Hi, I'm Rhiannon Giddens.

Welcome to Ireland, my second home.

We're here in Dublin at Whelan's, a legendary music venue that was one of the first places I ever played in this country.

In this season of My Music, we'll be visiting with some of the wonderful artists who call Ireland home.

Kylemore Abbey is the home of a group of Benedictine nuns set on a hillside above a loch in the picturesque wilds of Connemara.

And that's where we visited with Róisín Elsafty.

Róisín is a storyteller from the west of Ireland, and she tells her stories in song.

She sings in two languages, English and Gaeilge, or Irish, as they also call it here.

Gaeilge is the native tongue of the people of Ireland and it is part of a song tradition that goes back many centuries.

♪ [Sings in Irish] ♪ Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you for having me.

Oh, my gosh.

And in this incredible place.

Isn't it fabulous?

It's fabulous.

Can you kind of situate us a little bit?

Can you tell us where we are?

-So we are in Kylemore Abbey and this would be seen as more English speaking area.

I am living in the Irish speaking area of Galway, the west of Ireland.

We think remote, don't we?

People forget that there's Irish language —an Irish language that's separate to the English language.

And, it's small pockets in Ireland that have it: Donegal and and some bits of Cork and and Kerry and ... but our Gaeltacht, in Galway, would be the biggest and it's learned as a language at school as well.

So it's lovely to bring the Irish language back to Kylemore -Something I find in Ireland is that, you know, it's a small island, but there's loads of hyper-locality, like.

-Yes!

-You know, 20 minutes away there's a totally different you know, set of stories and songs, you know, because people just didn't move that much— -Accents!

Accents even just less than five miles there can be a difference in the Irish language Well, now, maybe more prevalent 50 years ago than today.

Today it's very TikTok-y and, you know.

-Yeah.

The global culture is kind of affecting the local culture.

-With...after the famine and everything you had people who wanted to emigrate, you needed English to do that.

There was— so there was a culture of trying to be educated.

You needed English when Britain ruled Ireland.

There was no Irish to be taught.

There was, you know, the children at school had to recite the poem “I am a good English child” all over Ireland.

I'm sure they did in Wales and Scotland too.

And all the colonies, you know, they were all English children.

So, there was a certain mindset to leave the bad times and leave the famine and to adopt the English language as well as what was imposed upon us.

And then you had the revival, and it's had its ups and downs.

But, you know, we have the radio since the ‘70s and the TV now is 20 years.

You mean like Irish language stations?

Irish language, yeah.

And it's become cool.

It's very cool now.

And a lot of young people who may not be brought up with Irish at home, but they've learned it at school.

And you have schools that are being totally taught through the Irish language— -Yeah, my own two are in that kind of school.

And, they're... they have a good reputation as well.

And even if parents aren't coming from that background, mightn't even be Irish.

You know, we have Ukrainians and we have Americans, and we have all manner of, of new society, multicultural now, you know, that are Irish, you know, but, coming from different backgrounds and who are speaking Irish.

-Yeah, it's brilliant.

And it is fabulous.

-So you sing, and you often sing in Irish, in the Irish language as well as in English.

But can we talk a little bit about— because that's, that's a very particular, um, it's kind of has become its own kind of category.

People call it “Sean Nós” [“Old Style”] or whatever.

I'm not, you know, very educated in that.

-Well, in my community where I would come, which would be a small part of Galway, we...it would have been seen as a pastime.

And it wouldn't be “sing a song”, it would be “say a song”, because you are telling a story, is what you're doing.

And so it wasn't an entertainment thing.

It wasn't a stage.

Often people could be very shy that were singers, and so you'd have a “time”.

It was called a “time” with the English language in a house.

Just an occasion.

It might be just a few people visiting, or you might have a big party and somebody would “say a song”, and they... it wasn't unusual that the hat might be on this person, down, the hand be covering them.

And it was very sort of intimate, non-showy.

Even with Irish dancing, and how your hands have to be straight and how your... the, the skirts had to be certain way and, and the steps had to be... all of that were rules that came afterwards.

Yeah.

There's a beautiful traditional style of dancing where the hands could do whatever.

But they were still very tidy with their steps because space was limited.

It was still happening at the house.

So we have an expression “Dhamseodh sé ar phláta” “He could dance on a plate” -Oh that's good.

-Yeah.

Cause he could do such, such intricate steps, but still it's only a small... you know.

Yeah.

You've got to mind the dresser with all the lovely crockery on it Prime spot there, you know— -And Granny won't be happy if... -Yeah.

So there is stuff like that where they might have a session and a and a dance, you know, it could have two, four, six, eight dancing and be “ ‘round the house but mind the dresser”.

That's one of the tunes!

-Fantastic!

I love it.

♪ [Sings in Irish] ♪ [scats in Irish] The songs that I sing are very much rooted in the language that I speak.

And I feel the music comes from that.

The two are entwined.

My particular type of the Irish language I speak be quite guttural, and back here, Donegal would be much sweeter, the Donegal Irish and Scottish Irish very similar.

And in Cork would be sweet and we are really the only ones that are kind of, you know, having a bit of a spit going on sometimes.

But that said and everything, people did travel.

So you had the different trades that would travel and you'd have spaílpin which would be laborers that would come from different locales just for a season.

Tailors, what have you.

And so they would bring —and if there was fairs, they would bring their songs with them.

And so our tradition was an oral tradition and wasn't written down particularly.

So songs changed and evolved.

If a singer could only hear it the one time and they're trying to learn it, you know, they'd go away and do the best that they could.

-The thing that for me, the more I get in sort of sink into traditional music and thinking about it, the more I realize that, you know, tradition changes constantly.

But it's if you have a root, then it's all— you know what I mean?

It's important that that you feel the rootedness of it in the place and the people.

But within that, everybody is an individual.

You know, and you can't overestimate like what that— what one singer can do.

-I know.

-You know?

And how it can change the way something's performed.

And it's not that they're not being traditional, because that is traditional.

It's just the way it goes.

Yeah.

I think as a people and as just— a world, you know, we're constantly sharing and taking up stuff, maybe without realizing, you know, and just bringing it, part of our own.

We are the one people.

-Absolutely.

We travel, we take things with us, we change where we go, and we are changed.

-Yes -All the time.

Without knowing.

-Without knowing.

Yeah, yeah.

Our language has changed.

You know, how we write it, you know, has changed even since the '50s and the '60s.

You know, and the grammar is changing.

So, yeah.

So for me, what I try to do is I try to listen to those old recordings of those people that would have been more entrenched in the tradition, would have had less outside influences of radio and gramophones.

And that and I hope that that'll help.

But our people traveled, too.

You know, our our guys from Connemara went over to the States and came back again, you know, I have that in some of my songs, you know, like “Cailleach an Airgid”, she's a wealthy woman who has gone over to America and she has come back wealthy.

And they're asking, is she going to marry, you know, so why wouldn't she have brought some, you know, stateside traditions with her?

People forget that the ocean is a two-way street.

-Yes.

You know.

-Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

♪ [Singing in Irish] ♪ That's such a great story.

When you're singing that, -Yeah.

-What's, what's in your head?

-Oh, my God, I'm having so much fun in my head.

And, um, I can't help myself.

I just feel like I always want to perform, like, I do— stuff that my face does, that I'm completely unaware of, because I when I'm singing the song, saying the song, performing the song, I want to have that connection with somebody, with my audience.

And that kind of flies in the face of what, you know, our tradition comes from -You're not putting your cap over your head.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I was taught to be a performer.

I was taught to go on the stage and to do that.

Now, I'm still I still try to be kind of rigid.

If you go to the singing competitions that happen around Halloween time, the big ones, in the Irish language and August time for the All-Irelands and stuff.

You know, they, they give them a chair to stand like this and sing a song and it's still unnatural, you know, you're half on the stage and half not.

-Yeah, right.

But for me, I have to try— if I'm missing that connection, and I missed it so much with Covid, I found that just, it just, the music was gone from me, you know, there was no point.

-Yeah.

There's no singing to a screen.

You know, singing to the camera.

-No!

-Ah, Gott.

So, when I'm singing the likes of “Cailleach an Airgid”, I'm having so much fun because I become the Cailleach and I'm telling her story or whatever, or I'm becoming the person who's talking about her.

I'm living the time.

I'm seeing the steamboat.

I'm, you know, I'm racing along and I have great fun.

And if I'm singing the slow, heartfelt songs of death or tragedy, you know, I'm there.

I'm the person dying in the bed, or I'm the person talking about it.

-Yeah.

-You're not meant to be.

You're only meant to be the storyteller.

I just— but that's— I can't help what I am, who I am.

But this is it, you know— I mean, it's I think, I think there's, there's, re than one way that is still connected to the center of it.

You know what I mean?

-Yeah.

-That's —your... -Yeah, that's just my way.

My mother married an Egyptian, and living in Ireland was was huge.

There was no Egyptians, I don't think, in Ireland at the time.

And they seemed— There's a culture in Egypt of the TV going back to the ‘40s, black-and-white.

And I have very strong recollections of Dad getting the satellite dish and that programming coming into our sitting room.

We had BBCs, but we had also Umm Kulthum singing you know, on a stage, huge physical presence of a woman, in front of an orchestra, which was classical instruments and Egyptian instruments, and she'd have her handkerchief and just a huge crowd in front of her.

And I remember being, you know, that was profound for me, watching that.

That was not how our songs were sung, but maybe that's what I was seeing on “Top of the Pops” and stuff like that with their microphones.

You know she was having the time of her life on that stage -She was amazing!

-She would sing some line, her songs mightn't be so long, but the audience would go rapturous over one line of whatever she was singing of “Habibi...” “La Ya Habibi” And she got this round of applause would happen in the middle of the first song so, you know, yeah, just the orchestra would know “do it again”.

Play it again, Sam.

So the song could go on for a long time.

-Amazing.

Do you sing any of her songs?

No, no, I, I don't have very much Arabic.

Just small little bits in there, you know?

-That's all right.

-Enough to bless you.

I suppose, there's more in the tradition of the songs that I sing.

It's not all... it's not all Irish songs.

Even though it's the Irish would be so important to me.

We have an equally rich tradition of songs in the English language.

And, you know, immigration plays a lot on that.

So I sing a song called “A Stór Mo Chroí” which could be a mother or father or just a family member, talking to their... to their person who's going to leave.

And to me, I always visualize it that they're going to America because the immigration was huge going and coming back sometimes.

But, oftentimes they never came back from America.

And the song goes, you know, when you're over there, you know, listen for the voice calling you home and, you know, don't forget the people will never forget you at home.

So, um, that's —that's a good one.

♪ A Stór Mo Chroí when you're far away from the home that you will soon be leaving ‘Tis many's the time by night and by day that your heart it will be sorely grieving.

For the stranger's land may be fine and fair and rich in its treasures holding You'll pine, I know, for the long, long ago.

and the ones that you left behind you.

A Stór Mo Chroí in the strangers' land there is plenty of wealth and of wailing.

While gems adorn the rich and grand there are faces with hunger paling.

Oh, the road may be dreary and hard to tread, the lights of other cities how they'll blind you.

Won't you turn, A Stór, to Erin's shore and the ones you left behind you?

A Stór Mo Chroí when the evening mist O'er mountain and meadow is falling Won't you turn away from the throng and the rest?

And then maybe you'll hear me calling.

For the sound of a voice that is sorely missed.

Calling for speedy returning Aroon, aroon, won't you come back soon to the love that is never old.