Ó Snodaigh trapping butterflies in music
KÍLA FRONTMAN RÓNÁN Ó SNODAIGH REFLECTS ON A LIFE DEVOTED TO CREATIVITY, HOW HE IS FACING THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWN, AND THE ORIGINS OF SONGS, WRITES MARY FOGARTY
RÓNÁN Ó Snodaigh was raised in an environment which lent itself to taking up arts, music and creativity. A founding member of the renowned Kíla, a poet, songwriter, bodhrán player and teacher, he has lived in the coastal town of Bray for the past seven years.
Last Thursday evening, he treated his followers to a solo concert on Facebook Live.
‘My mother is a sculptor and a writer. My dad’s a writer, a publisher and historian,’ said Rónán, reflecting on his personal history.
‘When you grow up in a house like ours, that’s what the normal is. Poetry and politics, that’s what was discussed.’
He always wanted to be a writer, ‘ like Jack Kerouac, travelling the world and writing fantastic journals’.
When it’s put to him that he’s achieved just that, Rónán is modest. ‘Ara, I’ve written a couple of songs and a few poems,’ he said. ‘It’s gas isn’t it, There’s a certain age and you can see yourself and you go “I’m f **kin’ brilliant”. You never match up to your fantastic dream of yourself.’
Music became a part of his life largely in Rónán’s school days at Coláiste Eoin in south County Dublin.
‘Rossa and Eoin (Ó Snodaigh), and Colm (Mac Con Iomaire) started a band with a few other lads. They kept with it and I started tagging along with them and went busking,’ said Rónán. Another Ó Snodaigh brother, Colm, would also join the band, named Kíla.
‘One thing leads to another,’ said Rónán. ‘I met great musicians. You had to be really good to play with people that you think are brilliant.’
At that time, the busking and live music scene in Dublin included such musicians and songwriters as Mic Christopher, Glen Hansard and Paddy Casey. ‘You keep going down that path that leads you after years of being a musician to be as good as you’re meant to be.’
The musician dreamed at one time of being an electric guitarist like Francis Rossi (of Status Quo). ‘But there was a bodhrán in the house. I suppose it’s what comes to hand. I still play the guitar, but I’m not anywhere near as good as Francis Rossi!’ The process of composing, of writing a song or a piece of music or poetry, does not come with a straightforward formula or road-map. ‘I call it trapping butterflies or something, you know, it’s impossible.’
Yet Rónan has proved it possible many times over, and in two languages. ‘ What comes first when writing a song isn’t predictable,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the idea comes first. People think the idea always comes first, it doesn’t. Sometimes the melody comes first or sometimes an atmosphere comes first, and then things coincide.
‘Because I’m still trying to be a writer, I write a lot, scribbles. I’m hoping that I’m coinciding it with whatever atmosphere, idea or melody I have. And it doesn’t always work. 80 per cent of the time or more. Sometimes the 20 per cent comes because you have to do something. It comes out of “we need a song”, so you just pick up and squash bits of ideas together and make it.’
Kíla is still, present circumstances excepted, gigging and composing. ‘We’re still at it, although it’s not all the same people,’ said Rónán. ‘Brian (Hogan - bass) said a cool thing. He said
“you do it until you can’t”. You have to grow, and life brings you here, there and everywhere.’
Kíla has brought its unique collection of Irish traditional and world-music inspired compositions all over the world. ‘We’ve had our peaks and troughs,’ said Rónán. ‘We were big in Spain for a while. We had an album that seemed to be a hit for a while.
‘We were big in Japan for a while. We went up and down America, but we weren’t big in America. We were small in America. It goes through phases.’
Under normal circumstances, Rónán would be giving weekly group bodhrán classes at Signal Art Centre in Bray on Wednesday evenings from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. He is also one of the ‘Lonesome Boat Larries’ who play unplugged sets on Sunday afternoons in the Harbour Bar. During these and other projects, he encourages creativity and expression in others.
‘Everyone isn’t the same, that’s the beauty of the world isn’t it? So everyone will need different things from different things. I’d be reluctant to say creativity is really vital and it’ll cure the world or anything. I don’t know if I’ve got a philosophy I can apply to anyone else.
‘I had loads of shy-nesses and all that carry on. I had a bucket-load of that – self-doubt and hesitancy. I still do sometimes. But I can see it in other people. I know that if someone encourages me, it really lifts me. It’s in the word “courage”. It’s an amazing injection of courage. You feel alright because someone told you that’s good or you’ll be grand or do that ... So I tried to do that for other people. The reward is huge; you walk differently.’
Irish is Rónán’s first language, and he writes both in Béarla and As Gaeilge. ‘For me there’s a difference,’ he said. ‘ They’re two different voices, two different paths in the brain nearly.’
His brother, Colm Ó Snodaigh has said he doesn’t feel any difference in terms of writing in his two languages. ‘Maybe I deliberately made the difference – if I can’t compose in this language, I’ll hop. It’s like two different wells. If you’re talking to me in English, you’re talking to one part of me. Talking to me in Irish there’s another fella there.’
There was no English allowed in the Ó Snodaigh home, so English is very much Rónán’s second language. ‘I loved it, and I still do, because I learned it all by myself. I like playing with it. I like messing As Gaeilge and putting a little bit of Béarla into it. There’s a little bit of craic to that. It would be lovely if life was all As Gaeilge though, I’d have a great time.’
It’s been seven years now since Rónán left Kerry because his older children were moving to Wexford. He had lived in the south West for seven years. ‘ Things changed, I needed to be on this coast,’ he said. ‘ There’s a lot more to Bray than I even know yet, I’ve only been here seven years.
‘I was pretty lost when I came here. Things didn’t work out a few times. Everything crashed,’ He said that at one point a few years ago he and his young family were very close to moving, but someone stepped in and helped them find a house.
‘I told the príomhoide down in the school “listen we’re done, we’re not putting the kids in for next year, just because of economics”. She helped us get the house there – otherwise I’d be in Waterford. That’s never happened to me before. It’s an example of kindness. When you’re shown kindness, it kind of disarms you. You can’t be a moan when you’re shown kindness. You have to accept it and be humble. I’m here in Bray and if we can stay, we’ll stay.’
Rónán has enjoyed life so far in the town, and has by no means been reluctant to get involved in numerous ways. He has a special fondness for the sea, particularly during this time of isolation.
‘I’ve enjoyed playing in the Harbour the last five years, and doing the lessons. I did some of the tree planting up on the hill.’
Bray, he says, is a ‘cool town’. ‘It’s a bit of a mini Dublin, but it’s a country town, there’s a bit of country in it.’
Since the restrictions placed on life due to Covid-19, he has been down the seafront every day, collecting seaweed and gathering his thoughts. ‘ The sea does help,’ said Rónán. ‘I think it dissolves the static around us.’
Hundreds and thousands of bands and musicians are now in a position where they are unable to perform to an audience in the flesh, unable to work. Many have been dipping a toe in the digital waters, posting videos and doing live online sets.
‘It’s kind of terrifying,’ said Rónán. ‘ You’d hope, and it seems to be happening, that creative people will come up with creative solutions. Everyone’s been using the phone and Facebook and singing into it. We’ll get better at that. I haven’t got any solutions yet; I haven’t quite figured it out. It’s up to us, that’s all I can say, to find the ways of doing it that people like.’
Rónán said that the virus hasn’t managed to stop the occurrence of creativity, albeit in a most unusual manner. ‘ There’s all sorts happening. People are singing out their windows and stuff, there are cool things happening. The music is going on anyway. People say it’s in the air, that’s probably true.’
He hasn’t started to miss performing to an audience just yet, a much-needed rest having been forced upon him. ‘ My thumb is better, my voice is better. I was probably gigging too much anyway.’
There is an edginess and a restlessness that comes with that though, it being in Rónán’s make-up to be active and busy.
‘I’m trying to gear down into the place where I was when I was coming up with ideas rather than imparting them,’ he said. ‘ They’re two different things – being a creator and being a performer. If you perform too much you run out of stuff because you’re not in the mode or gear to create.’
Reluctant to dole out advice to anyone on how to approach life in uncharted times, Rónán can only impart how he himself is facing the crisis. ‘Everyone has their own houseful and how they’re going to do it. It is a huge adjustment. Hopefully we will find ways to work.
‘ This thing isn’t going to last forever either. We’ll end up missing this because we’ll all have to work 12 hours a day to make up for all the money we owe. There is a real fear in the air about how does this work out for everyone.’
Meanwhile, for Rónán it’s all about ‘ gearing down, digging the garden and going back to the simple things’. ‘ You breathe in and breathe out,’ he said. ‘ This is time to breathe in, isn’t it?’
Wild Journeys, a collection of musical pieces composed by Rónán from the Crossing the Line TV series, Wild Journeys, is available on ronanosnodaigh.bandcamp.com, Spotify, iTunes and other platforms.
The collection includes 15 instrumental tracks, representing 15 animals – a meditation in the rhythms and sounds of each of the featured animals as they take their migratory journeys.
A series of bodhrán tutorials by Rónán is available on his YouTube channel.
THERE’S ALL SORTS HAPPENING, PEOPLE SINGING OUT THEIR WINDOWS. THE MUSIC IS GOING ON. PEOPLE SAY IT’S IN THE AIR, THAT’S PROBABLY TRUE