Enya - A Celtic Spell

Enya is not just the diminutive of Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin (in Gaelic, “daughter of Brennan”), the prodigy singer who grew up alongside her three siblings in a legendary “family band” called Clannad. Enya is an approach to music, to vocal technique, to recording methods. A sensory and at the same time “abstract” experience, one that seems to spring from some unfathomable dimension outside of time, where the ancestral allure of Celtic folk and the solemnity of sacred music merge with a modern electronic sound. In short, “Enya” is a genre unto itself, one of those ingenious inventions destined to remain a unicum. Not only will no one ever manage to reproduce it, but she herself will refrain from offering any live reconstruction of it, since it would inevitably fall short.

Enya is thus the arcane enchantress who bewitches the very last stretch of the '80s. The decade's hedonistic, neo-romantic aesthetic, its plastic, synthetic sheen, is by now fading, on the verge of a new decade that will reject it entirely in the name of a renewed cult of authenticity, one that will find its new fetishes in grunge guitars. Enya is thus the last artificial paradise before the awakening: a dreamlike, celestial trip, yet as sensual as a primitive rite, encased in a gleaming hi-tech shell.

Her dreamlike, rarefied compositions combine the austerity of classical music with pop's immediate melodicism, the suggestions of sacred and medieval music with sonic layering worthy of the great pioneers of electronics. But what breathes a soul into these abstract sketches is above all her angelic contralto, skillfully bolstered in the studio by producer Nick Ryan through extensive use of the “multivocals” technique (for a single song, in fact, Enya records and layers up to a hundred voices, and the result is a polyphonic choir worthy of the most solemn Gregorian chants). The lyrics, meanwhile, are almost always entrusted to Nick's wife, the poet Roma Ryan.

Gaelic is the first language of this formidable composer, born in Gweedore, County Donegal, in the heart of Ireland, into a family of musicians. Hers was a difficult mission: to export the culture of her island, the mystery of the Celts, the magic of a folk culture built on archaic myths and sacredness. Enya succeeded, starting from when, still just eighteen, she began singing alongside her three siblings in the “family band”, Clannad, one of the institutions of Irish folk alongside the Chieftains and the Pogues. In the mid-Eighties, when the BBC asked her to write a piece for a multi-part documentary on the Celts, she had already left the group. She sent English television a short composition. They called her back and entrusted her with all 70 minutes of the series' score. “The Celts was actually my second experience with a soundtrack,” she recalls. “I'd already written the music for 'The Frog Prince', a film produced by David Puttnam. But that was the confirmation of just how closely my visual imagination went hand in hand with musical composition.”

Of the 70 minutes of music written for the BBC score, 41 (suitably reworked and rearranged) were revisited on Enya, her debut album (later reissued as The Celts), which immediately shot up the Irish charts, even reaching number 1. The Irish artist reveals her full multifaceted talent, playing every instrument herself and showcasing the crystalline purity of her voice. The title track, at once epic and immediate with its martial drums and delicate refrain, is the lead single of an album made up mostly of short pieces, built almost entirely around Celtic stories and legends. One of the album's cornerstones is its use of children's fairy tales, albeit distorted and transfigured into a series of abstract panels: “Boadicea”, for instance, unfolds over a slow, almost liturgical pace, with Enya's whisper wrapped in dark layers of synth; “Fairytale”, a sublimation of the myth of Midir, king of the Fairies, and his passion for princess Etain, is an instrumental of great melodic impact, in which the singer's trills are immersed in a magma of keyboards, hisses and distant murmurs.

Dedicated instead to director Ridley Scott, “Aldebaran” (from the Arabic Al-dabaran: “the follower”) takes its name from the alpha star of the Taurus constellation: it's a mystical journey, built around enchanted guitar arpeggios and layered voices (in Gaelic), creating a sense of starry stillness. At other times it's the rhythm that takes over, as in “March of the Celts”, where the emphasis on percussion blends with a rich arrangement of piano, bells, strings and synthesizers. But when Enya slows her music box down even further, we arrive at magical, mysterious realms, like those of “The Sun In The Stream” (with piano and flutes to the fore), “Deireadh an Tuath” (a brief interlude, with an archaic-sounding chant, in pure Gaelic) and “Portrait” (a melancholy air for piano, strings and synth). Adding to the album's climate of austere solemnity are “I Want Tomorrow”, with vocals (this time in English) supported by strings and an unsettling guitar solo, and the Renaissance madrigal of “To Go Beyond” (also reprised in the final track), with gentle piano melodies and, later, synthesizers and choirs/echoes providing counterpoint to the vocal.

My foundation is always Celtic music, into which classical and pop occasionally creep in. I always start from the melody and let myself be carried along in search of the best way to express it. But in the studio all I have is a blank canvas to paint on. Anything can come out of it.

(Enya)

The important collaboration with fellow Irishwoman Sinead O’Connor, on the album “The Lion and the Cobra” (on which she reads a passage from the Bible in Irish on the song “Never Get Old”), is the prelude to Enya’s definitive consecration, which arrives in 1988 with her great masterpiece, Watermark.

Driving it forward is the extraordinary single “Orinoco Flow”: that unprecedented blend of Celtic melodies and keyboards used like African percussion, galloping along to the cry of “sail away”, sends the British charts into meltdown, holding the n.1 spot for three consecutive weeks. And it doesn't end there, because “Orinoco Flow” floods outward, just like the Venezuelan river it's named after, sweeping across half the world, helped along by the bucolic, pastel-toned video clip.

But the nursery-rhyme charm of “Orinoco Flow” is only the commercial centerpiece of a treasure chest that opens track after track, revealing all its enchantment. Starting with the incipit of the title track: a brief piano instrumental of classical ancestry and infinite tenderness. Equally precious, if less thrilling, are the other two instrumental interludes for piano and keyboards: the austere “Miss Clare Remembers” and the more urgent “River”.

The album's spiritual breath comes through in that kind of religious psalm that is "On Your Shore", with a minimal organ accompanying the vocals, but it's also sublimated in the slow-motion chant of "Longships", where the interplay between Enya's heavenly warbling, the choirs and the instrumental pad comes close to the most exhilarating dream-states of Cocteau Twins, and in the triumphant march of "Storms in Africa", with Chris Hughes's African drums evoking Peter Gabriel-style tribalism, punctuating yet another sublime melodic progression.

An atmosphere of ecstatic stillness dominates, winding through the (magical) flute gusts of “Exile” and growing more shadowy in the adagio of “Evening Falls”, thanks to a singular blend of “ambient” synthesizers and church-organ phrases. Darker still, the gorgeous medieval litany of “Cursum Perficio” unwinds into an ever more quivering, sinister crescendo of catacomb-like choirs and stately synths, while the closing “Na Laetha Geal M’Oige” – featuring Irish folksinger Davy Spillane on uillean pipes over a synthetic backdrop – perfectly sums up that union of ancient and modern which makes Watermark a timeless classic. It will go on to sell more than 11 million copies worldwide, gifting the Irish singer the most unexpected stardom of the decade.

In 1991 came Shepherd Moons, another elegant and evocative work that confirmed Enya as the queen of the Celtic-new age strand. Once again, it opens with a brief instrumental theme, the sweet title track. The record's highlights, though, are above all the dreamy waltz of the single “Caribbean Blue” (which updates the rhythmic experiments of “Orinoco Flow”), the austere elegy of “Marble Halls” (a reworking of an Irish traditional), the epic march of “Ebudae” and the moving piano air of “Lothlorien”. But “minor” episodes shine too, like the medieval-flavored piece “After Ventus”, another refined display of her utterly distinctive voice, and the limpid melody of “Book Of Days”, which unfolds over a high-class electronic fabric. The instrumentation is always rich, skilfully alternating the coldness of the synth with the magic of typically folk instruments like harp and cello.

The album confirms Enya's full class, even if, compared to Watermark, it perhaps appears less melodically explosive.

The follow-up, Memory of Trees, launched by the single “Anywhere is”, was even awarded a Grammy in 1996. Overall, though, it proves to be a minor record in Enya's output, barring a few notable exceptions (the requiem marked by obsessive drums of “Pax Deorum”, the ethereal “China Roses”, enriched by a neoclassical arrangement for harpsichord and violins).

Lingering in a touch too much baroque flourish and overusing production techniques somewhat, Enya takes a few steps back from the dazzling start of her career.

“My foundation is always Celtic music – Enya explains – into which classical and pop occasionally seep. I always start from the melody and let myself be carried along in search of the best way to express it. That's what has shaped my sound, even though in reality I don't have preconceived ideas when I'm in the studio. I just have a blank canvas to paint on. Anything can come out of it”. Many of Enya's songs are in Gaelic, her family's language. “Today in Ireland, schools only teach English – she says. Twenty years ago there was a mass abandonment of Gaelic, which was seen as something that cut us off from the world. So only a few communities are left still speaking it. But when I go back home I speak it regularly. And today there's a renewed pride in being Irish. The world talks about our music, our art, our literature. And the Irish feel recognized. I'm very happy about this attention, even if I think it's partly down to a trend”.

A Day Without Rain (2000) arrives five years after her previous studio work, The Memory Of Trees, which was followed by her first compilation, Paint The Sky With Stars. It's a return to her dreamy melodies, built on mystical atmospheres and electronic pulses, using the trick of a choir built from multiple overdubs of her own voice. “Taking care of all the voices and harmonies takes a considerable amount of time – Enya explains. Everything you hear on the album is played by me, which is why the production process takes so long. We have a studio in Killiney, just a stone's throw from my home in Dublin, where we do research and development. Compared to other artists, we spend much more time in the studio”. This is also the reason why Enya has never performed live, aside from a brief appearance at the Vatican in '95 during the Christmas Concert: “I'd have to bring too large a band of musicians onstage. Putting together a show would take an enormous amount of commitment, and I don't want to sacrifice my private life. It might be easier to put together a show for an American pay-TV channel, like HBO, where I could have control over everything, and it could be a sort of trial run for an eventual tour”.

Enya's “day without rain” is “an emotional and sentimental diary”. The title – she explains – refers to the mood that hangs over a clear day without rain. In Ireland it rains a lot in every season. We had so many days when it did nothing but rain. But one day the sun finally came out. And that's when I wrote the song that gives the album its title; what else could I have called it?”. A visionary music that makes a near-minimalist repetitiveness its charm, but at times also its limitation. The twelve tracks are the fruit of two years of work and see Enya tackling every instrument herself. It opens with the instrumental overture of the title track before venturing into rhythmic surges (“Wild Child”), ethereal lullabies (the single “Only Time”), sadly gothic melodies (“Tempus Vernum”), right up to the heartfelt invocation of “Fallen Embers”, where the album reaches its mystical peak. Enya's contralto stands out, amid electronic pulses and pianistic romances, with her usual class. And yet the magic formula of this little Irish fairy here and there begins to show a few signs of fatigue.

A multi-instrumentalist and by now a skilled expert in production techniques, Enya still has a soft spot for her favorite instrument, the piano: “I studied it from childhood – she says – for years my teacher was an old priest from Donegal. And the church was my first school. For a long time I sang in the choir, soaking up sacred music. And today I like going back to that church, especially when there's no one there. It's all so serene and quiet… it's very ‘therapeutic’”. For Enya, tranquility is a true way of life: no socializing, no tabloid flings, very few interviews and TV appearances. Curiously, she says she doesn't listen to much music (“it scares me to discover that maybe I got it all wrong, if that's the kind of music the public wants”) and that she prefers male company to female, because “conversations between women almost always end up as gossip and become incredibly boring”. She loves cats, black-and-white films and travel, even travel of the imagination, as shown by the exotic titles of some of her songs (“Orinoco Flow”, “Storms in Africa”, “Caribbean Blue”, “China Roses”). And she admits she prefers a glass of champagne to a pint of very Irish Guinness. You can bet this little Irish fairy will still have plenty to toast to: an average of ten million copies sold per album is a luxury that would make far more talked-about pop stars, like Madonna and Michael Jackson, turn pale with envy.

The latest chapters of her adventure, however, have been disappointing. A downward arc that culminated in Amarantine (Reprise, 2005), an utterly insipid and bland record that rehashes, in a cloying way, sounds and atmospheres exploited with far greater intensity on previous albums. The muffled sounds of “Drifting” and the intense colors of the title track offer perhaps the only points of musical interest.

The curiosity, if anything, comes from the presence of a wholly invented language, “Loxian”, the brainchild of Roma Ryan, the author of her lyrics. An idea born after Enya herself had sung in Elvish for the soundtrack of “The Lord of the Rings”.

Enya is certainly no stranger to more or less fairy-tale evocations of seasons, recurring dates, annual rituals and assorted festivities. Her discography, more than that of a typical pop artist, looks in retrospect like a confessional exercise in the most graceful ways of turning otherwise private — if not downright trivial — emotions into something superhuman. And so even And Winter Came… (2008) makes a certain kind of sense. Eithne Ni Bhraonain had certainly never been so predictable before, not even on its mediocre predecessor. Compared to that album, here the artist also drops her last invention, the “loxian” language, giving herself over instead to the usual feelings that precede the arrival of winter and Christmas.

Hence “Journey Of The Angels” (a bland caricature of Madonna's “Ray Of Light”), “Last Time By Moonlight” (yet another self-imitation of “Caribbean Blue”), “One Toy Soldier” (in which she tries to play the part of a pop singer stripped of her folk overtones) and the chant-like “Stars And Midnight Blue” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (one of the obvious Christmas traditionals), right up to “Dreams Are More Precious”, a parody of Celine Dion's “My Heart Will Go On”. Blurred into the mass, yet still faint echoes of the artistic purity she once showed, are the elegiac instrumental intro of the title track and the sing-along “White Is In The Winter Night” (the second single taken from the album).

Non-existent on the level of traditionalist poetry, the collection is also worth little as mere background listening. The singer's lyrical poses fall apart completely. “Oíche Chiúin” is the Gaelic version of the quintessential Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, written by the Austrian Franz Gruber (1787-1863), which had already appeared on several of her past releases.

Long awaited by old and new fans alike, the eighth album, Dark Sky Island (2015), resets the Celtic fairy's prodigious techniques to their most basic level. Here and there, the best moments in more than fifteen years of activity emerge, at least in terms of self-quotation: above all the harmony of the instrumental “Forge Of The Angels”, the sustained little march of “Even In The Shadows” and marzipan-sweet tunes like “Echoes In Rain”. In any case, between dated ballads (“I Could Never Say Goodbye”) and a new, flimsy revival of the fantasy idiom coined with Ryan Roma (“The Loxian Gate”), what really weighs the album down is precisely its artistic persona, robotically recycled like an unreal image, or an extinct creature preserved in formalin.

Enya has forged a musical formula of great visionary intensity. A formula that has, however, undergone a gradual drying-out and now appears to be completely stalled. For the time being, though, we can make do with the great albums that marked the start of her solo career, chiefly Watermark and Shepherd Moons.

Contributions by Michele Saran (“And Winter Came…”, “Dark Sky Island”)

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