Karan Casey: ‘When you sing, it calms you down... it’s like a prayer'

Karan Casey says festivals can be a great way for people to come together and forget their worries.

The singer-songwriter is one of the headline acts for the annual Cobh Trad Fest, taking place from July 23 to 26.

The event will see some of Ireland’s finest traditional musicians descend on the vibrant coastal town.

Karan will be taking to the stage at the Commodore Hotel on the Saturday of the festival alongside fellow musicians Niall Vallely and Niwel Tsumbu, and with special guests Luasca.

Originally from Waterford, Karan is now based in Cork. She has very fond memories of her childhood, where her musical talent was nurtured from an early age, not only by her parents, but also by one very special teacher.

“I had an amazing teacher, Winifred Foran, in first class in Ballyduff Lower Primary School.

“She regularly brought her pupils to visit her home and enjoy her beautiful garden. We spent many happy days singing with her daughters and learning all kinds of songs.

“It was wonderful having that informal kind of learning experience. I did a gig a while back in Waterford, and she was there. I am so grateful to her for all that she taught me.

“My mother was fantastic for bringing us around to local concerts, and dad was also a great singer. We had a lot of parties at home, and we all had to have our party piece, so being encouraged to sing in front of an audience was something I was used to from an early age, and I guess it stuck with me,” she recalls.

Karan attended UCD and the Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, where she continued her musical studies, and she also played in a jazz band four or five nights a week at George’s Bistro.

“It was great craic. I loved those years, and I am still very fond of Dublin,” she said.

With limited opportunities in Ireland during the late ’80s and early ’90s, Karan was among the many thousands who left Ireland for a life in New York around this time.

“I was waitressing in New York, and I got to know some other musicians. We ended up forming a band called Solas. We were very lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

“We found ourselves just on the cusp of the Riverdance era when all things Irish became very trendy, so we went down really well.”

Since then, Karan has released 12 albums of her own as well as contributing to numerous projects by other artists.

She has featured on more than 80 albums and toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, performing with her own band and collaborating with a stellar range of musicians including Peggy Seeger, James Taylor, Pauline Scanlon, Mick Flannery, The Dubliners, The Boston Pops Orchestra, The Chieftains and Maura O’Connell as well as many others.

“I hold a special place in my heart for the wonderful Maura O’Connell. She taught me to stand up for myself and to be myself both on and off stage, and also to recognise the tremendous joy that you can get from a song.

“She brings that joy to the stage with her, she’s a powerhouse.”

Karan is passionate about the power of song and music, and how richly it is interwoven into the tapestry of our lives.

“We sing at weddings, we sing at funerals, we sing lullabies to our babies.

“When you sing, it calms you down, even the breathing mechanism which you use when singing soothes your nervous system and takes you away from your troubles. It’s like a prayer.

“People find great solace in song. When we sing together, all of our songs dealing with both the joys and sorrows of life bring people closer together and forge a strong sense of community.

“That’s why the Trad Fest in Cobh is so important. There will be a lot of children there too, enjoying the festival, and it’s great that we have such a wealth of songs in our tradition that we can pass on to them.”

In 2018, Karan helped found FairPlé, an organisation aimed at achieving fairness and gender balance for female performers in Irish traditional and folk music, and she continues to be supportive to young women coming into the industry to pursue their musical potential without any barriers.

Her latest album, released in 2023, Nine Apples Of Gold was critically acclaimed and one of the most played albums on folk radio stations that year.

That same year, her stage show about women in the Irish revolutionary period, The Women, We Will Rise, was premiered at The Everyman theatre in Cork and went on to be performed in Dublin and Glasgow.

“There were a lot of women revolutionaries, humanitarians and artists who had huge ambitions for Ireland around this time, but there were no songs about them, so I decided to write some.

“Women such as Kathleen Clarke, the two nurses Julia Grenan and Elizabeth O’ Farrell, who delivered the surrender, as well as Countess Markievicz, were fighting not only for Ireland, but for workers’ rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and trying to alleviate the terrible poverty at the time.

“I’ve recorded these songs and am hoping to put them out as well as working on a retrospective to release next year for the 30th anniversary of my first album, Songlines, in 1997.

“I am really looking forward to playing at the Cobh Trad Fest. I think that festivals are a great way of coming together as a community and forgetting all about your own troubles and the troubles of the world.”

• See www.cobhtradfest.ie.