Loreena McKennitt's Musical Travelogue

From Inside Borders, November 1997

Transcribed By Debbie Castineiras

Through her numerous recordings, Loreena McKennitt has explored the evolution of traditional Celtic music and its various forms.  Her newest album, The Book of Secrets, incorporates Middle Eastern influences into her already potent mix of cultures.  We asked Loreena about both the modern and age-old sources of the music she makes.

What directions are you exploring with your new album that you hadn't before?

Well, having a passion for Celtic music, I've used that as a vehicle for learning more about history and acquainting myself with subjects and themes that I might not have engaged in otherwise.  In a more specific sense, with this recording I wanted to look at the more eastern direction of the Celts, or at least begin there, but again as with anything, you set yourself off in a direction and you really have no idea where you'll end up.

I look at the recording as a document of my path of exploration. It's a kind of musical travelogue, the process very similar to what professional travel writers go through: they land upon a theme, do a lot of research, read a lot of books, and then go to these places because there's a lot of essential information you can only pick up as a result of traveling to places--the light of the sky, the smell of the streets, the sounds of people.

How did you come upon these worldly musical influences from where you grew up in Canada?

Well, North Americans, having come from a whole different part of the world, feel a less strong connection to their roots, and subsequently people want to go back to where their family came from, whether it was Ireland or Scotland or Germany.  The culture that I was raised in was a very prairie kind of culture.  There wasn't Middle Eastern music or Celtic music around the house.  I first became exposed to Celtic music in Winnipeg.  I was in a folk group there, and a number of members were from Ireland or Scotland, and they brought with them a number of records.  I was instinctively drawn to that music.  Then began the process of learning, going to Ireland, immersing myself in the natural environment that this music sprang from, and also acquiring instruments that would allow me to participate and explore my own connection to it.  I want to paint my own personal musical document.  It's an impressionistic document, there's nothing authoritative about it at all--it's just a result of my own research.  Subsequently I've been going to Ireland for the last 16 years.  I have a very modest cottage there, on the west coast.  It's been a kind of anchor, in a way.

How do you choose the adaptations you do of poems and literary works, and what sort of particular problems do they present in adaptation?

In 1985 I had been asked to perform at an authors' festival in Toronto, and to set an Irish poem to music as a tribute to one of the Irish writers who was visiting at that time.  Once I had done it and looked back, I felt that having another voice other than my perspective strengthened the recording.  The recording itself--at least my recordings--are not all about me.  I'd like to think they're about all different themes and subjects.  And one can expand the perspective on a subject by adding more voices into that.  So that's been one of the driving motivations in including other writers' work.

Of the various disappointments I encountered on this project was that I wasn't able to find the literary material I had hoped to.  When it comes down to it, even when you find material that resonates in the right phonetic way, it sometimes doesn't scan well, or fit the meter of the music.  "The Highwayman" on this project was my personal Mount Everest.  I had no idea that it was going to be so, so difficult.  And I'm still not convinced that it's as successful as the poem can be.  But it wasn't until we started working on it that I encountered the various challenges within the metric structure of the poem, and at various times I was ready to just ditch the piece.  Then it became a personal challenge of mine, and at the end of the day I decided that this rendering might be strong enough to find its place on the recording.

Have you been surprised at the widespread popularity your music has achieved?

Oh, definitely.  When I did make the commitment to become a singer, to produce my own recordings and so on, I had no idea--I don't believe anybody had any idea--that it would work as well as it has.  I became convinced through busking on the streets of Toronto that there were indeed people who were interested in this kind of music, and particularly my music.  It gave me the confidence to --well, if I couldn't go through the front doors of the music industry, I was going to seek out the side doors.  And as I did that, and did that successfully, I realized that there are a lot of people who are interested in, not only my music, but the other different kinds of music that commercial radio or TV isn't geared to.

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