I was in a middle school when my music teacher, Richard McCready, a flamboyant Irishman first introduced our class to a new band called Celtic Woman. They had just released their first PBS Special that featured a cast of beautiful Irish women singing traditional Irish music with a contemporary flare. As I watched song after song, something leapt in my young heart. The music connected with me on a profoundly deep level, like nothing I had experienced before. I was absolutely captivated. That night, I made my mother take me to the store to buy Celtic Woman’s CD and the rest, as they say, was history.
I have been a devoted fan of the international Irish sensation Celtic Woman for over a decade. It was the amazing music of this band, directed by the brilliant Irish composer, David Downes, that ignited a spark in my young soul to reconnect and rediscover my personal heritage and history. Over the past decade, with the constant help of Celtic Woman and their ten subsequent albums, I have dug deep into my family history and the spirituality and culture of my ancestors and have become enthralled with the beauty and mystery of Celtic culture and spirituality.
This decade long journey is reached a high point this month, as I spent three weeks celebrating the released of my first book, Nomad: A Spirituality For Travelling Light, traveling across the United Kingdom and Ireland. This journey for me is far more than a book tour, but really feels like a spiritual pilgrimage, a homecoming, returning to a land, a people, and a culture that I feel so a part of and have longed for since I first saw Celtic Woman’s DVD in 2005. To celebrate this pilgrimage, I am going to be taking the next month to sit down and talk with some of the most influential figures in the world of Celtic culture and spirituality, reflecting with them on the beauty and gift of the Celtic way of seeing and being in the world.
Today, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to sit down and have a chat with one of the newest members of Celtic Woman, Eabha McMahon. We spoke just an hour before she took the stage for the first of two concerts in Denver, Colorado. Eabha is one of the most hauntingly beautiful alto’s that I’ve ever heard, and has extensive experience with both Irish music and culture beyond Celtic Woman. It was truly and honor and great fun to chat with Eabha about all things Celtic today.
BR: Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation today, Eabha. So, you’re one of the newest members of Celtic Woman. Did you know about the group before you joined? Are you all popular in Ireland?
EM: Celtic Woman really is an ambassador for Irish music around the world, but also in Ireland. Irish people are really proud of it because it brings traditional Irish music, fused with other genres, to a world stage, which to Irish people is incredible. Our culture is storytelling and songs sung without accompaniment, and to have a group like Celtic Woman to take these songs and bring them into the 21 Century, giving them life again is incredible. I grew up listening to the girls and it’s really amazing that I get to be a part of it now.
BR: I am about to embark on a book tour across the UK and Ireland this weekend and it feels perfect starting off this tour by going to hear Celtic Woman. But I’ve always sensed an inner longing for Ireland and Scotland and it really does feel like I am going home in a very real sense. That notion of longing for home comes through in a lot of Celtic music and folklore. As someone who grew up in Ireland, is that connection to heritage a part of your upbringing and experience?
EM: Definitely! I grew up in Dublin and my family spoke Irish, so we didn’t speak English in my house until I was about six, until my mom and dad decided that they should probably teach us English so we could take part in normal day things in Ireland. The music I grew up listening to and singing was traditional Irish music, and basically, it’s all stories that date from hundreds of years ago, stories about immigration and the past and spirituality and magical creatures that Ireland is associated with, folklore, like you said. So I grew up only listening to, singing, and playing that kind of music. So, that is what music is to me. It’s home. Wherever I go in the world, as long as I’m singing Irish music, I never feel too far away from home. My grandparents taught me stories through song, and now I will likely teach my kids these stories and songs. That’s how we pass along our culture and history, through song and poetry, and I feel very connected to Ireland, especially through singing and music.
BR: I really sense that that is part of Celtic Woman’s success. That many, especially in our (millennial) generation, didn’t grow up with traditions and having stories passed on to us, especially in the United States, and there seems to be a collective longing to rediscover our roots, our traditions, our heritage.
EM: Absolutely, when you see people coming to a Celtic Woman show, there are a lot of people our age, in their twenties, and you really see this music affecting them. Just the other day, there was a man in the front row, he had to have been about 22, and he was there with his parents who clearly asked him to come along. I don’t think he knew exactly what Celtic Woman was. But I remember after Danny Boy, I looked down and his eyes were full of tears, and he was uncomfortably in tears. He didn’t know why he was feeling this emotion towards this Irish music, and I think that’s a really important point when it comes to Irish music and culture. You come to a show like this and you don’t know why you’re reacting the way you are, why you feel this sense of longing while you’re at the show, but we have to remember that everybody has a past and a lot of people, their grandparents or great grandparents would have come over from Ireland to America, and they would have brought their stories with them, but overtime those stories get lost. I really do think that when people come to the show and they know they have some Irish heritage, the really get a sense of what their past was. The music is so haunting and so beautiful, that even if you’ve never listened to Irish music before, it’s so primal that it hits somewhere inside you and really gets to you. Everybody has a heritage and when you come to watch Celtic Woman, it gives the feeling of belonging and of your past.
BR: Jumping off of that, what is your favorite Irish song and your favorite song from the Destiny tour that you’re on now?
EM: This is really hard, I absolutely love traditional Irish music, it’s basically all that I listen to. I love songs in the Irish language, which are often steeped in sadness, about the heaviness of being Irish, because a lot of them were written and passed down from people who were going through really hard times. My favorite ones are when you can hear a spark of the really funny, or happy, or making the most of what was a very hard time. There’s a song called “The Old Poor Woman”, its about an old woman who has gone missing, and they try to find her. But it’s a funny song, it’s fast and witty.
My favorite song in the show is probably “Danny Boy”, and the reason for that is because it’s a moment in the show where everything stops. Its four of us on stage, and Tommy the guitarist, and it’s a moment of quiet. In the show, its constantly entertaining, but at that moment, everything stops. It’s just beautiful. Before I joined, my granddad, it was his favorite song and sadly in my first tour, he passed away. Every night I sing it, there is a real sense that I can feel his spirit. When you look around, people and crying and they don’t know why. It’s definitely a spiritual moment. It’s like a trance, I don’t even remember doing it every night. It’s amazing!
BR: Forgive me if you get whip lash with these next few questions- they’re all over the place. You have a degree in Human Rights and the Irish language, how does that degree tie into your own career combined with music, or does it?
EM: My dream since I was 12 was to work for people that had less than I did. I wanted to help and to work in human rights. After my senior year, I did a lot of work with UNICEF and the Christina Nobel Foundation and different organizations, and then when I went to Galway, I worked in the human rights sector. I lived in Vietnam for six months and worked at the social medical cent there and then went to Mongolia and lived there for three months, and worked with kids there. It was the best experiences of my life, I loved every moment. What I found is that I was doing music so much, music is like me breathing, so my dream was to be able to do both. I remember contemplating this as a child- how am I going to do human rights and music at the same time? Then I had a chat with my auntie who is a human rights worker in Ireland, and she said “Go do what you love, which is singing, and do what you want to do with your time off.” So for me, that’s how they tie in with each other. It has always been my dream to sing on stage every night and work for human rights organizations in my spare time. So they’re both very much alive in my life.
BR: In Celtic spirituality, Ireland is known as a place of “thin places”. Are there any sacred places that hold spiritual significance for you in Ireland?
EM: You know, I’ve traveled all around the world, and Ireland is one of the most spiritual places I’ve ever been. I’ve found that Galway has such a powerful sense of spirituality- from the people, the water, its all there. When I think of spirituality, I think of creativity and what allows me to open up to that place, and I find that when I am in Galway, it’s stunning. It’s the land of traditional music, islands, water. Definitely Galway.
I want to thank Eabha McMahon for taking time to chat with me about Celtic music and spirituality. To find out more about Eabha, you can visit her website here. For more from Celtic Woman, check out their website here. Until next time!