Episode 2
The Invitation: Song and Conversation with Amano | S6 Ep 2
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THIS EPISODE
In this Myth Workers and Culture Makers episode, we begin with a song. Our guest, Amano, offers “Cuireadh Scéine (The Invitation of the Skane),” a song she wrote in response to a visit to the River Skane, a tributary of the River Boyne, in Co. Meath.
OUR GUEST
Amano is a songwriter, vocalist, poet, and performing artist from Killarney, Co. Kerry. She works bilingually in Irish and English to explore themes of changing identities, cultural fluidity, language(s) and animist ecologies across a range of genres including folk, pop, sean-nós, electronic and spoken word.
In summer 2024 Amano released THREAD, a collaborative Irish music project with Cork-producer Kalabanx. Songs from the record including HEART (featuring Liam Ó Maonlaí) have been played on BBC Radio Ulster, RTÉ Radio 1 and Raidió na Gaeltachta.
Amano has performed at festivals and venues across Ireland since returning to the music scene in 2023 including Electric Picnic, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, and Brigid 1500 Festival. She is currently supported by the Arts Council in developing her practice in the sean-nós singing tradition.
Her next solo single, Burn, is set for release on February 19, 2025. Presave the song now.
Find her at: https://amanoanseo.com, and @amanoanseo on Instagram, Substack, and TikTok.
OUR CONVERSATION
- Amano’s journey, from academia and a future career in heritage museums, back to the music and language of childhood
- Blas: the Irish word for taste that also relates to your connection to the language and means something like “rooted sound”
- Questions about whether we need to be “pure” when it comes to how we use and blend language. What gets lost in standardization, and what gets lost when we try to be too precise?
- Sean nós or “old way” - a phrase first used in the 1940s to refer to particular types of Irish song and dance.
- The desire to name things that we revere as “ancient,” and knowing when it’s appropriate and not appropriate to use that term.
- “Complicated normalcy” is new in Ireland. As someone with Japanese and Irish heritage, Amano speaks to the experience of children who have origins and stories that don’t comply with the “typical” Irish experience.
- Amano’s experience of embodying the Cailleach in a series of street performances - the way the crone goddess calls us to embrace simplicity, and into relationship with plants, animals, the elements.
- Seeing Brigid as “task master and the goddess of fire.” Amano sees her as the perfect figure to look to when you’re worried about how your work will be perceived.
Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com
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