When Pauline Scanlon was \u201c10 or 11\u201d, she noticed a change in her mother, Eileen. \u201cThere was a darkness,\u201d the traditional singer recalls in the beautifully raw and mournful documentary Amhr\u00e1in do mo Mh\u00e1thair (TG4, 9.30pm). Eileen was overwhelmed with \u201cmemories she had buried deep inside and kept hidden\u201d but which had now resurfaced. \u201cThere was a different atmosphere in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defining trauma of her mother\u2019s life, Scanlon would learn, was the child Eileen and Scanlon\u2019s father, Paul, had together before they married and which they had been forced to give up for adoption. Eileen was never able to make contact with her oldest son, Graham, and it haunts both him and Pauline that she died without having met him or discovering the life he had made for himself in Dublin. \u201cShe was angry, but very quickly the anger turned to shame,\u201d Scanlon says. \u201cShe had never stopped looking; she longed to meet the child, but it was not allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, Scanlon paid tribute to her mother, who died in 2012, with the album The Unquiet: Songs for My Mother. This accompanying film features live restagings of central moments from the record. They are a reminder of how music can express emotions that words alone cannot, whether those feelings are torrid and traumatic or full of love and warmth.<\/p>\n
Amhr\u00e1in do mo Mh\u00e1thair also explores Scanlon\u2019s activism \u2013 including her work in founding FairPl\u00e9, an organisation advocating for gender equality in Irish traditional music. She didn\u2019t get much thanks for her efforts \u2013 as is too often the case in Ireland, there was a sense that some things were best buried. \u201cThere was a backlash. I was made to feel ashamed,\u201d she says. \u201cThat shame was handed down one generation to the next. I wanted to address that feeling and deal with it within my personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film has a dreamlike aspect to the point where it risks being a little bit all over the place. One moment, Scanlon is reminiscing about a misbegetton youth attending raves in Kerry. The next, her father is recalling his days playing inter-county football \u2013 a reminder that, alongside all the pain and trauma, life often just carried on regardless. Yet this wooziness ultimately gives the documentary a powerfully impressionistic quality. It is as if the audience is experiencing Scanlon\u2019s emotions as they rise up within her in real time. Our feelings obey no logic, but their own, and that is captured here.<\/p>\n
Amhr\u00e1in do mo Mh\u00e1thair concludes with Scanlon and her band performing the folk standard \u00d3r\u00f3, s\u00e9 do bheatha \u2018bhaile in a church. It is a jagged, angry take, fuelled by squalling guitar and Scanlon\u2019s voice rattling with feeling. \u201cI have a lot of rage,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just red-hot rage I\u2019ll always feel. My mother felt it too, and she had every right to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Pauline Scanlon was \u201c10 or 11\u201d, she noticed a change in her mother, Eileen. \u201cThere was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,34095,7727],"class_list":{"0":"post-269516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-irish-language","12":"tag-kerry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}