I was raised in Beaumont in Dublin. I lived with my granny, mam, auntie and big sister. My memory is of a sense of matriarchy. I think it set the path for me always to look for more matriarchal ways of being.
There was a lot of music. I loved musicals. My mam loved soul and blues. My auntie loved rock. My sister loved metal – she was big into Metallica and Sepultura. I was raised on a lot of different stuff.
We moved to Newtownmountkennedy (in Wicklow) when I was about five. This was the early 1990s. My mam was a bit of a celebrity about town because she stood out as the only black person. I remember people would ask me why I’m white and my mam is black, and [I would ask] my mam: why are they asking that? What does that mean?
My closest friend was from Travellers who lived up the road. She was bullied more than I was. But then, there are different ways of being othered. There’s othering through constant microaggressions and there’s othering through aggression, so from a young age, I was witnessing both.
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My mam passed away in 2006. Prior to her passing, she was working as a tour guide, and people watching, when she saw this Nigerian family out in their Sunday best. Watching all these different cultures walk by, she was so inspired. She felt at home. It excited her to see the diversity that was happening in Ireland and not feel so much like she was standing out.
Ten years later I remember going to Ireland Music Week and walking into a room where there was a black Irish singer performing, and everybody in the room was black. I had to walk out and compose myself because I was crying. I realised my mam had never experienced that, where she was the majority in a room. It overwhelmed me that she had missed this sea change in Irish culture.
I don’t remember not wanting to be a singer. I loved music, I loved television, I would get up at 5am to watch videos when I was five or six. I found my way into singing and session singing and that’s been a beautiful process for me. Over lockdown, things shifted because I no longer had access to other musicians. My creative export moved into writing and world-building and trying to make sense of this very complicated background and legacy through poetry and through writing my first play, which I did in 2024.
At the moment, my process is playing with Ableton (production software) and trying to be completely autonomous in creating and producing my own work. I’ve just come back from Brisbane and Chiang Mai. When I was in Chiang Mai, I met the most amazing musicians, I spent time in a studio with them. I took music that I’d co-written in Ireland and gave it to these incredible musicians who gave these songs incredible life.
I have a lot of strings to my bow but it’s funny, I feel like the more vast my capacity is for different things, the less people are interested. I find that really strange. Certainly in Ireland – I came back from touring with Billy Idol expecting people to be interested in maybe working with me and there seemed to be very little out there. I left almost immediately again. I was beginning to internalise that I was unwanted. I needed to go abroad to remind myself that this was circumstantial and that when I go other places, people are excited and serious about what I have to offer.
Of course, I have some incredible champions , like (director and choreographer) Catherine Young, who always supports me and is excited to work with me. I’m really grateful for that. We began working on (dance and music project) Ciseach, a year-and-a-half ago, and now we’re going on tour. Ciseach means a terrain over uneven land, and it also means a mess. It’s about our disconnection from the land and how we have to find our way back to the land using the wisdom of our ancestors.
[ This Album Changed My Life: Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life (1976)Opens in new window ]
At this point in my life, it really resonated with me. One of the things I love about it is the fact that I have no lyrics. The way I’m singing is trans-linguistic. It’s accessible to everybody. I get to be this universal, ancestral voice, and because of my own legacy, when I’m performing, I’m thinking about all those things. I’m thinking about: what is it about my ancestry? What were they not able to say? What were they unable to feel or manifest as a result of that? What can I bring right now to my vocals that allows that magic into the world?
The best thing about Ireland is our capacity for culture. We are a deeply intelligent people, and we think about things. We are existential with a seasoning of humour.
I have loved this country for years. I’ve grown up in this country. I’ve felt safe in this country. I’ve felt safe to create in this country. I’ve been funded by national bodies. I’ve been supported by national bodies. But also, we struggle with the nurturing of art. So much of it comes back to basic needs, which is our connection to security and having an affordable place to live and a quality of life. If you don’t give the everyday Irish person an affordable place to live and quality of life, you’re not going to get creative people any more.
In conversation with Niamh Donnelly. This interview is part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland. Jess Kav performs in Catherine Young Dance’s Ciseach: An Embodied Manifesto, touring nationally April 18th-May 9th, catherineyoungdance.com.
