Biography Reherseal

Known as Enya - was born in 1961, 17 May, and spent her childhood in Gweedore (in County Donegal, situated in the north-west of Ireland, one of the main redoubts of the Irish language). There are nine brothers and sisters. Apart from Enya, who is in the middle, there are four other girls and four boys. All the family have won many competitions and are famous in national traditional [music] circles.

Whilst at school, Enya studied the piano and classical music. Three of her brothers and sisters, Máire Ní Bhraonáin (Mary Brennan), Ciarán Ó Braonáin (Kieran Brennan) and Pól Ó Braonáin (Paul Brennan) formed, together with their uncles Pádraig Ó Dugáin (Patrick Duggan) and Noel Ó Dugáin (Noel Duggan), a folk music group (at first with a certain American feel and then more purely Irish, though influenced by jazz and by others such as Pentangle). The group was named Clannad, a contraction of "the family from Gweedore" in Irish. In 1980, at the suggestion of their manager, Fachtna O'Kelly, Enya became a member of the group, participating in the recording of two of their albums, Crann Ull and Fuaim. Apart from providing vocals, she played the Wurlitzer electric piano and later the Prophet 5 synthesizer. She performed with Clannad on many occasions, until, in February 1982, on completing a European tour, she left the group, no one really knowing why. Perhaps she was fed up with being treated as just the little sister.

Since then she has lived in Artane, in the north of Dublin, sharing a house together with Nicky Ryan and Roma, his wife, who comes from Belfast. All had been involved with Clannad at some time. Nick Ryan had worked as a sound engineer with Planxty and later with Clannad, at the time the group was starting out. In 1980, their manager, Fachtna O'Kelly, took charge of the new group The Boomtown Rats, for which reason Nicky thenceforth took charge of their [Clannad's] work. In his house he installed a recording studio, Aigle. There he has recorded, for example, Christy Moore's album Ordinary Man, which has three songs in which Enya takes part in the chorus.

It was also Fachtna O'Kelly who suggested to Enya after she left Clannad, that she devote herself to composing for films. And so, in 1984, she approached her first important task. Roma Ryan had sent a cassette of Enya to film producer David Puttnam, who already had to his credit such titles as Midnight Express, Chariots Of Fire and Los Gritos Del Silencio. Puttnam asked her to compose dreamy and romantic music with a sixties feel for the feature film The Frog Prince.

Having a studio at her disposal, Enya worked almost always at home with the Roland Juno 60 synthesizer or the Kurzweil sampler, and then added piano and voice. Nicky Ryan recorded everything and helped to put the compositions into their final form.

The next commission was for the BBC. It was to prepare music for an important television documentary series on the history of the Celtic civilisation throughout its 2700 years. The series was called The Celts. The composition took ten months work. The music was liked so much that the BBC decided to release a selection as an independent record, before the series was broadcast and entitled simply Enya, with barely a mention in the liner notes that it was a soundtrack. She played nearly all the instruments on the album, sometimes doubling up as many as eighty voices to create her characteristic sound, of dense textures, and ethereal voices, dreamlike and enchanting. It was to paint by means of synthesizers a modern sonic landscape that could evoke different atmospheres, from the mournful lament of 'Deireadh An Tuath' to the striking 'Boadicea', with its astounding dynamic of overdubbed voices. Nicky Ryan acted as producer and co-author of the arrangements and his wife Roma wrote nearly all the lyrics, for the most part nearly inaudible or impenetrable, giving an evanescent character to the music by being sung in Latin, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic.