The idea for Edel Meade’s new album came to her during a week-long stay in Havana, where she was in the middle of a course in performing Cuban music. “Something clicked,” the Tipperary woman recalls, “and I said to myself, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re over in Cuba, singing in Spanish — and you know nothing about Irish music.’ So that’s when I felt I needed to go and learn about Irish music and immerse myself in it.”
Meade’s subsequent focus on Irish folk music and culture, combined with her own experience as a woman in contemporary Ireland, led to her new album Brigids and Patricias.
The 37-year-old’s talent as a singer is indisputable but music was not a formative influence at home when she was growing up in Clonmel. She had the usual pop musicians plastered to her bedroom wall: Take That, Kylie Minogue and Spice Girls. The latter, she says, taught her how to sing harmonies. Despite her natural talent, though, Meade didn’t consider pursuing music as a career, and instead did a degree in journalism at DIT in the capital.
“There didn’t seem to be a music course that was suitable,” she says, shrugging. “I had never heard of the jazz course at Newpark [an academy in south Dublin], and the likes of BIMM Institute hadn’t been established. So the only options were classical music, and I had zero interest in opera so I didn’t go down that route. I chose journalism with Irish, because I thought it’d be cool to work in radio or television if I couldn’t go down the music route.”
While in college, she continued to indulge in music as a hobby, joining the Gardiner Street Gospel Choir. She would busk at the weekends on Grafton Street with her best friend — “if you can imagine two girls just up from the country, thinking they owned Dublin,” she laughs — but a turning point came when she studied for a semester in Chicago and took extra music classes.
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“The weekend before I was due to fly out, I went to see the movie Ray [a biopic of Ray Charles] with Jamie Foxx. I had never heard music like that: it had such an impact on me — that blues, gospel, soul, jazz sound. I auditioned for the vocal jazz ensemble and got in, having never sung jazz before. I think I sang a Carole King song. That whole time was so formative.”
Upon her return to Dublin, her resolve was strengthened and she enrolled in the jazz course at Newpark — but even then, she remained torn between a comparatively stable career and pursuing her dream. “At the start of my second year in Newpark I was offered a position on The Late Late Show,” she recalls. “The programme would need me all day on Fridays and that clashed with the course. So I had to make a decision: which do you want to do? A job on The Late Late Show would have been a dream role if I was going to pursue broadcast journalism, but I just knew in my heart that I wanted to do music, and that was it.”
Meade went on to perform successful tribute shows to artists such as Joni Mitchell and Billie Holiday, but her own original music began to shine through. She released a jazzy debut album, Blue Fantasia, a mix of covers and originals, in 2017. The groundwork was laid on that trip to Havana, however, for a 180-degree turn to the Irish folk inspiration of Brigids and Patricias.
This second album — stripped back, recorded during lockdown last year, and remarkably affecting for both of those reasons — is a striking piece of work. Reflecting Meade’s experiences as a 21st-century Irish woman while nodding to the past, songs such as the injustice-inspired Long Way to Go reference everything from the #MeToo movement to the CervicalCheck cancer scandal. Meade was inspired, she says, after being introduced to the work of Damien Dempsey and Steo Wall while developing her songwriting with an MA course at the University of Limerick.
“It really moved me that it was so raw and honest,” she says of Wall’s material, which combines soul and spoken word. “I felt it in my body, it really shook me. I felt what it was asking me to do was to be more honest in my own work and cut the bullshit.”
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Some tracks on Meade’s album, such as Not for This World, take a more personal slant; that lullaby-style song, she says, was written to acknowledge her grandmother’s loss of a child. Others relate to historical stories: Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland; and Bridget Cleary, a Tipperary woman accused of being a changeling, who was murdered by her husband in 1895.
Brigids and Patricias arrives at a significant moment for the continuing debate over disparity in airplay for male and female artists on Irish radio.
“From what I can see, there’s phenomenal talent coming out at the moment from Irish women,” Meade says. “It feels like there’s never been a time like this before. I do feel there’s a long way to go, but progress is being made. For example, Tipp FM are absolutely brutal when it comes to supporting women. I’ve contacted several presenters on that station, as I have with other stations, and they haven’t responded to me. But with other stations, I have felt very supported, by both men and women.
“I would have presumed that women would naturally be more interested in the album, but no — it would seem to be half and half. So things are improving. With the release of [Irish Women in Harmony single] Dreams, and the likes of Wyvern Lingo doing amazing stuff . . . There’s a long way to go but it’s getting better.”
As well as her album’s powerful messaging both on a personal and social level, Meade hopes that those who listen to it will appreciate the value of art, particularly over the past 12 months. She has been putting her extensive and eclectic experience to good use by working as a part-time vocal coach but recognises the struggles for any double-jobbing artist.
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“With the pandemic, we’ve realised how important art is — but not enough is being done to support artists,” she says. “Sometimes people think music is just songs about love and break-ups, but art is powerful and necessary in the world and can create social change.
“It would be amazing if people could recognise and appreciate the importance and the value of artists, and this album. Because at the moment it’s just so hard to make a living doing this.”
Even so, she is already thinking about where her music might go in the future. Having braved the jazz and folk worlds with her first two albums, she is “definitely willing to experiment”.
“I think I’ll do one more album following this path I’m on right now, and I’ll probably bring in some more musicians and Irish-sounding instruments,” she says with a grin. “But I’d be quite adventurous and I have a diverse taste in music, so I’ll probably move on to something totally different next. Sure, why not?”
Brigids and Patricias is out now