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00:00My name is CoulĂ© and Bale BĂșrnia.
00:02You can see the music itself,
00:04and they're playing the music itself.
00:06You can see the music itself,
00:08and you can see the music itself,
00:10and the music itself.
00:24Now I'm heading down to Cork and Kerry,
00:27Places where the songs are part of the family.
00:30You don't learn them from a book.
00:32You hear them in kitchens, at wakes, in whispers.
00:36I want to meet the people who've kept that flame alive.
00:39Songs that have survived generations.
00:42I'm hoping they'll find a place in me too
00:44and that I can learn some songs that are rooted
00:47in this part of our gorgeous country.
00:50Thanks a lot.
00:52Thanks a lot, and I'm glad to see you in the future.
00:58I'm not sure.
01:00I think they're all the most famous songs
01:02and the most famous songs of the King.
01:05They're all the best ones!
01:07They've also been born as a new series
01:10of art in the world of Ireland and the world of Ireland.
01:14It's been a long time for me to be the best ones
01:17..the best crown in Fennig, in LĂĄir Ă«anĂ­g, in GĂłnĂ­.
01:21It's time to spend a lot of time with the rest of the world.
01:47Thank you very much.
01:49Maread, your auntie was best grown and your granny.
01:54Yes, indeed.
01:55So I'm here to ask you about her
01:59and the rest of the family and yourselves,
02:01and also to have your gorgeous scones and your bread,
02:03which the smell of is killing me.
02:06I need to get in.
02:07Start.
02:07Will I pour?
02:08Oh, do you?
02:09No.
02:12Thank you very much.
02:13You're Mila.
02:14You're welcome.
02:15Tell me about Bess.
02:17She was incredibly important for music in Ireland and songs.
02:22You see, her son was in Dublin,
02:24and he got to know Seamus Innes.
02:26And Seamus Innes was a collector of folklore,
02:29so it moved from there.
02:32And I suppose, had her son never been in Dublin,
02:35she may never have been heard of.
02:37There's something like 300 and something actual songs,
02:41both Irish and English.
02:43Where did she learn that amount of songs,
02:45and then where did she pass them on?
02:47She said that when they were living in Ragh,
02:50the place where they grew up,
02:52they had workmen.
02:54Ah.
02:55And some of the workmen had songs they used to sing,
02:58and they were travelling workmen that used to go around
03:01from place to place, and they used to sing.
03:04And she picked up a lot of her songs from them.
03:07And it was Seamus
03:10collected a huge amount of her stuff, would you say, Seamus Innes?
03:14Yes.
03:15And there was another guy called Brian George.
03:17And then there was Alan Lomax.
03:20Alan Lomax and Robert Roberts.
03:22They were from America.
03:23Now, Alan Lomax was, like, for me, that's a huge deal.
03:27He was documenting the best in the world.
03:31Therefore, you know, she's up there with the best in the world.
03:35She used to sing a lovely song called Lord Gregory.
03:39They had the words, but they never had got the ear of it.
03:42Scotland or any of those places.
03:44Or any of those places.
03:46It's amazing.
03:47You'd have different versions, wouldn't you, in different places,
03:50but none of them had the ear of the Lord Gregory.
03:53And Beth did?
03:54She had it, and they were thrilled just to have that.
03:56And to have two CDs with her voice on it,
04:01and, like, at 70-plus years, it's amazing,
04:05because her voice still had stayed lovely and sweet.
04:09I am my king, the daughter, I strayed from Cap-a-quinn.
04:16In search of Lord Gregory, my God, I coined him.
04:22The rain beats at night, and the locks, and the Jew holds me still.
04:28The baby's cold, and my arms, and my God, let me in.
04:34Come, saddle me the black horse, the brown or the bay.
04:40Come, saddle me the black horse, the brown or the bay.
04:48Come, saddle me the best horse from your stable estate.
04:56Till I roam round the valley, and the mountains so wide.
05:04Till I find the last of Aaron, and lie by her side.
05:15Oh, my goodness me, wowie.
05:22Your voice is gorgeous.
05:24And we're so lucky to have all this written down and recorded.
05:30So it's great.
05:31And sung to us by yourself.
05:33The way of the song and Sianos is it's so lovely everywhere I go,
05:47somebody's able to tell me who wrote the song, who sang the song,
05:52who taught it to them.
05:53In each place that we go, each area, it's like they're holding something very precious
06:00that was given to them, and they're passing that along.
06:07Ah yes, I was surprised by that part of the song on the river in the river.
06:11Because I was so happy with that part of the song on the river,
06:16and I remember the song on the river which we sit down in a river.
06:19We are playing the song on the river like that,
06:21even if you haven't had any of the song on the river,
06:24and it's like it's not a good one.
06:29Lannan is the first time to talk to me.
06:34And I think it's the first time to talk to you...
06:37...and I think it's the first time to talk to you...
06:39...and I think it's the first time.
06:59to learn Irish and reconnect us through songs and poetry and stories.
07:03Absolutely, because you're getting the nuance of the language.
07:06The vocabulary, the vocabulary, the pronunciation,
07:11and the nuance of the language.
07:13Like, you know the way people translate English or Irish into English,
07:17but you lose, when you do that, you lose the emotion.
07:21You know? I agree.
07:22Because the language itself is very poetic.
07:25Like, we're such an emotional people.
07:28Maybe long ago, before maybe the 1700s,
07:31that we were entitled, or not entitled,
07:33but were able to express ourselves emotionally.
07:36And then when we were colonised, all that was taken away
07:39and we became fearful.
07:40And so a lot of those songs were old.
07:42So you probably were allowed to.
07:44Whereas, I don't know, did we become kind of shamed and...
07:48Yeah.
07:49And as far as I know, lots of songs were cleaned up,
07:52and something else put in the line so that that...
07:55So censorship.
07:56Censorship.
07:57Censorship.
07:58Yeah.
07:59I suppose if it was anglicised, you know, within...
08:04I could be totally wrong, I'm grasping, I'm asking.
08:07It'd be more polite.
08:08It'd be more polite.
08:09Yes.
08:10That's where I was going.
08:11Yeah.
08:12It'd be more polite.
08:13And then you had the church to contend with as well.
08:16I was afraid to mention that, but they had a lot to answer.
08:18They did.
08:19So it seems as worth chatting away.
08:21I'd love to hear a few songs, of course, with you and your sisters.
08:26So one of her most favourite in the lullaby thing was Bug Brain.
08:31Oh, yes.
08:32Drink to the old man, washing his feet.
08:34And I suppose that's what people did long ago, minding the old people.
08:37Like a little drop.
08:38Yeah.
08:39And you know, it's not water.
08:40No.
08:41On shameding, it doesn't say it's whether it's a man or a woman.
08:43Well, I suppose that's what they did when people got old.
08:45They minded them.
08:46Yeah.
08:47Bug Brain, Bug Brain, Bug Brain, Gun Tandina.
09:00Bug Brain is lush pain.
09:05Bug Brain, Gun Tandina.
09:11Bug Brain, it's lush pain.
09:41Bug Brain, Gun Tandina.
09:48It's been so lovely to hear how the female voice has enriched and captured the essence of song in Cule and Ballyvarni for generations.
09:59And still today it's as prevalent as ever.
10:03Because I've never heard of Cule and Ballyvarni for generations to do some new theme into Cule in Nescair.
10:14With Amen.
10:16I haven't perceived so much theyss music can do to beあぼ tune in the transformers that have come on in Cule and Ballyvarni for a single theme in Cule.
10:23...to the old Irish music that I can't access...
10:25...unless I learn...
10:27...the language totally...
10:29...fairly, I think...
10:31...we're going to have a new style...
10:33...of the music that I can't access.
10:53I can learn it to an extent, but I'll miss a lot of nuances which I'll need to learn.
10:58And so I'm also finding on my travels with this, that there's a flip side to that,
11:03which I've just discovered recently, is that maybe it's not learning the language to learn the songs,
11:09maybe it's learning the songs to learn the language.
11:11I was just going to say that, because to learn a language through music,
11:17I think you're using that right side of your brain.
11:21It's about the sounds, the musicality of the language, instead of like the grammar
11:25and the kind of formal learning that we did in school.
11:28So it's a more imaginative way of getting to know the language just through the sounds of it
11:35before you worry about anything else.
11:38So for me, when I'm singing in Irish, there's the music, the melody line of the song,
11:43but there's also the music within the words.
11:46And Irish is really vowel centric. It's really open.
11:49So it lets out the voice.
11:51So when I'm singing in English, I feel like it's a little bit more closed.
11:54Oh, I love this.
11:56So I always thought the Irish language was so percussive, you know?
12:01But it's you're saying it and maybe the...
12:03I feel like it's the opposite.
12:05So there is a theory that I heard, I don't know if it's true or not,
12:10but that the Irish word for English, which is Beirle, comes from Beirle.
12:16Because when Irish people saw people speaking English, Beirle means mouth speak.
12:24So you know when I'm speaking English, everything is up here to the front, OK?
12:27Yeah.
12:28So English is up to the front of your mouth.
12:30Yeah.
12:31A lot of Irish sounds are further back.
12:33You've got the soft...
12:34Yeah.
12:35But they're all very soft.
12:36They're never glattal stops.
12:38They're...
12:39The air is pushed through them slowly and flowing and softly.
12:43So it always carries the melody.
12:46What it also symbolises is that the vowels rule the whole sounding of the word.
12:52So it's always about, I'm in love with vowels, can you tell?
12:55It's really nerdy.
12:57No, I'm loving this.
12:58Yeah.
12:59This is very...
13:00It's making total sense of everything and then for singing.
13:03Then around here, people will sing in both languages
13:06and then they'll sing a country song or they'll sing a song from the crooners.
13:09Yeah.
13:10And there was never this discrepancy over what's a real song and what's not.
13:16It's all music.
13:17It's all to be welcomed and to be expressed with joy.
13:22And to be celebrated.
13:23Yeah.
13:24It's to be loved.
13:25It's not...
13:27It's not something elitist.
13:29I don't want it to be elitist, you know?
13:31I don't want it to be inattainable for people.
13:34I want it to be accessible.
13:36That's what I feel my role is as a singer.
13:39We all have to reframe our identity and our relationship with the language and with the music.
13:52I'm visiting my gorgeous friend and wild man Brendan Begley, a true legend of Irish music and song in West Kerry.
14:07I'm eager to hear his perspective on my journey to master the Irish language through song.
14:16There's loads of beautiful words that are gone.
14:18Maybe that's why I find it daunting to, as I'm learning Irish, I keep thinking,
14:24Oh, God, I didn't know that.
14:25And this is how this whole quest came about.
14:28You have it in the English language because the English that you heard in The Liberties is not the English that you hear in England.
14:35There was a great journalist called Conn Hullain, he said,
14:39I have great respect for the English language, even though I don't speak it myself.
14:43I speak hiberno-English, English woven on a Gaelic loom.
14:48But once you sing a song and you know the words and you know what you're talking about and you know the history of it,
14:55and you're, you're, you're, you're, uh, being truthful to what the poet that wrote the song, um, uh, was intending to put to,
15:05to, to the story of the poet that he was trying to give in those words.
15:09You're speaking the language.
15:12So learn it your own way, but also nurture the dialects that are important.
15:17Be aware of them.
15:18Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:19Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:20Your Irish will be, um, higher spoken on an, on a Dublin English loom.
15:26Oh, I love that.
15:27It'll be sprink, sprinkled with Dublinese.
15:30Yeah, yeah.
15:31Right.
15:49Listen to Brandon perform.
16:03It wasn't about fluency or perfection.
16:08It's about understanding, feeling, belonging.
16:12It's about hearing yourself in a language you thought was lost to you.
16:25After chatting with both Myron and Brandon, it feels like now is the perfect time to learn a piece in the Sian Nose tradition.
16:32Myron has very kindly offered to teach me, so I'm both excited and terrified.
16:38CHOIR SINGS
17:03Now when I went and I sang the wrong second half of the verse, because you're...
17:07Sorry.
17:08Now they...
17:09This was...
17:10My brother played this on the box at my mother's funeral.
17:13You see that?
17:14Because she loved it so much.
17:16So...
17:17That's why I recorded this song in the first place, because I know it resonates with so many Irish people.
17:23This is the one.
17:24The one that makes you cry is the one.
17:26And this is my...
17:27I dreamt of my mum last night.
17:29She came to me in a dream.
17:31So this seems to be a sign.
17:32It's actually a very, very old air.
17:35So it's thought that this goes back at least to the mid-1600s.
17:40OK?
17:41So...
17:42There are people that even dispute that and say it could be even a hundred years older again.
17:47But it has been attributed to a poet from Tyrone actually, called An DĂș GĂĄnach.
17:52But the version that we're going to do would be the West Munster, West Kerry version.
17:59Every different dialect of Irish there is a different style of singing.
18:04So we like to personalise things.
18:07And that's one of the nicest things about traditional music and traditional singing is that...
18:11How you personalise it is very up to you.
18:14It's not just about your regional style, it's about your own personal style as well.
18:17It's like it touches on magic.
18:19Well, I think that a song like this is an example of the classical music of Gaelic Ireland.
18:26It's high art.
18:28It really is.
18:29You want me to?
18:31Mm-hmm.
18:40."
18:41Yes.
18:45."
18:52For the all-e'or-e'ra-me'-r'e'b
18:59See a rail-e'l-tah-hah-keen
19:07Okay. Oh my god, this is a mess.
19:11We nixed us.
19:12We nixed us.
19:13We nixed us.
19:15We nixed us.
19:16We nixed us.
19:19We nixed us.
19:21No, no, let's say up.
19:22We nixed us.
19:25We nixed us.
19:27We nixed us.
19:29We nixed us.
19:31We nixed us.
19:33We nixed us.
19:35Woohoo!
19:36That one you actually did get.
19:38And I just want to tell you,
19:39that is the hardest line in the song for me as well.
19:42And you have it.
19:43Yeah.
19:44Just let it happen now, because it's there in the can.
19:49Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
20:07Fa ni o'eram erev, si a'rel ta'ok a'keen.
20:25Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
20:45Na'era gan rai'n.
20:57Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
21:09Na'era gan rai'n.
21:15Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
21:21Si tev le shandim, si tev le shandim,
21:27Na'era gan rai'n.
21:31Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
21:37Si tev le shandim, si tev le shandim,
21:43Na'era gan rai'n.
21:47Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
21:51Na'era gan rai'n.
21:57Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
22:01Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
22:15Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
22:21Na'era gan rai'n.
22:25Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
22:31Na'era gan rai'n.
22:41Ava katumah hulan, si tev le shandim,
22:45Si tev le shandim, si tev le shandim.
23:08That's the best you've sung it.
23:09That's the best you've sung it.
23:11I'm so blown away and proud of you, and well done.
23:16I felt every note.
23:19That was perfect.
23:22Next week, I go to beautiful Connemara
23:26to explore how the past and present come together
23:29to keep our songs alive.
23:32It's not as closed as people might think, you know?
23:34That's what I love about the younger generation coming up
23:37is they have decided to have their own conversation
23:41in their own way.
23:42And it just opens up so many different spaces.
24:11I love you.
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