Let the Music Speak
There is a lot to be said about holding your counsel and taking the view that it’s best to let the music speak than to shout from the sidelines. It is fair to say that from their formation in 1970 in the Irish-speaking parish of Gweedore, County Donegal, Clannad took the wiser and less talkative route. “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence,” are words attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, the man whose painting of Mona Lisa gave us one of the world’s most enigmatic smiles.
Roots in Donegal and Early Performances
Similarly, there is an inscrutability about Clannad, but not in a way that was ever planned. Their formation was as natural as the air they breathed and the music they listened to, from childhood to adulthood. Siblings Pól, Ciarán and Máire (Moya) Brennan and their two uncles (the Duggan twins, Pádraig, 1949-2016, and Noel, 1949-2022) first performed in the family-owned Leo’s Tavern, playing a mix of traditional songs that had been sung in living rooms and bars for centuries, and songs by contemporary artists such as Joni Mitchell, and The Beatles. It may have helped that the siblings’ mother, Máire, was a music teacher, and their father, Leo, was a saxophonist and a member of a touring showband (Slieve Foy), but it was performing regularly in front of the tavern’s clientele that the embryonic group, now with a line-up of double bass, guitar, flute, harp and mandola, honed their skills.
Naming the Band and First Record Deal (1973)
By 1973, the family group had a name. “My grandfather, Hugh, a schoolmaster,” Moya explains, “had a great interest in literature and the arts. He suggested we use ‘Clann As Dobhar’, which means ‘family from Dore’, but after some thought, he suggested we put together the first letters of the last two Irish words and stick them onto the end of ‘Clann’. So Clannad, it was.” They also had a record contract, awarded to them when they won a music competition at the Letterkenny Folk Festival.
Debut Album and Early Direction
In the same year, Clannad released their self-titled debut album. Mostly drawing from the Irish folk tradition, two non-traditional songs (Morning Dew, a song popularised in 1967 by Tim Rose but written five years earlier by Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson; and Liza, co-written by Pól Brennan and Pádraig Duggan) suggested smart musicians looking towards a future of diversion and innovation. “We did a lot of research,” Pól remarks. “We constantly looked for gems of songs, unearthing ones that we felt weren’t readily available anywhere.” Clannad’s debut album is instructive, however, as the sound of a group in search of itself (or, as the website Prog Archives notes, ‘a fulfilment of a family mission’).
Building the Sound (1974–1980)
Subsequent albums (Clannad 2, 1974; Dúlamán, 1976) continued this mission. As they toured extensively in Europe, the group gained insights not only into performing but also into recording and production techniques. By 1980, with the addition of Nicky Ryan as producer, the additional musicianship of younger sister Eithne (Enya), and the creative osmosis of recording in Conny Plank’s Köln-based studios (Plank, who engineered many recordings by significant German progressive/experimental music acts such as Kraftwerk, Harmonia, and Holger Czukay, was an ardent believer in the possibilities of electronic music), Clannad released their fourth studio album, Crann Úll.
Foundations for a Breakthrough
If the four albums released between 1973 and 1980 constituted anything in Clannad’s history, it was how commitment, purpose, and creative vision laid the groundwork for what was to come. If the four studio albums released between 1982 and 1987 (Fuaim, Magical Ring, Macalla, Sirius) proved anything, it was how they played to their strengths as continuously adventurous, searching musicians
Turning Point: Fuaim and “Theme from Harry’s Game”
Fuaim (ostensibly, the starting point of Enya’s solo career) was the turning point for Clannad, however. A particularly evocative Scots-Gaelic song, Mhòrag 's Na Horo Gheallaidh, caught the attention of the writer (Gerald Seymour) and producers of a television show that was being made of the 1975 novel Harry’s Game, which has a storyline about an undercover British agent infiltrating Republican strongholds in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The song’s seafaring narrative, however, didn’t match, so Clannad suggested they would write something that would. The resulting piece of music, Theme from Harry’s Game, says Moya, “won an Ivor Novello award and launched our career.”
Global Recognition, Awards, and Later Years
There was no stopping Clannad from that point on. Subsequent studio albums and soundtrack work for television and film were released in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and garnered BAFTA, Grammy, and Billboard awards. A final studio album, 2013’s Nádúr, was not, however, the final word. In 2019, a career-defining retrospective and world tour, In a Lifetime (named after the international hit song, performed by Moya and U2’s Bono), was so positively received that the group (minus, sadly, the Duggan twins, Pádraig and Noel) remain very much in existence. The band’s present focus is on a concerted programme of reissues, the most recent of which is the 40th anniversary of Macalla.
Legacy and Influence
Much is said of their pioneering music. Moya Brennan has referred to its “earthiness”, while others have noted how rooted it is in expressive melancholia and mesmerising Celtic tradition. How about adding a sonic personality that has, over the years, been borrowed from but never bettered?
Tony Clayton - Lea
Let the Music Speak
There is a lot to be said about holding your counsel and taking the view that it’s best to let the music speak than to shout from the sidelines. It is fair to say that from their formation in 1970 in the Irish-speaking parish of Gweedore, County Donegal, Clannad took the wiser and less talkative route. “Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence,” are words attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, the man whose painting of Mona Lisa gave us one of the world’s most enigmatic smiles.
Roots in Donegal and Early Performances
Similarly, there is an inscrutability about Clannad, but not in a way that was ever planned. Their formation was as natural as the air they breathed and the music they listened to, from childhood to adulthood. Siblings Pól, Ciarán and Máire (Moya) Brennan and their two uncles (the Duggan twins, Pádraig, 1949-2016, and Noel, 1949-2022) first performed in the family-owned Leo’s Tavern, playing a mix of traditional songs that had been sung in living rooms and bars for centuries, and songs by contemporary artists such as Joni Mitchell, and The Beatles. It may have helped that the siblings’ mother, Máire, was a music teacher, and their father, Leo, was a saxophonist and a member of a touring showband (Slieve Foy), but it was performing regularly in front of the tavern’s clientele that the embryonic group, now with a line-up of double bass, guitar, flute, harp and mandola, honed their skills.
Naming the Band and First Record Deal (1973)
By 1973, the family group had a name. “My grandfather, Hugh, a schoolmaster,” Moya explains, “had a great interest in literature and the arts. He suggested we use ‘Clann As Dobhar’, which means ‘family from Dore’, but after some thought, he suggested we put together the first letters of the last two Irish words and stick them onto the end of ‘Clann’. So Clannad, it was.” They also had a record contract, awarded to them when they won a music competition at the Letterkenny Folk Festival.
Debut Album and Early Direction
In the same year, Clannad released their self-titled debut album. Mostly drawing from the Irish folk tradition, two non-traditional songs (Morning Dew, a song popularised in 1967 by Tim Rose but written five years earlier by Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson; and Liza, co-written by Pól Brennan and Pádraig Duggan) suggested smart musicians looking towards a future of diversion and innovation. “We did a lot of research,” Pól remarks. “We constantly looked for gems of songs, unearthing ones that we felt weren’t readily available anywhere.” Clannad’s debut album is instructive, however, as the sound of a group in search of itself (or, as the website Prog Archives notes, ‘a fulfilment of a family mission’).
Building the Sound (1974–1980)
Subsequent albums (Clannad 2, 1974; Dúlamán, 1976) continued this mission. As they toured extensively in Europe, the group gained insights not only into performing but also into recording and production techniques. By 1980, with the addition of Nicky Ryan as producer, the additional musicianship of younger sister Eithne (Enya), and the creative osmosis of recording in Conny Plank’s Köln-based studios (Plank, who engineered many recordings by significant German progressive/experimental music acts such as Kraftwerk, Harmonia, and Holger Czukay, was an ardent believer in the possibilities of electronic music), Clannad released their fourth studio album, Crann Úll.
Foundations for a Breakthrough
If the four albums released between 1973 and 1980 constituted anything in Clannad’s history, it was how commitment, purpose, and creative vision laid the groundwork for what was to come. If the four studio albums released between 1982 and 1987 (Fuaim, Magical Ring, Macalla, Sirius) proved anything, it was how they played to their strengths as continuously adventurous, searching musicians
Turning Point: Fuaim and “Theme from Harry’s Game”
Fuaim (ostensibly, the starting point of Enya’s solo career) was the turning point for Clannad, however. A particularly evocative Scots-Gaelic song, Mhòrag 's Na Horo Gheallaidh, caught the attention of the writer (Gerald Seymour) and producers of a television show that was being made of the 1975 novel Harry’s Game, which has a storyline about an undercover British agent infiltrating Republican strongholds in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The song’s seafaring narrative, however, didn’t match, so Clannad suggested they would write something that would. The resulting piece of music, Theme from Harry’s Game, says Moya, “won an Ivor Novello award and launched our career.”
Global Recognition, Awards, and Later Years
There was no stopping Clannad from that point on. Subsequent studio albums and soundtrack work for television and film were released in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and garnered BAFTA, Grammy, and Billboard awards. A final studio album, 2013’s Nádúr, was not, however, the final word. In 2019, a career-defining retrospective and world tour, In a Lifetime (named after the international hit song, performed by Moya and U2’s Bono), was so positively received that the group (minus, sadly, the Duggan twins, Pádraig and Noel) remain very much in existence. The band’s present focus is on a concerted programme of reissues, the most recent of which is the 40th anniversary of Macalla.
Legacy and Influence
Much is said of their pioneering music. Moya Brennan has referred to its “earthiness”, while others have noted how rooted it is in expressive melancholia and mesmerising Celtic tradition. How about adding a sonic personality that has, over the years, been borrowed from but never bettered?
Tony Clayton - Lea