"In Concert" Transcription from the Enya mailing list
Dave Allum
reposted from the Enya mailing list. Anyone wishing to join the list
may do so by sending a message to enya-r...@boulder.colorado.edu
----- Start of reposted material -----
From: boyd johnson <joh...@com.spectra>
Subject: Re: Enya on ABC's _In_Concert_ (corrected repost of transcript)
To: en...@edu.colorado.boulder
Date: Mon, 11 May 92 16:46:11 PDT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL0]
Sender: enya-r...@edu.colorado.boulder
Please pardon the double post, but David Eiche pointed out a couple
minor errors in transcription. You may junk my previous post.
Also, would somebody with access to alt.* please post it there if it
isn't already there?
I transcribed Enya's monologue from the Friday 5-8-92 "In Concert" for
those of you that may have missed it. I tried to be as accurate as
possible. Please excuse any errors. Enjoy!
Some errors corrected 5-11-92
Boyd Johnson nosc!spectra.com!johnson or joh...@spectra.com
"Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)" video begins:
My first encounter with music was traditional Irish music, and then
later on, when I started to study classical music I felt I'd love to be
able to combine my love of classical music with Irish traditional
music.
I come from a very big family. I have four brothers and four sisters,
and there's always been a lot of music in my family. It goes back to my
grandparents.
I'm a very private person, but with my music I'm extremely personal, and
it's a time where I open completely, especially with all my emotions,
and there are happy, sad emotions that I go through especially with my
melodies.
It all began with an idea, and one of the ideas was the vocal idea.
And at first we worked on soundtracks, so there was no need for lyrics.
So I used to dedicate and focus mainly on melody. And then when it came
that we were asked for lyrics to write a song I felt I had given
everything I wanted towards the melody, and I had no inclination or
desire to try and translate my emotions in lyrics.
But at this stage I was living with Nicky and Roma [NOTE 1], and Roma got
to know me very well, and she'd been working on the project with me, and
she felt that she could conjure the feelings that I was feeling through
the melody and what I wanted to say in lyrics, and that's how it came
about, how she started to write the lyrics.
It's so personal to us, that I think people can sense this. It's not
like three people sit in a studio, we decide "this is fine".
It takes a long time for us to come to that stage. We work on a piece
of music; we put lyrics to it; we put a title to it, but that could be
six months before we finally listen.
"Carribean Blue" video starts:
I will sing a vocal part maybe sixteen [60?] times exactly the same and
then I will sing sixteen part of a harmony to this, and then I built up
maybe to two hundred vocal parts alone, and what has happened is this
sound comes forth, and it's a sound that we have developed, and it's
very much linked with my melodies as well. It complements my melodies.
I like to sing by using my voice as an instrument, and especially with
my classical training. In some cases for a song I might use my voice as
a string section to sing the staccato, the arpeggiated sounds, but this
is done purely with a voice sound, and it's something that myself and
the producer Nicky Ryan have worked for a long time to push the voice
to see what we can achieve with it, and by no means we don't feel we
have finished with experimenting with the voice.
When I mention about Irish traditional music and I mention about
classical, well there is another influence which comes from Church
music, and having been brought up a Catholic I would have sung a lot of
hymns, and I grew to love the structure of a hymn where the melody is
very simple, and hence people will know what the next note is and
will join in, and it's a wonderful feeling and I like to capture
some of this feeling as well. I love melodies.
NOTE 1: (Thanks to David Eiche ei...@star.ENET.dec.com)
Nicky Ryan and his wife Roma are Enya's producer and lyricist
respectively, but the relationship is even closer than that.
Enya moved in with the Ryans 10 years ago (at age 19), after
she stopped touring with her kin in the group Clannad. It
seems that the Ryans have provided her with the moral support
and the quiet environment that Enya needs to work.
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======= Boyd Johnson <=> San Diego, Ca. <=> nosc!spectra!johnson =======