Musician, Heal Thyself

There’s a track on the album Angel One by Íse (pronounced Ee-sha) called ‘A Lotta Grief’. In one sense it could describe aspects of Íse’s personal life before she discovered music as a truly healing force.
“Two of my brothers died, one from meningitis in 1990 and another in a motor bike accident about three years ago,” she says. “My father also died, and I found those events had a profound effect on me. But music is a wonderful healing power, and my music and my songs allowed me to face those events and helped me through the healing process.”

Her world received another body blow earlier this year with the death of Irish philosopher and thought-provoking author John O’Donoghue. As she says, “When I read his books I’m drawn into the profound things he has to say. Despite being so profound, his writings can be easily understood, as if they’re really very obvious things that we’ve either forgotten or overlook in the whole rush of things. Just like some people dip into the Bible, I regularly go back to O’Donoghue, especially his Divine Beauty. He draws me back to the present every time I read him. I was deeply shocked by his death, and I was disappointed that I never met him, although maybe someday I will. People like O’Donoghue and Nelson Mandela set the bar higher for mankind and inspire us all to try to become the best kind of humans we can be.”
Íse’s musical history dates back to the ‘80s when she was a member of Ton Ton Macoute after Sinéad O’Connor had left the band.
“That period was really just part of the journey I went on to get to where I am now,” she says. “It was part of me breaking away from what I was expected to be. I had this sweet, high choral voice, but I wanted to be a rock star. I was very naive back then, and I met people who had svengali kind of traits. But it was good for me, because when people try to get you to do things and then you find that you don’t want to do those things anyway, that’s a great way of discovering who you are and what you actually want to do with your life.”
This discovery led the singer to form her own band and use music as a form of catharsis.
“I became tired of being a mouthpiece for someone else’s thoughts,” she explains, “and I left that band to form The Restless Natives and write my own songs and express my own views. But after the death of my youngest brother from meningitis, I shaved my head, changed my name and screamed my angst through my songs. It was like throwing up, in a way, getting all that stuff out of me. Singing it all out from the depths of your soul can bring extraordinary relief, although I can’t sing those songs anymore.”
In time she dropped the electric guitar and drums, and the anger too, for a more mellow acoustic approach that attracted the interest of Enya’s renowned manager Nicky Ryan.
“Nicky heard me and was so impressed that he started trying to get record companies interested,” she recalls. “But eventually he had to admit, much to his bemusement, I think, that he couldn’t get anybody to see what I was. Personally, I don’t really connect with the music industry as such. I don’t think like a business woman. There’s no creativity in that for me. Angel One is quite an emotive album, and that’s where I live. My partner Kevin Byrne, who plays drums and produced it, is more finely-tuned to the business end and the technology. But I just concentrate on doing the music the best way I can. I think people are especially connecting with the softer songs, but ‘Two Worlds’, ‘I Could Jump’ and ‘Message’ seem to be reaching people. So far we’ve had really positive feedback from Canada and Sweden, for example, so what I’m doing obviously connects with people all over the planet.”
Íse also had her song ‘A Lotta Grief’ used on the soundtrack to Noel Pearson’s film Gold In The Streets, and more recently she played Glastonbury and loved it, despite the mud.
“I’d never been before, but I knew from TV that it can be a bit of a mudfest. I did my gig in wet clothes, with myself on guitar and another guitarist. Usually I have the cellist Kevin Murphy with me, but he couldn’t make it to Glastonbury. It was a fantastic experience, but then I’m a total hippy! We were on in the hippy area and there was no litter! So hippies care about the planet! Love and peace, man!”