As a child, Eithne Brennan grew up not far from Mullennan, my home, in one of the most prestigious families in the history of Irish traditional music. How, then, could Enya reduce this same man to tears? After all, even Aphex Twin’s most soothing ambient works often made him unplug my CD player, as if their nontraditional musical forms might damage our wiring. It just confused me to see my father similarly moved. Her melodies recursed and interwound her vocals shimmered and shone, at once new and old, alien and familiar. I was mesmerized by the folding synthscapes of “Caribbean Blue” or “Sumiregusa (Wild Violet),” which hit my childhood ears like probes from a far-flung planet. I, a youthful devotee of ambient music, loved Enya for her place in that genre’s canon. The global success of this mélange of Irish traditional music and new-age electronica was unlikely given that the bulwark of her fandom, in Ireland at least, appeared to be people like my father: rank traditionalists entering middle age, few of whom would have countenanced synthesizers, arpeggiated strings or heavy reverb in any other aural context. Enya’s music is suffused with an aura of mysticism so nebulous it borders on the occult nevertheless it enraptured a man so Catholic he would interrupt family holidays with cheerful visits to Marian shrines. Her music wasn’t like anything else he listened to, but then, it’s not much like the music anyone else makes either. My father’s fascination with Enya was mysterious. But none of those artists struck me like my father’s personal favorite, Enya. The cheerful ribaldry of the Dubliners, Christy Moore’s “Live at the Point” and the earnest, heart-tugging confessionals of Eleanor McEvoy and Mary Black all soundtracked our winding trips through the unending swatches of green that formed the Irish countryside. Many of these would be familiar to any Irishman from that time. On the long drives through Ireland that peppered my childhood like bouts of flu, my father played songs from a small pool of classic albums.
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