“Let The Orinoco Flow”: Enya, Celticism, and Irish Musical Identity Kristen Leigh Mitchell Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, known worldwide as “Enya,” is one of the most successful pop musicians in history. Having sold over 75 million albums, she is consi dered one of the top - selling artists of all time, and as of 2015 was the wealthiest female musician in the British Isles. 1 And yet, Enya has never toured publicly and eschews celebrity, living in a secluded old castle outside of Dublin , where she maintains a fiercely private personal life and accepts invitations for public appearances only under special circumstances. 2 Some critics have derided her seclusion as part of a self - constructed mystique of new age fantasy, “Celticism” and traditional Irish femini nity. 3 Yet interviews with Eithne Brennan reveal that it is her pragmatic commitment to her craft as a studio musician , her slow, laborious, and admittedly perfectionistic studio process , and her introverted personality that ha ve largely motivated her to r emain off the road. “After Orinoco Flow,” she told The London Times, “I realized the albums would suffer if I became bigger than the music.” S peaking of her early life participating in traditional Irish music competitions , and later touring with her family band Clannad, she admitted : “I walked away from the things that would have made me more famous.” 4 London’s Sunday Times report ed that she expressed concerns that too much self - promotion would cause “people start focusing on me, 1 Jim Sullivan, “Goddess of New Age Music: Studio Work Keeps Enya From the Stage,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , December 1997, sec. Cue, 4. 2 On Christmas Eve 1996, for example, she accepted an invitation to perform a charity benefit at the Vatican, and the following Christmas per formed live on British television before flying home to County Donegal to sing in her mother’s choir at midnight Mass. 3 Anna Maria Dore, “How Can I Keep From Singing? Enya and the Female Myth of Ireland” (University of Limerick, 2003), 4 - 6. 4 Will Hodgkin son, “How To Make It Big: Hide In A Castle and Never Play Live,” The London Times , November 2, 2015, sec. T2. and I really don’t want that. I love the music to be known, but I’m not after fame for myself.” 5 This paper considers the music and musical career of Enya, particularly i n relation to the criticism s urrounding the phenomenon of “Celtic music” in light of the musicological constructions of Irish identity in the late twentieth and early twenty - first centuries. I give special attention to the signific ant scholarly blind spots concerning Enya’s musi cal career , and the inadequacy of traditional ethnomusicological approaches to adequately address the role of technology and stylistic hybridit ies in the context of globalization and postmodern music - making Perhaps unwittingly, Enya’s musical style and career choices have initiated a deconstruction of late - modern nationalist discourses of Irish identity and authenticity, much to the chagrin of many traditional Irish musicians and North American ethnomusicolog ists. This paper seeks to demonstrate how Enya’s identity as an Irish studio musician raises questions about cultural and musical identity in the globalized context of the twenty - first century, revealing the paradoxes and contradictions in this much - conte sted scholarly terrain. “Most Irish traditional musicians,” writes American ethnomusicologist and early music revivalist Scott Reiss, “do not recognize Celtic as a musical category, referring to it as a ‘non - category’ or ‘the C word.’” Reiss goes on to la ment “the conflation of Irish, Scottish, and other styles enacted by the phrase ‘Celtic music’,” which he claims “contradicts the local, regional, and national associations embodied in the music and its performance.” 6 This oft - quoted line and its underlyin g sentiment has been echoed by numerous North American folk music enthusiasts and ethnomusicologists over the last two decades, many of whom position 5 “The Pop Icon Who Refuses to Be A Star,” The Sunday Times , January 27, 2002, Final 1 Edition edition. 6 Scott Reiss, “Tradition and Imaginary: Irish Traditional Music and the Celtic Phenomenon,” in Celtic Modern: Music at the Global Fringe (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 100 – 116. themselves as the valiant defenders of the Irish people , champions of Gael ic language and histor y , and gatekeepers for what might be perceived as authentic form s of Gaelic musical expression. North American ethnomusicologist Michael Nicholsen summarized these concerns in his 2016 essay : In the twentieth century, record labels, t ouring acts, and authors further promoted the idea of “Celtic” music...to conveniently market commercial recordings, concerts, and music festivals that combined different forms to increase sales. Simultaneously, several musicians and writers contested what they perceived as the illegitimate conflating of different music forms, and a great deal of conflict over perceptions regarding the adjective “Celtic” has ensued. 7 That there was once an ethnolinguistic group in central Europe that the ancient Greeks ref erred to as “ Κελτοί ” ( Keltoi ), who apparently referred to themselves as “ Celtae ” as late as the first century BCE, 8 is not in question here . That this group eventually migrated north in to the British Isles, bringing with them their language, artifacts, and culture (as demonstrated by the archaeological record) remains largely uncontested (though it is increasingly debated). 9 But what ethnomusicologists and musicians indigenous to the so - called “Celtic nations” (particularly Ireland) seem to find most troubl ing is the use of “Celtic” as a genre that lumps together divers e nationalities and musical styles from disparate groups of Celtic - speaking peoples The s imilarities between these groups, it is argued , can only be perceived when viewed from the outside , an d in contrast to a dominant culture. In this sense, the modern construction of the term “Celtic” is perceived to be similar to the term “Hindu” — a word that the neighboring Persians used to refer to the people living on the other side of the River Indus , wh ich was foreign to Vedic language and culture until it was adopted by the British as a convenient way to lump 7 Michael Nicholsen, “‘File Under Celtic’: The Uses and Misuses of a Musical Myth, 1882 - 1999,” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 39, no. 2 (2016): 138. 8 Gaius Julius Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War , trans. W.A. McDevitte and W.S. Bohn (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1869). 9 The animosity towards this cultural category has become so strong that some scholars have set out to reinterpret the archaeological record altogether in order to discredit the notion that there is any connection between the so - called “insular Celtic” languages of the British Isles and earlier “continental” Celtic groups. See Michael D. Nichelson, “‘File Under Celtic ’: The Uses and Misuses of a Musical Myth 1882 - 1999, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 39, 2 (2016): 137. together all the diverse forms of religious and cultural expression on the Indian subcontinen t It is important to keep in mind, however, that hi storically speaking, neither the term “Celtic” nor the modern construction of a common cultural identity among Celtic - speaking peoples were initiated by an outside colonizing force ( much less by the moguls of the late twentieth century recording industry ) Rather, the conceptualization of the Celt was something that emerged from within the context of “ Celtic” - speaking communities It was in response to a request from Cornish linguistic scholars seeking to preserve their language , that Welsh linguist Edward Lhuyd developed his theory in 1707 that distinguished the origins of the marginalized languages of the British Isles from the dominant language of English, arguing that these were the surviving remnants of an ancient “Celtic” language. 10 While Lhuyd’s t heory is rooted in scant historical evidence and may very well be a modern ist fabrication , over the course of the last two centuries his construction has been grafted onto the nationalistic sensibilities and self - understanding of the people within these communities , as they sought to distinguish themse lves culturally and linguistically from the homogeni zing forces of colonia l Britain. This ethnolinguistic history of the term “Celtic” is significant when considering the postmodern controvers ies surroundi ng the concept of “Celtic ” as a genre, which is usually framed by e thnomusicologists as a category that was “ invented ” by the recording industry in order to drive sales. The earliest use of the term “Celtic music” in a pan - Celtic sense , however, was by a group of traditional Irish musicians living in Chicago in 1885 . They staged a music festival entitled Feis Ceoil Goadhalach , which they strategically translated in to English as a “Celtic Music Festival.” 11 Promoting the notion of a pan - Celtic identity helped to establish a sense of “racial distinctiveness from the English other” that allowed them to participate in the 10 Sean Williams, Focus: Irish Traditional Music (New York: Routledge, 2010). 11 Nicholsen, “‘File Under Celtic’: The Uses and Misuses of a Mus ical Myth, 1882 - 1999, 141.” nationalistic discourses that were already taking place in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland 12 According to Michael Nicholsen, this pan - Celtic movement was not confined to the Irish diaspora in North America; the same “Celto - ma nia” was present in Dublin as well as Chicago , and “periodicals in both cities worked in tandem to promote the ‘Celticity’ of Irish music.” 13 The bourgeoning music industries of the early twentieth century in North America then adopted the term “Celtic m usic” in precisely this sense: it was understood to be the “world” music of a n already racialized people who were thought to be indigenous t o the “Celtic nations.” This defini tion remained normative until the mid - 1990s , at the height of Enya’s musi cal career In 1995, a Canadian columnist writing for the popular American folk periodical Sing Out! wrote a scathing article entitled “Celtic, Shmeltic!” 14 The author stated unequivocally that the genre of “Celtic music” was nothing more than a fabrication conce ived by the recording industry as a convenient way for labels and promoters to market their recordings and sell concert tickets. He argued furthermore that Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton musics should not be filed under the same label “Celtic,” but th at neither should the detestable “New Age” music that was increasingly found there , a miscategorization he regarded as “a marketing scam of the first order.” 15 In short, nothing should be filed under “Celtic music,” because there is no such thing ! Ov er the next twenty years, numerous scholars have carried the torch of this same basic argument, in particular Michael Newton, an American ethnolinguistic scholar and self - proclaimed “authority on the native traditions and literature of the Scottish Highlands,” who likewise laments that “because of the deeply - entrenched stereotypes about Celts, lots of things get included in the virtual ‘Celtic bin’ that don’t relate to or derive from Celtic - speaking 12 Nicholsen, “‘File Under Celtic’: The Uses and Misuses of a Musical Myth, 1882 - 1999, 141.” 13 Nicholsen, “‘File Under Celtic’: The Uses and Misuses of a Musical Myth, 1882 - 1999," 141. 14 Ian Robb, “Celtic, Shmeltic!,” Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine , July 1995. 15 Robb. communities at all.” 16 Newton is one of the few people who explicitly names Enya’s “ n ew a ge” music as a “mutant ” of Celtic music that was “created by the industry,” which he claims i s “not rooted in any living community” and “has little or nothing to do with real Celtic - speaking communities.” 17 Because Newton understands language to b e the organizing principle of cultur al identity , a linguistic understanding of the term “Celtic” is the only one he considers valid. T hus , he argues that “Celtic music ” can only be understood as music derived from Celtic - language speaking communities. And ye t, even strictly according to this definition , Enya’s music should be considered “Celtic.” After all, unlike many of the North American “New Age” musicians whose recordings ha ve been filed under “Celtic” des pite the fact that their music neither originate s fro m, nor is connected to, any Celtic - speaking nation or community (Loreena McKennitt, David Arkenstone, and Jeff Johnson, to name a few), Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin was raised in the Irish - speaking Gaeltacht, born to a traditional Irish music family in Gweedore, County Donegal. She spent her early life immersed and trained in the soundscape of traditional Irish music and culture, and developed her unique sound and style in collaboration with fellow Irish musicians. While she has openly acknowledged the diverse “outside” influences that have contributed to the development of her innovative sound (including Western classical music, the music of the Catholic church, and perhaps most importantly, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound), Enya has done much to populariz e and promote her native Irish language, and insists that , at least from her own perspective, her music is a n “authentic” expression of her Irish heritage. 16 Michael Newton, “The Fallacies of ‘Celtic Music’: Or, "Is There Such A Thing As ‘Ce ltic Music’?,” Patreon, June 16, 2019, https:// www.patreon.com/posts/27668760. 17 Newton. Perhaps it is for this reason that many traditional mus icians, folk music advocates , and critics of “Celtic music ” as a genre avoid naming Enya outright , despite the fact that she was the earliest pioneer of the sound that is so frequently derided as a marketing scam concocted by outsiders. 18 Anxiety about where to place Enya in relation to “the tradition” may al so account for the complete absence of any scholarly literature about her music, despite her massive commercial success. For comparison’s sake, Enya’s neighbor Paul Hewson, popularly known as Bono, is the only Irish artist to have ever outsold her in terms of recordings. But while there have been over 20 books written about U2 from a variety of musicological perspectives , there are currently zero books or scholarly journal articles focusing solely on Enya’s music or her artistic career. Enya was not even incl uded in Mairéd Sullivan’s 1999 book Celtic Women in Music, which featured biographies and short interviews of 30 successful female artists whose music had been called “Celtic,” including Enya’s sister Márie Brennan. 19 Ethnomusicologists on both sides of t he pond occasionally mention her in passing, but usually only in a derogatory way that obscures her background while lumping her together with Loreena McKinnett and other later Enya - inspired acts (i.e. Celtic Women). 20 For the most part, however, writers and c ritics seem to have settled on a strategy of simply criticizing Enya’s sound without naming her explicitly. An Albuquerque press release in 2002, for example, advertised an upcoming show for the traditional Irish band L ú nasa by differentiating their more “ authentic” Irish sound from “the yawn - inducing, New Age tripe that 18 Canadian artist Loreena McKennitt is often named as a fellow pioneer of “New Age/Celtic,” but her first three albums, Elemental (1985), To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), and Paralle l Dreams (1989) are primarily very traditional Irish folk songs, sung with a single vocal track and accompanied by harp. McKennitt’s earl iest recordings reflect an effort to adhere as closely as possible to typical late twentieth century stereot ypes of Irish music, as well as images of traditional “Celtic” femininity. Enya’s first album, The Celts (1985), on the other hand, featured several songs that characterized the innovative multilayered vocal style that she and producer Nicky Ryan se t out to create in 1984. While McKennitt’s later albums took on an increasingly “ethereal” character , Enya’s characteristic sound and style never changed, and has remained consistent for the past 35 years. 19 Mairéid Sullivan, Celtic Women in Music: A Celebration of Beauty a nd Sovereignty (Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1999). 20 See, for example, Williams, Focus: Traditional Irish Music, 232. too often dominates the broad heading of Celtic music these days.” 21 David Browne of the New York Times called her sound “musical I rish oatmeal,” lamenting that it was “not for the pub, but for the coffee bar.” 22 The writer for London’s Sunday Times accurately summed up the criticism s of Enya’s music by highlighting that it consi sts primarily of “macho male critics ” who “ dismiss it as wind chimes with words, new age elevator music, or unchallenging muzak that sounds like ‘a computer mating with a synthesizer.’” 23 These sentiments point to the presence of underlying patriarchal gender constructions of “authentic” Irishness. As Helen O’Shea has shown, the history of Irish nationalism and the tendency to associate “traditional” Irish music solely with the pub music of the early twentieth century has resulted in a highly masculinized conceptualization of Irish music and identity. 24 Irish music scholar Anna Marie Dor e has also shown how strongly Enya’s music has become associated with femininity. 25 The intentionally soft, intimate, reflective, and dreamlike quality of Enya’s sound (and indeed, of ambient music in general, which is frequently referred to as “new age” i n a pejorative sense 26 ) — is precisely what seems to be so distasteful for most critics, who would prefer to associate Irish music with high - energy jigs and reels played at top speeds over pints of Guinness. Sean Williams has pointed out that in the context of many pub sessions, even the singing of sean nos airs — which are considered by many to be the very heart of “traditional” Irish music — will cause many listeners’ eyes to glaze over before the singer has even completed the first verse. 27 While Williams cha lks this up to the difficulty of learning the Irish language, it is 21 Mike Easterling, “Redefining Celtic Music,” Albuquerque Journal , February 1, 2002. 22 David Browne, “Recordings View: New Age Mists Envelop Traditional Irish Songs,” New York Times , August 17, 1995. 23 “The Pop Icon Who Refuses to Be A Star.” 24 Helen O’Shea, “‘Good Man, Mary!’ Women Musicians and the Fraternity of Irish Traditional Music,” Journal of Gender Studies 17, no. 1 (March 2008). 25 Dore, “How Can I Keep From Singing? Enya a nd the Female Myth of Ireland.” 26 Ryan Hibbett, “The New Age Taboo,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 22, no. 3 (September 1, 2010): 283 – 308. 27 Williams, Focus: Irish Traditional Music, 159 worth considering that this “softer,” more presentationa l and reflective style of music - making was also traditionally the purview of women, often sung in the more intimate context of the home among close family and friends. Even when performed by men like Joe Heaney, this style of Irish music is usually perceived in an “effeminate” way. 28 Of course, Enya is not a sean nos singer by any stretch, nor does she claim to be (although even Michael Newton has acknowledged , in spite of himself , that several of Enya’s songs do draw on the rhythmic patterns of traditional Gaelic work songs, 29 and that many of her vocal ornamentations come directly from Irish singing traditions). For every session musician who has lamented over the tediousness of having to listen to a sean nos air at the pub, there is a sean nos singer who has lame nted over the number of requests they get from to urists to “ play any Enya.” 30 Which also suggests that there is more going on here than simply a patriarchal distaste for femininized musical stylings Indeed, one of the primary tensio ns between Enya’s music and what has come to be understood as “traditional Irish music” is precisely that it cannot realistically be performed live. This, of course, is one of the primary considerations for why Enya herself has never toured and rarely perf orms her own music. As she explained in an interview with The London Times , initially her record company couldn’t afford to send her out on the road with an orchestra and a choir, which would have been the only way to faithfully render her sound live. But after the phenomenal success of Watermark, she decided that she didn’t really want to try and replicate her sound live . She preferred to stay home and work on making studio recordings rather than going out on tour. “I am a very private person,” she said in an interview with Will Hodgkinson , 28 Lillis Ó Laoire and Sean Williams, “Fighting Words, Fighting Music, The Performative Male,” in Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 157 – 76. 29 Newton, “Th e Fallacies of ‘Celtic Music’: Or, "Is There Such A Thing As ‘Celtic Music’?” 30 Williams, Focus: Irish Traditional Music, 232. who concluded after talking with her at length that her primary goal genuinely seems to be just to maintain a regular nin e - to - five schedule, and some “semblance of normalcy in a world besotted with c elebrity and gossip ” 31 But Enya’s success as a recording artist, combined with her general introversion and her pragmatic preference for routine music - making in the studio, has paradoxically elicite d criticism from “traditional music” purists on both sides of the issue. As a successful pop star, she is accused of being overly concerned with her “image” and with profit (despite 35 years of consistent efforts to avoid public visibility and celebrity f or the sake of simply recording music, releasing only a grand total of nine albums in a span three and a half decades) , while at the same time her music is criticized as being culturally inauthentic precisely because it is not performed (or even perform - able) in live social contexts. For Scott Reiss, this is perhaps the most important distinguishing factor between traditional Irish music and “Celtic music,” which he argues exists “wholly in the realm of sound and image” and therefore “is not shared, but it is exchan ged.” 32 Celtic music, Riess claims , “is neither derived from musical lineage nor rooted in any specific space.” 33 In Reiss’ estimation , this “imaginal” scenario has resulted precisely from the fact that “Celtic music” is a soundscape that arose out of the p henomenon of recorded music He writes: The Celtic community is bound by the commodity. As a symbol , the commodity itself possesses the power to convey inclusion; to own it is to become a member of the group. Consumers, the n, enjoy a privileged status in the virtual community. They complete the circuit left open with the loss of context. In a pub session, musicians are sharing and communicating with each other within a social context that includes the patrons and staff of th e pub, who share in the musical experience not through the process of consumption (except with a pint or two), but through a process of what one might call “active passivity” — being part of the scene, part of 31 Hodgkinson, “How To Make It Big: Hide In A Castle and Never Play Live.” 32 Reiss, “Tradition and Imaginary: Irish Traditional Music and the Celtic Phenomenon.” 33 Reiss, “Tradition and Imaginary: Irish Traditional Music and the Celtic Phenomenon.” the context. In the virtual community, the conte xt is created by the producers of the CD, but it is activated by the consumer who projects himself or herself into the Celtic imaginary. 34 It is worth noting that his extensive scholarly analysis of the relationship between “Celtic music” and “tradition al Irish music” the autho r fail s to mention , even in passing , the most successful “Celtic” artist of all time, who also happens to be the most successful Irish musician to have emerged from the Gaeltacht One might begin to wonder how other Irish musicians who have produced popular recordings and have been financially successful in the global marketplace have managed to avoid similar criticisms from traditionalists. Thomas Turino provides a helpful analyti cal framework for understanding the different classifications for music - making in the age of recorded music, with his discussion of the differences between high fidelity recordings and studio audio art Turino demonstrates how in the earliest days of reco rding, many people still conceptualized “music” primarily in an active, participatory sense M usical recordings were not necessarily considered themselves “music,” but were representations of musical events, captured for the sake of recalling an ev ent , much in the same way one takes a photograph in order to visually recall a particularly compelling moment. 35 Musical recordings created by what Turino has classified as participatory music communities are therefore not necessarily to be perceived as co mmodities in themselves, but are meant to serve as high fidelity renderings of social events, used primarily to remember and celebrate “social interactions realized in a special way through playing music and dancing 34 Reiss, “Tradition and Imaginary: I rish Traditional Music and the Celtic Phenomenon.” 35 It is interesting, however, to consider in light of this discussion the transformation of photography also from a mere mimetic device into an “artistic” medium. See Thomas Turino, “Participatory and Pres entational Performance,” in Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 23 – 65. together.” 36 Studio audio art on the other hand, involves the creation and manipulation of sounds in a studio or on a co mputer to create a recorded art object (a “sound sculpture”) that is not intended to represent real - time performance. Whereas in high fidelity recordings studio techniques are masked or downplayed, in studio audio art processes of electronic sound generati on and manipulation are often celebrated and are overtly represented. 37 Conservative writers like Michael Newton and Fintan Vallely — neither of whom seem to have a very realistic comprehension of what a studio process is like , or how the recording industry works , much less what motivates mos t popular musicians — have offered sweeping indictments of any musician who participate s in the amorphous creature known as “the marketplace,” especially those who have gained any sort of financial success through music al innovation under the guise of “Celticity,” presumably for the sake of profit. “Celtic” artists like Enya (though , again, she is rarely ever mentioned outright) are believed to be in the business of abandoning their traditional m usical roots and intentionally constructing fanciful images of “Celticity” in order to pander only to what sells . Newton even provides a helpful graph that clearly outlines the “Clashes of Tradition and Marketplace,” emphasiz ing the impossibility of their overlap by showing how studio recordings turn music into portable products for an “audience without specific local knowledge , ” and therefore must exist only “for monetary transactions outside of the community of origin.” 38 In his review for Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr ’s book Wayfaring Stranger, Newton even goes so far as to suggest that people should not consume, listen to, or play music from outside of their own community of origin, writing that “it is better for communities to create and participate in their own fo rms of cultural expression, 36 Thomas Turino, “Participatory and Presentational Performance,” in Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 26. 37 Turino. 38 Newton, “The Fallacies of ‘Celtic Music’: Or, "Is T here Such A Thing As ‘Celtic Music’?” rather than to consume products passively that have been produced by others.” 39 In her 1966 book Purity and Danger, anthropologist Mary Douglas has demonstrated how human cultures throughout history have sought to maintain similar ideologies of cultural purity and segregation. Rooted in cognitive survival patter ns that seek to avoid harm, humans formulate unconscious visceral perceptions of what is “dirty” and “clean” based on classification systems that const ruct epistemological notions of which things belong together, and which things should be kept separate . Notions of “orderliness” and “cleanliness” are thus constructed around cultural conceptions that , more often than not, take on a moral dimension. Those things that are perceived as being “out of place,” or as crossing established classifications and categories, are perceived to be dangerous and morally corrupting , usually eliciting an emotional response of disgust as a defense mech ani sm 40 This cognitive framework may help to identify at least s ome of the animosity that exists for Enya’s music , beyond just the casual misogyny of the pub scene and /or concerns over the corruption of globalized commerce. Again, many “traditional” Irish musicians who have been wildly successful as recording artists — Natalie MacMaster, Chr isty Moore, the Clancy Brothers, and Kevin Burke to name a few — have somehow managed to escape such criticism s, and are often even celebrated for their financial success es But m uch of the underlying consternation about Enya’s musical soundscape (or again, the soundscap e “Celtic music ” in general , since Enya as its pioneer is rarely mentioned outright) is not simply the commodification of her music through recordings released to global audiences, but the hybridity of her use of techno logy and synthesizers to create studio audio art as opposed to high fidelity live recordings. 39 Michael Newton, “Book Review: Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia,” E - Keltoi Book Reviews 1 (June 10, 20 15): 73. 40 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge, 1966). Enya’s unique sound is achieved by recording and layering literally hundreds of tracks of backup vocals, with some songs containing upwards of 500 separate vocal tracks. 41 While her music often draws on rhythmic and melodic material and ornamentation styles from traditional Irish music, and makes use of “traditional” Irish instrumentation (especially the uilleann pipes), her characteristic sound is created primarily using keyboards, synthesizers (particularly the Roland Juno - 60) and a great deal of reverb and echo to achieve her desired effect. Dore therefore describes Enya as a “musical cyborg,” precisely because her music cannot be recreated “naturally ” It therefore has a “disembod ied” quality. 42 It is this “loss of personality to technology” that Vallely explicitly laments. 43 Furthermore, in addition to singing in her native Irish language (which is the language she still speaks on an everyday basis), 44 Enya also sings in English, Latin, and a newly - invented language she calls “Loxian,” which she created alongside her lyricist Roma Ryan, inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien. 45 The suggestion of Newton and others that these innovations were motivated solely by the desire for p rofit (or at the very least, were constructed according to “global expectations” that have “little or nothing to do with real Celtic - speaking communities”) can be easily discredited by just a brief reconstruction of Enya’s bio , and interviews in which she ha s spoken about her own creative process. “I was on stage when I was three and a half years of age,” she told Will Hodgkinson of The London Times. “There were Gaelic singing competitions in Donegal and Derry, and each one of us in the family would enter them in our own age category , a nd come 41 Sullivan, “Goddess of New Age Music: Studio Work Keeps Enya From the Stage.” 42 Dore, “How Can I Keep From Singing? Enya and the Female Myth of Ireland, 23 - 24.” 43 Fintan Vallely, “The Apollos of Shamrockery : Traditional Musics in the Modern Age,” in Celtic Modern: Music at the Global Fringe (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 208. 44 “The Pop Icon Who Refuses to Be A Star.” 45 Loxian was initially melodically inspired: Enya wanted to find words that would fit certain vowel sounds for a melody that she was working on. Inspired by their recent work on Lord of the Rings, it soon became more than a language, as Enya and Roma created an entire mythology for it, based on the idea of a futuristic group of “Celts” who leave Earth and travel to a planet near Aldebaran, a star in the constellation Taurus, 65 light years away. home with medals. My dad has toured and sung all his life. My mum is a music teacher.” 46 Enya’s father owned and operated a local pub and restaur ant in Donegal called Leo’s Tavern that served as a one of the primary venues in the area for nightly traditional Irish music sessions. Enya is certainly no stranger to the traditional Irish music scene. When she was 13 years old, Eithne was sent to a convent school in Donegal that was run by Loreto nuns. As the sixth child of nine (she had four brothers and four sisters), she describes her time in boarding school as an extremely liberating experience: Coming from a family where you were not asked a que stion because the decisions were made for you, it was wonderful. On the first day they asked us who would like to study piano, who would like to be in the choir, and who would like to study music. I put my hand up three times. It was a dream , because I hea rd my own voice for the first time. After that I realized I could make my own decisions. 47 Like many people who grow up in “traditional” cultural contexts, Enya cherished many aspects of her rural heritage, but also experienced the expectations of her fam ily and culture of origin as taxing and limiting. One of the nuns at the convent recalled that “she was brilliant at melody, very gifted at writing music,” but also that “she was shy and would never put herself forward. She took part in our musicals every year , but not as an actress.” The nun added that she also seemed to have “a particular fascination with Gregorian chant.” 48 After studying classical piano at the convent and developing a love of choral and chant music, Enya was invited at the age of 18 to join the family’s Irish music group Clannad (shortened from “Clann As Bodhar,” meaning “the family from Dore”). Enya was a backup singer and keyboardist, but after two years she left the group , along with manager and producer Nicky Ryan, in order to follo w her own artistic path Nicky writes that Enya was 46 Hodgkinson, “How To Make It Big: Hide In A Castle and Never Play Live.” 47 Ibid. 48 “The Pop Icon Who Refuses to Be A Star,” The Sunday Times , January 27, 2002, Final 1 Edition. “fiercely independe nt” and “intent on playing her own music ” 49 Being heavily influenced by the Beach Boys and the Beatles, Nicky and Enya had long discussed the idea of using multitrack recordings of her voice to form a “choir of one,” inspired by Phil Spector’s Wall of So und concept When Enya received a commission in 1985 to record soundtrack music for a six - part BBC documentary series entitled The Celts, the pair set out to co - create the sound that they had imagined together . The soundtrack became so popular that it was later released as an album. Her second album, Watermark, was released four years later in 1989. It slowly climbed the charts, eventually going platinum and receiving a nomination at the 32 nd Grammy Awards for “Best New Age Performance.” In interviews and o n her website and promotional materials, Eithne has always made sure to emphasize that she is not individually responsible for the creation of her music, but that she is part of a triumvirate collaboration with Nicky and his wife Roma , who has become her chief lyricist. Eithne likes to refer to the team collectively as the “Enya triangle,” and she has admitted in several interviews that “without Nicky and Roma, ‘Enya’ wouldn’t exist.” 50 “It’s really great to work with Nicky and Roma because of their encourag ement,” she said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal . “I write a melody, and then it’s so wonderful that they can sense exactly what I sense within the melody, the same sort of emotional feelings, so that they can transfer that into what they do bes t , Nicky through producing and arranging, Roma in the lyrics.” 51 In terms of her creative process, she describes it as “an emotional feeling. I don’t think, ‘I’m going to 49 Nicky Ryan, “The Very Best of Enya (Collector’s Edition) CD Booklet Notes (‘ It’s Been a Long Time’)” (Warner Music, 2009). 50 Dore, “How Can I Keep From Singing? Enya and the Female Myth of Ireland, 5.” 51 Sullivan, “Goddess of New Age Music: Studio Work Keeps Enya From the Stage.” write a piece about this subject,’ I let it evol ve naturally.” She adds that the team “might record 200 voices for one song and erase them all if we don’t feel they’re working.” 52 Based on the consistency of Enya’s responses in similar interviews over the past three decades, it is difficult to defend th e assertion that her music and image emerged out of an individuali stic effort to commercially profit off a falsified outsider mythology of “Celticity” created through visual and sonic manipulation. It is also difficult, upon further scrutiny, to defend the notion that Enya (consciously or otherwise) promote d a self - image of “traditional Irish femininity,” which Irish musicology scholar Anna Marie Dore was at pains to argue in her master’s thesis. 53 Dore argues that both Enya’s music and her videos pla y into traditional Irish “feminine” stereotypes , primarily through her interpretation of the song “How Can I Keep From Singing.” Yet Enya’s first official music video was for the song “I Want Tomorrow,” which features the artist with a pixie haircut an d no makeup, donning at various points an oversized wool coat, motorcycle leathers, and women’s business attire. At the end of the video , she is depicted shooting flames out of her fingers to light a nearby car on fire. The infinite interpretive possibilit ies of Enya’s musical and visual choices within a glob alized milieu highlights the limitations of traditional ethnomusicological approaches when applied to popular music of the postmodern era, particularly in terms of the applicability of Turino’s dichotomy between “participatory” and “presentationa l” music cultures within the marketplace Such conceptualizations not only obscure the presentational (and in some senses commercial) aspects of how participatory music is packaged for consumption in the twenty - first century, but they also overlook the participatory aspects of attending to presentational music in the form of studio audio art. 52 Hodgkinson, “How To Make It Big: Hide In A Castle and Never Play Live.” 53 Dore, “How Can I Keep From Singing? Enya and the Female Myth of Ireland.” “Appreciating a work of art,” Gordon Graham reminds us, always “requires imaginative activity on the part of the observer no less than the maker.” 54 This imaginative “attending” is itself a form of participation that makes the subjective li stener always an author alongside any artist. Sean nos singing — which, again, is considered by many to be at the very core of the Irish music tradition — is said to be characterized precisely by this “imaginal” kind of participation in presentational singing, where the singer intentionally does not engage relationally or personally with an audience , so that they can construct their own meaning in the listening As Sean Williams explains, singers generally refrain from engaging the audience in eye contact; they usually withdraw behind the curtain of anonymity provided by the song... the audience may disengage from the personality of the singer to allow the meaning of the song to speak more directly and emphatically to them. 55 One of modern ethnomusicology’s primary pitfalls in the context of the twenty - first century is a tendency to continue em