The Breath Q&A
“Music is a familial language”
As The Breath prepare to bring their latest album Land of My Other to WOMEX, we hear how guitarist Stuart McCallum and singer/flautist Ríoghnach Connolly are reducing audiences to tears through their intense sonic storytelling, and why playing in Spain will be an opportunity to “build a city of voices”.
What does playing music together feel like?
Stuart: From a very personal perspective, I like the kind of headspace that I get into when I'm playing music. The state of flow, or a kind of meditation, being in the moment, being in the zone, whatever you want to call it. But that place where you're just totally focused on the sound that you're making and the sound of the room is making, and the other people are making. That headspace is a very peaceful place, and as I've gotten older and more experienced, I feel like there's less of a cognitive and physical boundary between me and getting into that headspace. I can listen in a deeper way, with less physical boundaries on the instruments.
What is it that you love about music?
Ríoghnach: Music is a familial language for me. To start with, music was for family dos – you know those terrible family dos where you end up having the same conversation over and over again, with like, your fifth cousin twice removed. Music just knocked all that sh*t on the head for us – me and my siblings could just sit in the corner, we’d have pride of place, we wouldn't have to talk to anyone. It was more like communing with the old, and with the grandparents and that generation, you know, like singing their songs and paying respect. We wouldn’t have to talk to anybody, and people would just bring us treats and we would get heralded, and my grandad would be proud. I haven't really moved away from that, because I'd still go to the oldest person in the room in a session.
Do you think of music as a universal language?
Ríoghnach: For me, music is the laziest way of communicating, and the quickest way of getting to the best person in the room. If you learn a song in any language, I always hear the notes in language first and then I'll try and copy the vowel shapes, and if I've got a tongue twister, that's also good. You’ll learn more about a culture just by learning its easiest songs first and if you have that, it's a sort of sign of respect. So, for me, it's just a way of socially dodging and diving. Music is a passport to the most dangerous company, the most exciting company. I don’t need to say anything, I don’t really need to impress anybody, I can just join in.
How rock’n’roll are The Breath?
Ríoghnach: Have you noticed that when someone says that something is ‘rock'n'roll’ they usually mean something awful has happened? They all tend to involve no sleep, snowstorms that ground all flights and being in South America trying to get home at Christmas.
What are you looking forward to about WOMEX?
Ríoghnach: I love reading a room. From the stage, people-watching, and spotting the patterns and the sources, the circuits and why people are communing the way they are. There's a reason why everybody wants to be together, and it can’t just be for self-promotion. I really like to get to know as many people as possible to see what it's all about. I've been truffle-picking all my life and it's interesting what that room holds.
Stuart: Performing to an audience is a nice place to share, and for other people to share with you where they get into their flow from, either through music or meeting a lot of like-minded people who are all circling around the same thing in different ways.
What will be on the Breath’s rider at WOMEX?
Ríoghnach: The most important part of the rider for me is a local delicacy. It can be food, alcohol – it can be just something fruity and delicious, something that grows local and that also gives you a real map of the landscape and it gives you an insight into how people live around there. For example, in Belgium, we were playing in lots of churches, and every church had a local monastery and monastic produce.
How do audiences respond to your performances?
Ríoghnach: I’m a funeral singer by tradition. People normally think that’s a bit grim, so I don’t tell them, but someone did say our music is like a “syllabus of sorrow” because we cover all the terrible things that have happened in history to various peoples. But we have a way of doing it that is tasteful and has wry humour.
Stuart: There was a guy who put a comment after a gig that we did, that said something about us being ‘folk and jazz with sweary stories’ – that was worth missing the cricket for.
“You want to be able to hold people and sing in their ear and then snarl at their back”
Where do you see the opportunities at WOMEX?
Ríoghnach: I’ve a terrible memory for names and I often don't know who I’m speaking to, so I'm not that good at networking! But music is worth it. For me it is about gathering rocks, you know, and we've created this perfect little symbiosis between the two of us, and who wants a piece? They say it takes a village, but it takes more than a village. We brought our families together to make this music and we've got our family in Manchester where we are based, and we’re going out as a village – but how do you turn that into a movement, into a city of voices?
WOMEX is coming to Manchester in 2024 – what can attendees expect next year?
Ríoghnach: Manchester is one of those places where the circuits all interlink and so once you've been round the jazz or folk circuit once, you know everybody that's in the room, because we all kind of hold each other close to get through the winters. We always know if there's a new musician in town – we all talk and we get that person's feet under the table, give them a chance. Gig-wise it is this real community spirit up here.
What is special about making music together as The Breath?
Stuart: The thing that connects me and Ríoghnach is our love of risk when we're playing. Wanting to be on the edge of the cliff where the discoveries happen. There is a real overlap between us, so we can be on our own cliffs and looking into the depths of the unknown individually, but there's also something linking our perspectives together.
Ríoghnach: I pride myself on being able to bring the audience to tears. When I was a youngster, I used to really get off on being able to settle a pub, to have a pin drop in a pub within the first sentence, or the first few bars of a song, and when I was really little it was probably because my granny was looking at anybody that made a noise, but that became addictive. Then when you stop singing harder and you start singing softer it becomes a game to see if you can get people to lean in, because you want to be able to hold people and sing in their ear and then snarl at their back. We just want to be able to take people on the story of the song. I just want to give people the sh*ts.
“Music is a passport to the most dangerous company, the most exciting company. We don’t really need to say anything, we don’t need to impress anybody, we can just join in”
