Noel Hill that people started to sit up and take notice of his magnetic and original voice. His work with the Afro Celts marks a significant departure from his previous body of work, however.
The elegiac Nil Cead Againn, for example, sounds like a throwback to the days of the aislingi or vision songs but tells of the plight of refugees from the carnage of modern day wars. Intimate and tortuous, Inion is a North African call to prayer while Eistig Liomsa Sealad is an old Irish lament with a remarkable new gloss.
I find it interesting that you are able to get West African beats and rhythms and melodies to work with Celtic music," he says. "The Africans have a saying that all music comes from the same pot. They were lovely people to work with and the music just poured out of them."
In recent months O Lionaird has been working with Ingmar Kiang, a former guitarist with the New Versions, and an album is due to be released on the Celtic Heartbeat label in the near future. Kiang comes from the land of ambient music and reggae and should provide an interesting underscore for O Lionaird's newly penned Irish songs. He'll also be doing a solo recording with Real World in the autumn in which he plans to filter old songs through a contemporary mindset. The material will be uncompromisingly old but the accompaniment experimental.
He proposes, for example, to put a Jimi Hendrix guitar riff on the famous sean nos song, Aisling Geal, a synthesis he feels will not be incompatible in terms of tenderness. He expresses admiration for The Prodigy, Goldie and Leftfield, and hopes to incorporate elements of their style in his new recordings. "They're talking, about the landscape of now in a very real way and their post modern sadness provides an interesting counterpoint to the sadness of the dispossessed which is the root of all my singing," he says.
Born in Cuil Aodha, Co Cork, the cradle of traditional music, O'Lionard's precocious talent was nurtured from an early age. His grand aunt, Elizabeth Cronin, was a noted singer in the 1930s and 1940s and was recorded by musicologists such as Seamus Ennis, Alan Lommax and Jean Ritchie. Iarla himself soon came under the influence of his musical neighbours, Sean O Liathin and Peadar and Sean O Riada.
There was much cultural cleavage and clashing of values at the time, however. "The umbilicust that connects people to their culture wasn't to be taken for granted where I was growing up - at the edge of a Breac Gaeltacht with the world of the 1960s impinging and waiting to subvert it," he says.
"The establishment of Cor Chuil Aodha slowed down the natural progression of sociological time in the area. Sean O Riada stopped people who were 20 years older than me from going to the showbands. He didn't forbid them, but he drew them back into his living room where they recultivated the old land and drew out the old music again. In actual fact it was a deliberate handing on of the tradition. It brought feinmheas (self esteem) back to an area which had a relatively unbroken lineage of cultural cohesion."
Articulate and reflective, O Lionard does not shrink from fulminating against current musical trends. Indeed his sharpest arrows are pointed at his fellow sean nos singers.
He takes issue with the tradition interpretation of sean nos as singing in the "old style", preferring instead to regard it as singing in the way". You get a lot of, people telling you what sean nos is but I don't hear much sean nos even in sean nos circles, he says. I think people are missing the point. Firstly, I don't think singers are spending long enough learning the songs or with the source of the songs. The second factor then is one of approach. I think a lot of people do set out to learn techniques and ornamentations and whatever else is required to carry off a song. But to me a lot of it sounds organically dead and without subtlety or humanity. I'd rather not hear it at all. You're doomed if you lack the willingness to make each time you sing a personalised and elevated event."
He considers a lot of current in to be mired in affectation and bereft of the essential inner dialogue that takes place with a song. He also believes that people would have to reassess their theses on the current healthy state of scan nos if a selection of contemporary singers were played back to back with those of old.
THE Afro Celt Sound System's project is the brainchild of Simon Emmerson, a former punk and doyen of 1970s counter culture. In 1992, he used the uillean pipes of Davy Spillane to complement West African instruments, while recording Lam Toro, his first album with Senegalese singer Baaba Maal. The seeds of an idea were sown and the staggering success of the album prompted him to pursue the musical fusion further.
Emmerson works as a producer with Real World Records which runs a recording festival on an occasional basis. They throw open the doors of their studio at Bath to a large number of international musicians on such occasions. "It gives the opportunity for artists of many different cultures to interact together and, to explore musical dialogue. So it seemed like a perfect chance to kickstart a lot of the performance side of this recording," says Amanda Jones, managing director of the label. They then brought together an assortment of musicians for a week's recording. These included Iarla O Lionird, piper Ronan Browne, James McNally of the Pogues, Myrdhin a six foot, six inch Brefon harpist, Kauwding Cissokho (Kora) and Masamba Diop (Tama) from Senegal and Ayub Ogada a Kenyan thumb pianist.
The studio was, adorned with the Celtic and African images of visualiser Jamie Reid who had made a name for his situation artwork for the Sex Pistols. This proved a great source of inspiration as the week produced hours upon hours of material which was subsequently culled and beaten into shape by Emmerson.
The theory behind the album is that if the Celts migrated to north Africa, through Europe, and into the edges of Britain and Ireland, then it should come as no surprise that the music of West Africa and the Celtic nations share the same roots.
There is much in Emmerson's argument that is dubious and speculative, however. Irish audiences may have deep misgivings about yet another "Celtic" album and may find the parallels that are drawn a bit too facile. He points to remnants of our shared cultural heritage and implies some kind of historical continuum.
"The kora and the Celtic harp, the talking drum and the bodhran, seem to talk the same language," he says. If his theory of the Celtic diaspora is correct, then the kora would be the precursor of the harp. He poses the question whether the similarities between the instruments are mere coincidences or whether they share their lineage because their inventors have the same roots.
But didn't Jimmy Rabbitte of the Commitments already come up with the theory that the Irish are the blacks of Europe? Is this another attempt at post colonial patronisation? "I think the last thing that Simon or anybody here would want to do is to try and put some pseudo scientific flesh and blood on what is first and foremost a spiritual connection between musicians," says Amanda Jones.
The end product more than compensates for any theoretical shortcomings. Technically audacious, it contains a multiplicity of styles including elements of dance music, sean nos, jungle meltdown, ambient global prance as well as more ethnic influences. The two traditions subtly weave a sound of the past into one of the future to produce a cohesive entity far greater than its disparate parts.
