This piece is based on a single recording I made of the Irish satire song “Johnny Seoighe” when I was in An Cheathrú Rua (Connemara). It is one of the few surviving Irish language songs from the time of the so-called Irish Famine (read genocide) and it speaks of Tomás' attempt to find a job at a workhouse in order to be able to feed his family. The local British relieving officer denied this request.

We accompany Tomás on his long way home. A Banshee — a female spirit in Irish folklore who announces the death of family members — is heard keening distantly, foreshadowing the passing of his family from hunger and exhaustion. Embodied by the recorded singer — a native Irish speaker, of whom there are very few —, the Banshee is herself a ghostly witness and symbol of the partial destruction of Irish culture and language by the British colonial occupation.

Decades later, the island is still coming to terms and mourning the loss of a quarter of its population, either by hunger or displacement, and working towards the revival of the Irish language and reconnecting with pre-colonial cultural practices and identity.

This piece was premiered at the Wave Field Synthesis Festival 2024, in the New Music Lab (Royal Conservatoire of The Hague), Amare. Read more about Wave Field Synthesis and the Game of Life Foundation. Photo by Viktoria Nikolova.