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The Rebirth of Moya Brennan
By Louise Carroll
Irish America June/July 2004, pages 58 and 59
 If
you don't immediately recognize the name Moya Brennan, it's only because she
recently changed the spelling of her name. As the lead singer of Clannad,
and now a successful solo artist in her own right, Brennan had been known as
Maire Brennan for years. She explains, "I was not winning in trying to get
people to say my name right, and it was harder for people to find me in the
record store. So I just changed a couple of letters to make it easier."
In fact, she was reluctant to make the change earlier because she worried people
would assume she was imitating her younger sister Enya, one of the most
successful Irish musicians of the past 20 years. (Enya originally spelt
her name Eithne.)
Fans of ethereal Celtic music should take
note of the new name spelling because they won't want to miss out on Brennan's
new album. Released by Universal Music, Two Horizon is a unique
concept album and has received wide critical acclaim. Building on her
demonstrable strengths as a singer from her almost 30 years in Clannad, she
takes her music in a new direction and has re-introduced her audience to a truly
traditional instrument - the Irish harp.
Brennan admits that she has at times
resisted her position as a harpist, going back to her days as a teenager.
"My Dad decided that it would be a lovely idea for a daughter, [to learn it] and
he would start with me, the eldest of nine. I actually hated the idea of
harp and singer. I would have been into different kinds of music at that
stage, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The harp wasn't hip. But
I went and learned it." Thankfully her father was persistent and her
talent as a harpist secured her position in the band when her siblings formed
Clannad in 1970. (The band has recently released a greatest hits album:
In a Lifetime.)
 But even in her years in Clannad, as much
as she loved the harp, it was treated as an afterthought. "The harp was
always one of the last things to go on when we were making an album," she
explains. Strangely enough, it's the harp that Brennan writes her music
on. "When I was composing any songs, I always did it on the keyboard but
with a harp sound." However, she has resisted using the harp as the center
of an album until Two Horizons. "But you know what it's like in
Ireland, you open the newspaper [the Independent] and you see the harp on
it, on Guinness there's a harp on it, and you get a letter from the government
and there's a harp on it. And you think it's so overexposed. But
then, only in Ireland it is. And even Irish people like the harp, and then
it dawned on me, this might be an idea," she explains.
Brennan's relationship with the harp has
come full circle on Two Horizons. The album is a story that unfolds
from the first song to the last, telling of Brennan's quest to find a missing
harp. The harp that belongs in Tara, an important ruling area in ancient
Ireland, has disappeared. A blind stranger entreats her to find it and
return it to its rightful place. The songs then guide the listener on her
journey. Brennan explains, "With every song there's a line or two to give
you the picture of where you are at with my story. But it's not too
detailed so that the listener can be part of it with me. There are
different permutations of how you can review the story." Indeed, even the
identity of the stranger is open for interpretation. Brennan says that he
could be the legendary 17th century Irish harpist Turlough O'Carolan, but she
likes to keep the mystery alive by not making definitive pronouncements.
The various meanings and the symbols in
the album come from Brennan's roots as a Gaelic songwriter. She explains,
"Ancient Gaelic songwriters wrote in very much a cryptic way because years ago
in Ireland, they weren't allowed to sing about their country or their land or
their heritage. So they used to write in ways with two or three different
meanings."
 Brennan has also embraced the Gaelic
language throughout her career, and she sings in Irish and English on Two
Horizons. "In Clannad, we used the language as if it's just another
instrument," she says. "I still use chants and choruses that come
naturally. I choose the language that feels more natural. Sometimes
I write in Irish and I may translate it into English and if it feels okay, then
it's fine with me."
In addition the the harp and the Irish
language, Tara, a place in County Meath on the east part of Ireland, inspired
Two Horizons. In ancient Ireland, the High Kings ruled from Tara and
traditional celebrations and rituals took place there. Brennan points out,
"Even in the 1800s, [political leader] Daniel O'Connell had a gathering of
a million people at Tara." Considering the great importance of this area,
she was astounded that before she recorded her song "Tara," there was only one
song previously written about the area. It was the Irish minstrel Thomas
Moore's song "The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls," and it inspired
Brennan's story.
Her first visit to Tara almost two years
ago influenced the title of her album. On the advice of a friend, she
arrived at the top of the hill at 5:30 a.m. to watch the sun come up.
Brennan says, "I arrived up there and it was a clear sky and a full moon.
I didn't set that up! And I was standing there and I could almost touch
the moon." At the opposite horizon, the sun came creeping up, and thus
Two Horizons was born.
 The album signals a rebirth of Brennan's
career, and it's inspiring to see a woman who has 30 years of experience in the
business still push the boundaries with her music. She ponders whether the
story of the journey that the album tells is an allegory for her life.
She says, "I don't know. I don't
think there are as many dark moments on the album as there would have been in my
life. I think there is more hope and encouragement and spiritual earthy
feel to this album than would be in my life. But the happiness at the end
of the album, that is very much where I am in my own life now. There is a
definite fulfillment."
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