Entertainment

Lorcán Mac Mathúna returns to the well of Irish legends

Lorcán Mac Mathúna, on right, with accordion player Martin Tourish, who performed with Mac Mathúna on the album The Arrows That Murder Sleep
Lorcán Mac Mathúna, on right, with accordion player Martin Tourish, who performed with Mac Mathúna on the album The Arrows That Murder Sleep Lorcán Mac Mathúna, on right, with accordion player Martin Tourish, who performed with Mac Mathúna on the album The Arrows That Murder Sleep

FEW singers can have straddled the ancient and modern worlds as well as Lorcán Mac Mathúna.

A sean-nós singer from Dublin, in his work you cannot help but feel you are present in a primeval environment, surrounded by warriors and ravens and a beautiful but dangerous Mother Nature.

His singing is strong and uncompromisingly stark, yet beautiful at the same time and although many of his songs take inspiration from the great stories of our oldest literature, Lorcán has written most of them himself.

Last year he brought out a collection of his best compositions, The Arrows that Murder Sleep, which has been described as "a collection of sensual moments of ancient Irish literature, brought fully to life by a group of virtuoso musicians with powerful melodies and dynamic, cinematic arrangements".

When I spoke to Lorcán, I asked him if he was always interested in Irish mythology.

“I was and I suppose the first of the basic texts that I really studied was Táin Bó Cuailgne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) and many people will know what the Táin is about and how important it is in the canon of Ireland's literature. That's where it all started for me and I do keep going back to it as well to other stories from our early literature," he says.

Lorcán was drawn to the epically dramatic nature of the stories and that really suited the kind of music he wanted to create.

“The people in the stories all had urgent needs; they had grave matters weighing on their hearts and that brings out all the drama of human existence in the stories and I try to equal that drama in the music," he explains.

For example, Ordeal by Cohabitation relives the poignancy and tragedy of the story of Liadán and Cuirithir, Ireland’s eighth century tale of star-crossed lovers tragically struck down. The title track traces the intensity of Créid’s grief as she comes upon the still-warm corpse of her lover Dínertach “with seven wounds upon his breast”. The melodies and arrangements take stock of the full complexity of these stories and give them their full breadth and depth.

However, it was not the tales of ancient Ireland that brought Lorcán to Derry earlier this year, but the heroes of the Easter Rising when he performed 1916 – Visionaries and Their Words at the Cultúrlann in Great James Street in February.

But even here the links between modern times and the Gaelic past are strong, Lorcán explains.

"For instance, when Patrick Pearse was trying to create a new system of education in Ireland, he emphasised the importance of history and used Irish mythology, especially Cúchulainn, at Scoil Éanna in Ranelagh as a source of inspiration and as a model by which his pupils could live their lives. The kids at the school said it was almost like Cúchulainn was physically present in the classroom with them.

"And of course that tradition of heroism from the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle and the Fenian Cycle was what the leaders of 1916 wanted to reawaken in the Irish people,” he says.

Lorcán was one of the nine artists selected by the Irish Arts Council to produce an artistic creation which honoured the Rising and its legacy and his 1916 – Visionaries and their Words was performed to critical acclaim in January and February.

The show explores the writings and ideals of the leaders of the Easter Rising in a spectacular dramatisation and musical interpretation inspired by their lives, their work, and their words. In reality, the script written by those who fought in the Easter Rising with actress Elaine O’Dea interpreting the written words of its participants to a backdrop of archive footage of Ireland 100 years ago.

"At the heart of the show is the character of the people who took part in the Rising through the poetry they wrote because you get a better understanding of a person by reading what they wrote rather than by reading it second or third hand," says the Dubliner.

"The character comes through the music and that music is based on the words of primarily three rebels – James Connolly, Joseph Plunkett and Patrick Pearse. I've composed new music to accompany their work and there is a strong multi-media element to the show as well."

Now Lorcán is hoping to make an album of the show with the help of crowd-funding site indiegogo.com.

As he explains on the site: "The Rising was led by deep thinkers and artists with integrity and vision whose beautiful words stand out as some of the best essays and poetry produced by any Irish man in history. Patrick Pearse’s poetry has a beauty which sees to the heart of rural Ireland, and of nature itself.

"Joseph Plunkett wrote profoundly of the spirit, employing veils of meaning whilst paradoxically expressing incredibly clarity of image. James Connolly wrote ballads of the downtrodden and the rights of the poor and Eamonn Ceannt expressed himself with the music of the hearth of old Ireland ... but beyond the cauldron of armed insurrection and the bold assertion of a national vision, these men laid down a life-times’ work in a wider cultural context."

If you want to help Lorcán fulfill his ambition of having 1916 – Visionaries and their Words produced as as CD, go to www.indiegogo.com/projects/1916-visionaries-and-their-words-the-album--2#/