Dolores Keane | |
|---|---|
 Mary Black sits while Dolores Keane sings with De Dannan at the 1985 Trowbridge Folk Festival | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 26 September 1953 Sylane, County Galway, Ireland |
| Genres | Celtic, folk |
| Occupation(s) | Singer |
| Years active | 1975–present |
Dolores Keane (born 26 September 1953) is an Irish folk singer. She was a founding member of the group De Dannan following which she pursued a solo recording and touring career.
Keane was born in a small village called Sylane (near Tuam) in rural County Galway in the west of Ireland. From the age of four she was raised by her aunts Rita and Sarah Keane, also well-known sean-nós singers. Keane started her singing at a very young age, due to the influence of her musical aunts. She made her first recording for Radio Éireann in 1958, at the age of five. Her brother, Seán, also went on to enjoy a successful music career. [1]
In 1975, she co-founded the traditional Irish band De Dannan, [2] and they released their debut album Dé Danann in that same year. The group gained international recognition and enjoyed major success in the late 1970s in the US. Keane went touring with the band and their single "The Rambling Irishman" was a big hit in Ireland. In early 1976, after a short two-year spell, Keane left De Dannan and was replaced by Andy Irvine, who recorded live with the band on 30 April 1976, during the Third Irish Folk Festival in Germany. [3] Soon thereafter, she married multi-instrumentalist John Faulkner, with whom she would subsequently record three albums of folk music.[ citation needed ]
Keane lived and worked in London for several years with Faulkner, before they moved to Ireland in the early 1980s. They worked on a series of film scores and programmes for the BBC and formed two successful bands, The Reel Union and Kinvara. During this period Keane recorded her first solo album, There Was a Maid in 1978. [2] This was followed by two other releases, Broken Hearted I'll Wander (1979) and Farewell to Eirinn (1980), which gave credit to Faulkner. [2] In the mid-1980s, she rejoined De Dannan and recorded the albums Anthem and Ballroom with them.
Keane turned her attention, once again, to her solo career in 1988. It saw the release of the eponymous Dolores Keane album. [2] Her follow-up album A Lion in a Cage, which was released in 1989, featured a song written by Faulkner called "Lion in a Cage", [2] protesting the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. [4] It became Keane's first Irish number-one single, [5] and she performed the hit at the celebration of his release. A new facet was added to Dolores' career when she played the female lead in the Dublin production of Brendan Behan's The Hostage , a new translation by Niall Tóibín and Michael Scott, the opening night of which was attended by Mary Robinson, the President of Ireland at the time.
In 1992, Keane was among the many female Irish singers to lend their music to the record-smashing anthology A Woman's Heart . The album, which also featured Eleanor McEvoy, Mary Black, Frances Black, Sharon Shannon and Maura O'Connell, went on to become the biggest-selling album in Irish history. A Woman's Heart Vol. 2 was released in late 1994 and was also a high charting album in Ireland.. Also in 1994, a solo album, entitled Solid Ground, was released on the Shanachie label (available on Dara Records) and received critical acclaim in Europe and America.
In August 1995, Keane was awarded the prestigious 'Fiddler's Green Hall of Fame' award in Rostrevor, County Down, for her "significant contribution to the cause of Irish music and culture". In that same year, she took to the stage in the Dublin production of JM Synge's Playboy of the Western World . Dolores contributed to the RTÉ/BBC television production Bringing It All Back Home (1991), a series of programmes illustrating the movement of Irish music to America. [2] Keane was shown performing both in Nashville, Tennessee with musicians such as Emmylou Harris and Richard Thompson, [2] and at home in Galway with her aunts Rita and Sarah.
In August 1997, Keane went to number one again in the Irish albums chart with a compilation album of her most loved songs. Another studio album was released by Keane in 1998, called Night Owl. It saw Keane returning to her traditional Irish roots and it did well in Europe and America. Despite a healthy solo career, Keane went on tour with De Dannan again in the late 1990s, where she played to packed audiences in venues such as Birmingham, Alabama and New York City.
Keane is known the world over for her deep, melodic voice. Her recordings of songs such as Dougie MacLean's "Caledonia", Frank A. Fahey's "Galway Bay", Paul Brady's "The Island", and Donagh Long's "Never Be the Sun" are regarded as amongst the greatest interpretations of these songs. [6] American singer Nanci Griffith said of Keane: "Dolores Keane, the queen of the soul of Ireland, has a sacred voice".
Keane married musician John Faulkner, with whom she had worked on many occasions, in 1977. After a difficult pregnancy, Keane gave birth to their first child, Joseph. He was born with Bardet–Biedl syndrome, which causes obesity and failing vision. Dolores and John's marriage ended in 1988. Her current partner is Barry "Bazza" Farmer, with whom she had her second child, Tara, born in 1994. Keane put an end to recording and touring in the late 1990s, due to depression and alcoholism. She has received extensive treatment for these conditions. As of 2007, Keane lives outside Galway with her two children and her husband Barry. [7] As of June 2014, Keane was given the all clear[ vague ] after developing cancer. [8]
Dolores duets with John on "It's a Cheating Situation" and "In a Town This Size".
Mary Black is an Irish folk singer. She is well known as an interpreter of both traditional folk and modern material which has made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland.
De Dannan is an Irish folk music group. It was formed in 1975 by Frankie Gavin (fiddle), Alec Finn, Johnny "Ringo" McDonagh (bodhrán) and Charlie Piggott (banjo) as a result of sessions in Hughes's Pub in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, with Dolores Keane (vocals) subsequently being invited to join the band. The fiddler Mickey Finn (1951–1987) is also acknowledged to have been a founder member.
Cara Elizabeth Dillon is a Northern Irish folk singer. In 1995, she joined the folk supergroup Equation and signed a record deal with Warners Music Group. After leaving the group, she collaborated with Sam Lakeman under the name Polar Star. In 2001, she released her first solo album, Cara Dillon, which featured traditional songs and two original Dillon/Lakeman compositions. The album was an unexpected hit in the folk world, with Dillon receiving four nominations at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Maura O'Connell is an Irish singer. She is known for her contemporary interpretations of Irish folk songs, strongly influenced by American country music.
Tommy Fleming is an Irish singer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s after he was asked to tour the US with Phil Coulter. He soon established himself as a solo artist and found his greatest success singing traditional Irish music, both old and contemporary. Fleming has toured extensively throughout Ireland, UK, United States, the Netherlands and Australia.
Mary Coughlan is an Irish singer.
Caledonia is a modern Scottish folk ballad written by Dougie MacLean in 1977. The chorus of the song features the lyric "Caledonia, you're calling me, and now I'm going home", the term "Caledonia" itself being a Latin word for Scotland. "Caledonia" has been covered by various artists, and is often dubbed Scotland's "unofficial national anthem".
"Down by the Salley Gardens" is a poem by William Butler Yeats published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889.
Eleanor McEvoy is an Irish singer-songwriter. She composed the song "Only a Woman's Heart", title track of A Woman's Heart, the best-selling Irish album in Irish history.
"Galway Bay" is the name of at least two different songs.
Seán Keane is an Irish singer and musician, known for his distinctive sean-nós-style voice.
Eleanor Shanley is an Irish Roots musician, from Keshcarrigan in County Leitrim in the North West of Ireland.
Frances Black is an Irish singer and politician. She came to prominence in the late 1980s when she began to play with her family's band, the Black Family, performing a mix of traditional and contemporary Irish music.
Gael Linn is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation focused on the promotion of the Irish language and the arts. The organisation's funding includes government and lottery sources.
Tara Music has been regarded for many years as one of the leading traditional Irish music recording companies. The label was set up by Jack Fitzgerald and John Cook in the early 1970s.
Rita Keane was an Irish traditional singer and accordionist. She was a member of a well known Irish musical family, and had a lifelong musical partnership with her older sister, Sarah. She was a paternal aunt of singers Dolores, Seán and Matt Keane.
Alexander J. Phinn, known professionally as Alec Finn, was a British-born traditional musician who is famous for his unique style of accompaniment on the bouzouki.
Rita Eriksen is a Norwegian singer, as solo artist and in the 1990s, as part of the Norwegian singing duo Eriksen with her sibling guitarist and singer Frank Eriksen. Rita Eriksen was also briefly a member of vocal group Queen Bees.
Charlie Piggott is an Irish traditional musician, best known as a founding member of De Dannan and has toured extensively in Europe, Canada, and the US.
James Kelly is an Irish fiddler, composer, collector, researcher and teacher from Dublin. He is the son of County Clare fiddler, John Kelly, and has played with various groups including Patrick Street and Planxty. Kelly has been described by The Journal of Music as "one of the greatest Irish traditional fiddlers alive today" and by Cathy Benton, Professor of Music at Missouri Baptist University, as "one of the top 10 fiddlers in the world".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
