In perfect harmony for Clonakilty Guitar Festival
Australian duo Mama Kin Spender are enlisting the help of a local choir for their trip to West Cork this week, writes .
The power of a choir to transform a room and conjure, as if from thin air, a sliver of spirituality has been recognised by every from Mozart to Hozier.
Among the latest to champion this most sanctified of traditions are Clonakilty-bound Mama Kin Spender, an alliance between Australian songwriters Mama Kin and Tommy Spender.
“I saw a video of Rufus Wainwright singing Hallelujah with the Thousand-Strong Choir in Canada, which has over 1,000 members,” recalls Mama Kin, aka Perth-based Danielle Caruana.
“It was a real lightbulb moment. We decided we would create this work for a duo — but illuminate it with a choral section.”
The results can be heard on their extraordinary record, Gold Magnetic.
The album walks the line between the contemporary and the classical, the pair’s natural musical chemistry shining throughout.
However, it’s on the road that the alliance has truly come to life.
Instead of travelling the world with a choir in tow, they’ve done something far more interesting in working with local choral groups.
So when they come to Ireland shortly they will perform with choirs at Clonakilty Guitar Festival and at Ballydehob on Culture Night (Sept 21, preceded by a brace of choir-free gigs in Galway).
Thus what might that been conventional rock concerts become site-specific experiences, in which Caruana and Spender’s rhythmic, high-soaring pop is infused with a sensibility unique to wherever they happen to be playing.
The goal, says Caruana (married to John Butler, leader of the jazz-rock group The John Butler Trio), is to hold up a mirror to the locality where, if only for an evening, they have put down roots.
She and Spender are out of towners passing through. The real power of the performance comes from the singers from the community.
“These are our songs and we’re up there. But we are far out-numbered by locals. So we are just a conduit.
"We become a vehicle for the town to celebrate itself. We’ve already worked with 15 choirs around Australia and it has been an unbelievable experience, far beyond the connection we could hope to create.
“It’s such a ridiculously ambitious thing to do. And I can think of nowhere I would rather do it than in Ireland.
"It’s a long way from home but you guys have got under my skin. Every time I go, there’s a connection.”
Entering a collaborative musical relationship was not an off-the-cuff decision by Caruana (who was unfamiliar with the Aerosmith song ‘Mama Kin’ when she took her stage name).
After a long-term solo career she was feeling the burden of doing it all on her own.
She needed someone to bounce off — not just creatively but also in terms of the logistics of being a working musician.
“It’s about the choices around touring, creating content, dealing with management, having to make all these macro and micro decisions on my own.
"If something is going to take me away from my family I have to be doing it with someone completely invested in the project — who is also a dear friend.”
The thrill of bringing her music to the world had, she says, dwindled severely.
Spender felt likewise. Mama Kin Spender was their way of falling in love with it again.
“We were both struggling and feeling quite disenchanted. Having had families our priorities had shifted — there was no longer any romance about how long the slog is.
"We were almost coaching each other through our conversations — we needed to get back to the simplest form of what we do.”
She grew up in Melbourne but some years ago made the 3,200km journey west to Fremantle with her husband. She misses home — yet thrives amid the beauty and endless horizons of Western Australia.
“It’s just like the way Ireland got under my skin,” she says.
“I love the nature over here. It’s so rugged and wild and beautiful and very different.”
