“In terms of the Irish emigration story the woman’s narrative is not widely told, I am trying to tell the important women’s stories that are so often missing, I am trying to redress that.” Maz O’Connor
By Michael J McDonagh
Rising music star Maz O’Connor grew up in the Romantic poets’ Lake District, studied literature at Cam- bridge and settled in East London.
Her first album This Willowed Light, a folk set, earned her well-deserved praise for her stunning voice and song- writing talent. Her next, The Longing Kind, addressed millennial angst. Her latest, and long-awaited, new album, A Chosen Daughter, is a personal tour de force.
The album title refers to adoption, religion, and to feel- ing like the next link in a chain of women stretching back hundreds of years.
This link, thanks to their sacrifices, is able to tell the stories. We talked to Maz about her inspiration for this album and the influence of her Irish background on her work.
You are certainly a daughter of the Irish diaspora growing up here with your Irish roots. Tell us about that.
“Yes, on my dad’s side Gran was from Waterford and my granddad was from Galway and they both settled in Liverpool, where they had my dad. Then on my mum’s side my mother was actually adopted by my lovely English grandparents, but she was the daughter of an Irish woman, who was working as a domestic servant in England and she became pregnant. Because of the times, she had to have the baby adopted and that is all I know.”
Was there Irish music in the house where you grew up?
“Yes, there was. My mum and my dad were both really
keen musicians and my mother was a music teacher, so there was a lot of folk and traditional music. From my
dad’s side he was big into Irish traditional music, but my
brother was the musical star really as he played the
melodeon and was playing sessions and things. I remember my dad took us to Doolin when we were teenagers and we joined in sessions there, but my brother was so much better than me that I was a bit intimidated.
“I used to play fiddle, but I didn’t keep that up sadly. Then the singing took over when I was a bit older.”
From your dad’s music at home who were your influences?
“It would have been The Dubliners and The Pogues, more songs than tunes really which I heard from him, but I remember we had that compilation album called A Woman’s Heart which was big in our house, so I am sure that had an effect as well.”
How did you get into singing and song writing did you have some English influences too?
“I grew up in Cumbria and my dad’s family were in Liverpool and I was part of the folk scene in the North, but I was also, in the folk scene in the North East as I was part of Folk Orchestra, which was run by Kathryn Tickell and I think the music in the North of England is more Celtic influenced and I was not really into the more traditional English stuff until much later.
“I think melodically the Irish and Scottish stuff is more in my bones and I think as well they were the songs that I first learned to sing when I started to sing a Capella songs and singing in competitions and it was the Irish songs that particularly appealed to me.
“My dad used to sing this song called The Butcher Boy which he would sing at every party and family get together when there was an Irish contingent and there would al- ways be a point when they would start singing and that would be my dad’s party song.
“He would sort of send it up and make more melodramatic and bit silly but when I started to sing it and as I got older, I thought it terribly sad. So, I have always had an affinity with those sad songs and the melancholic side of things, which the Irish music does very well.”
It was your Irish grandmother who inspired your song San Francisco and you travelled back to her childhood home to learn more about her story?
“Yes, my grandmother was born in Waterford City and was one of five girls. She had four sisters and their dad had a shop on the waterfront, he was a grocer called Sielding and they lived above the shop, but he died quite suddenly, so as they lost their home as it came with the shop.
“They were pretty much homeless really moving from a family home to stay with friends and getting put up by people.
“The way that they got out of it was that my great Aunty Mona, who was my gran’s eldest sister moved to San Francisco when she was 16 and became a nun and in return the order educated and housed her sisters in England, so she got her family out of homelessness essentially and that allowed my grandmother to train as a midwife and get herself back on her feet.
“There are still lots of people from that small city that were delivered by my grandmother. I thought it was an amazing story of sacrifice and sisters.
“It is also a story about the limited choices that were then available for women at that time – this was one of the options for young girls in the late nineteen twenties.”
Do any of the other songs have Irish influences or was it a chance conversation with your mother when watching the film Philomena that inspired Chosen Daughter?
“Yes, it was the other side of my family. I’d learned that story about my aunty Mona and San Francisco and that was my dad’s side and the song San Francisco came, then I was watching the film Philomena with my mum.
“We knew she had been adopted as that was no secret, but she did not know anything about the heritage or who her biological mother was and in the film Philomena there is a point where the nuns tell her that all the records were lost in a fire.
“My mum said ‘Oh, that’s funny!’ because she was told all the records about her mum were lost in a fire too and I started to ask her about it, and it turned out that it was a Catholic Mother and Baby home run by nuns.
“It is just wrong that you can’t know more.
“When I did more research, and from speaking about it to my Nana (who) adopted my mum, what she knew was that my mum’s mother was an Irish woman who was working as a domestic here in England and that she became pregnant.
“I think that just having that knowledge, that there was another Irish woman in my family history, who had also had a difficult time and who had also suffered a lot, like a lot of women, and she also had an Irish background, inspired a couple more songs.”
“Then I started to think about the album (Chosen Daughter) and thought this is the story I wanted to tell – not only to reflect on my life and what I had inherited from these women, and the good stuff like the freedom I have got that they did not have, but also wondering whether the female trauma could be passed on.
“I was told that would be something that would be of interest to anybody in any diaspora, involved in emigration. So that was the idea of the album.”
You also write for theatre
“I worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company when I first got out of university and I have written for them as well, and I am currently writing something based on another Irish woman but I don’t want to say what it is as somebody might get there before me – but she came from Tipperary in 1898 and it has taken me about two years to write it.”
What seems to draw people to your songs is you write songs about issues you are passionate about. How did that come about?
“Well I’d say I am political with a small ‘p’, for me it is about storytelling and hopefully by telling the stories of these individuals they would interest people and would uncover underlying issues, but I am not an issues writer.
“I just always try to find a story to tell. Like San Fran- cisco, by picking one young girl and telling her story it fits in the issue of emigration. I think that in terms of the Irish emigration story the woman’s narrative is not as widely told, so that is also partly what I am trying to do, to tell female Irish stories and to think about Irish independence and Irish suffering. The important women’s stories are often missing, what I am trying to do is redress that.”
You are doing some shows to debut the album?
“Yes, I am doing 15 November in London with the full band at London’s The Courtyard Theatre, as my album launch and then I am doing the Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room on 23 October as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival. This will be a solo performance as it is a triple bill with Lisa O’Neil and Laura Duff and I then I have a tour and am doing about 12 dates.”
If you have not yet discovered the talent of Maz O’Connor this new album and her tour dates are an ideal opportunity to hear by this highly talented daughter of the diaspora.
You are doing some shows to debut the album?
If you have not yet discovered the talent of Maz O’Connor this new album and her tour dates are an ideal opportunity to hear by this highly talented daughter of the diaspora.
Chosen Daughter by Maz O’Connor is out now
Fast rising music star Maz O’Connor grew up in the Romantic poets’ Lake District, studied literature at Cambridge and settled in East London
Her first album This Willowed Light, a folk set, earned her well-deserved praise for her stunning voice and song- writing talent. Her next, The Longing Kind, addressed millennial angst.
Her latest, and long-awaited, new album, A Chosen Daughter, is a personal tour de force.
The album title refers to adoption, religion, and to feeling like the next link in a chain of women stretching back hundreds of years.
This link, thanks to their sacrifices, is able to tell the stories. We talked to Maz about her inspiration for this album and the influence of her Irish background on her work.
You are certainly a daughter of the Irish diaspora growing up here with your Irish roots. Tell us about that.
“Yes, on my dad’s side Gran was from Waterford and my granddad was from Galway and they both settled in Liverpool, where they had my dad. Then on my mum’s side my mother was actually adopted by my lovely English grandparents, but she was the daughter of an Irish woman, who was working as a domestic servant in England and she became pregnant. Because of the times, she had to have the baby adopted and that is all I know.”
Was there Irish music in the house where you grew up?
“Yes, there was. My mum and my dad were both really keen musicians and my mother was a music teacher, so there was a lot of folk and traditional music. From my dad’s side he was big into Irish traditional music, but my brother was the musical star really as he played the
melodeon and was playing sessions and things. I remember my dad took us to Doolin when we were teenagers and we joined in sessions there, but my brother was so much better than me that I was a bit intimidated.
“I used to play fiddle, but I didn’t keep that up sadly. Then the singing took over when I was a bit older.”
From your dad’s music at home who were your influences?
“It would have been The Dubliners and The Pogues, more songs than tunes really which I heard from him, but I remember we had that compilation album called A Woman’s Heart which was big in our house, so I am sure that had an effect as well.”
How did you get into singing and song writing did you have some English influences too?
“I grew up in Cumbria and my dad’s family were in Liverpool and I was part of the folk scene in the North, but I was also, in the folk scene in the North East as I was part of Folk Orchestra, which was run by Kathryn Tickell and I think the music in the North of England is more Celtic influenced and I was not really into the more traditional English stuff until much later.
“I think melodically the Irish and Scottish stuff is more in my bones and I think as well they were the songs that I first learned to sing when I started to sing a Capella songs and singing in competitions and it was the Irish songs that particularly appealed to me.
“My dad used to sing this song called The Butcher Boy which he would sing at every party and family get together when there was an Irish contingent and there would al- ways be a point when they would start singing and that would be my dad’s party song.
“He would sort of send it up and make more melodramatic and bit silly but when I started to sing it and as I got older, I thought it terribly sad. So, I have always had an affinity with those sad songs and the melancholic side of things, which the Irish music does very well.”
Maz O’Connor’s grandmother with her sisters, including Mona, who became a nun and returned from the US to help her siblings an event which inspired O’Connor’s latest album
It was your Irish grandmother who inspired your song San Francisco and you travelled back to her childhood home to learn more about her story?
“Yes, my grandmother was born in Waterford City and was one of five girls. She had four sisters and their dad had a shop on the waterfront, he was a grocer called Sielding and they lived above the shop, but he died quite suddenly, so as they lost their home as it came with the shop.
“They were pretty much homeless really moving from a family home to stay with friends and getting put up by people.
“The way that they got out of it was that my great Aunty Mona, who was my gran’s eldest sister moved to San Francisco when she was 16 and became a nun and in return the order educated and housed her sisters in England, so she got her family out of homelessness essentially and that allowed my grandmother to train as a midwife and get herself back on her feet.
“There are still lots of people from that small city that were delivered by my grandmother. I thought it was an amazing story of sacrifice and sisters.
“It is also a story about the limited choices that were then available for women at that time – this was one of the options for young girls in the late nineteen twenties.”
Do any of the other songs have Irish influences or was it a chance conversation with your mother when watching the film Philomena that inspired Chosen Daughter?
“Yes, it was the other side of my family. I’d learned that story about my aunty Mona and San Francisco and that was my dad’s side and the song San Francisco came, then I was watching the film Philomena with my mum.
“We knew she had been adopted as that was no secret, but she did not know anything about the heritage or who her biological mother was and in the film Philomena there is a point where the nuns tell her that all the records were lost in a fire.
“My mum said ‘Oh, that’s funny!’ because she was told all the records about her mum were lost in a fire too and I started to ask her about it, and it turned out that it was a Catholic Mother and Baby home run by nuns.
“It is just wrong that you can’t know more.
“When I did more research, and from speaking about it to my Nana (who) adopted my mum, what she knew was that my mum’s mother was an Irish woman who was working as a domestic here in England and that she became pregnant.
“I think that just having that knowledge, that there was another Irish woman in my family history, who had also had a difficult time and who had also suffered a lot, like a lot of women, and she also had an Irish background, inspired a couple more songs.”
“Then I started to think about the album (Chosen Daughter) and thought this is the story I wanted to tell – not only to reflect on my life and what I had inherited from these women, and the good stuff like the freedom I have got that they did not have, but also wondering whether the female trauma could be passed on.
“I was told that would be something that would be of interest to anybody in any diaspora, involved in emigration. So that was the idea of the album.”
You also write for theatre
“I worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company when I first got out of university and I have written for them as well, and I am currently writing something based on another Irish woman but I don’t want to say what it is as somebody might get there before me – but she came from Tipperary in 1898 and it has taken me about two years to write it.”
What seems to draw people to your songs is you write songs about issues you are passionate about. How did that come about?
“Well I’d say I am political with a small ‘p’, for me it is about storytelling and hopefully by telling the stories of these individuals they would interest people and would uncover underlying issues, but I am not an issues writer.
“I just always try to find a story to tell. Like San Fran- cisco, by picking one young girl and telling her story it fits in the issue of emigration. I think that in terms of the Irish emigration story the woman’s narrative is not as widely told, so that is also partly what I am trying to do, to tell female Irish stories and to think about Irish independence and Irish suffering. The important women’s stories are often missing, what I am trying to do is redress that.”
You are doing some shows to debut the album?
“Yes, I am doing 15 November in London with the full band at London’s The Courtyard Theatre, as my album launch and then I am doing the Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room on 23 October as part of the Liverpool Irish Festival. This will be a solo performance as it is a triple bill with Lisa O’Neil and Laura Duff and I then I have a tour and am doing about 12 dates.”
If you have not yet discovered the talent of Maz O’Connor this new album and her tour dates are an ideal opportunity to hear by this highly talented daughter of the diaspora.
Chosen Daughter by Maz O’Connor is out now
