Turas Imbolc Premiere “I Mo Bholg” Video Honoring Brigid’s Day
Posted in Bootleg Theater on February 1st, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Today in Ireland is Brigid’s Day. The pagan festival Imbolc. Halfway between the winter solstice and the Spring equinox. A celebration of the coming renewal of life, and Brigid — a triple deity, which both sounds cool and is a real thing such as it is — being a goddess of creativity, healing, protecting, wisdom, feminine power and accomplishment, and so on, would seem to have earned the song. Premiered today, “I Mo Bholg” brings together vocalists Michelle Sionnánn and Aoise Tutty Jackson (also percussion), Seán Mulrooney (Tau and the Drones of Praise) on guitar and vocals, and George Quirke on yidaki — not a didgeridoo — as a gorgeously harmonized four-piece called Turas Imbolc.
You can feel the spirit coming through the material. It’s not long. It won’t take up too much of your busy day, but if you got five minutes, the melodies, the incantation, and that part at about 3:45 when all the voices come together — it’s the stuff of chills up the spine. Plus, there are horses — a rather hilarious moment when Quirke is playing the yidaki for them — and frolicking in a green field, and everybody’s hanging out and having fun and communing with the space around them and no one is telling anyone they don’t love them or being mean or mad about nothing. I don’t know. I feel like if that was the world, we’d probably be okay.
A simple view, maybe. Relationships, politics — the great, many “things” of existence — are rarely so compliant to get in line and sing a song, literally or figuratively. More reason to celebrate those moments when they do, then. How many times in your life are you going to get to play yidaki for a horse? Six if you’re lucky and you work hard at it? I’m glad this video was made. The occasion might be the first marking of Brigid’s Day as a full-on national holiday, but it’s clear the resonance of the goddess runs deeper here than just a day off work.
Also, quit your job.
Enjoy the clip:
Turas Imbolc, “I Mo Bholg” official video
NEW SONG CELEBRATING BRIGID’S DAY, NEW PUBLIC HOILIDAY
“Turas Imbolc – I Mo Bholg”
Releasing: Brigid’s Day, 1st February 2022
With the Government’s recent announcement that Brigid’s Day will become a public holiday from 2023 and preparations for St. Brigid’s 1500-year anniversary in 2024 underway, the significance of Brigid to the Irish people is palpable.
To celebrate this historic occasion, four musicians from Ireland are releasing a song dedicated to Brigid, and the season she presides over – Imbolc.
Singer and co-creator Michelle Shannon (Sionnánn) says “As we once again prepare to approach the threshold of Imbolc (‘i mo bholg, meaning in the belly), we present to you a song and video to honour and celebrate not only Brigid as triple Goddess and Matron Saint of Ireland but also to celebrate the rise of the feminine and equality in Irish culture, where a national holiday has been dedicated to a woman for the first time.”
The song features the powerful double vocal female invocation from Aoise Tutty Jackson (poet and singer) and song carrier, Sionnánn. Sean Mulrooney from Tau provides the production, vocals and instrumentation with George Quirke, who has studied with first nation Australian elders on Yidaki.
The song was written during Imbolc 2021 as the group of friends gathered around the fire on Sliabh an Iarann, Co. Leitrim. The video was shot by Cian Brennan at Brigid’s Well near Uisneach which is said to be the mythical 5th province and heart center of Ireland.
Brigid, Brigit, Bríd is a triple Goddess of pre-Christian Ireland who presides over healing and creativity. She was also one of Ireland’s most pre-eminent Saints when she walked these lands over 1,500 years ago. She is associated with the symbols of water, fire and earth, all of which are honoured in this song.
As we are all connected in this collective vision, our friend Laura Murphy expressed what many of us are feeling eloquently in her open letter to an Taoiseach on Brigid’s Day 2021…
“Let this be our commitment to shaping Ireland’s future, a new era guided by Brigid’s principles of light, inspiration, imagination, healing, truth, justice and love.”
Seán Mulrooney says “Our hope is that we can share this song with the world to amplify the message and remembrance of Brigid, Goddess symbol of compassion and love whose qualities are perhaps needed now more than ever.”
