BIIRD: ‘Trad music has stood the test of time, it’s bigger than all of us and it never will die’

Crystalline in their vision and masterful in their execution, BIIRD have spent their first year absolutely soaring. On St Patrick’s Day in 2024, the 11-piece group performed to a crowd of 10,000 at Trafalgar Square in London, mystifying the masses with their lively, zealous set and uncompromising dedication to Irish design.

Since then, they’ve been steadily building up their online following with the help of viral videos that bring a trad session from the corner of a pub to a global audience, packing out tents at festivals like All Together Now, and selling out headline shows. They’ve also made an appearance on The Late Late Show and released their first official music video for the tune The Rollover.

BIIRD is founded by seven-time All-Ireland champion harp and banjo player Lisa Canny, who has toured the world extensively as part of groups like Celtic Crossroads and The Young Irelanders and exists as a true force to be reckoned with in the music realm, both trad and otherwise.

First picking up her instruments at the age of four, Lisa grew up in a home that blasted Mary Black, Francis Black and Dolores Keane from the speakers. In college, she studied Irish music and dance, and went on to complete a Masters in traditional Irish music composition. By 19, she was touring the States with troupes born in direct response to the phenomenon of Riverdance, cutting her teeth on huge stages around the world.

“I had a really clear vision of what it meant to be a BIIRD. The personality and attitude on top of the talent — and they were everywhere,” Lisa continues. “Everything fell into place. I was finding all of these incredible young musicians, some of whom I’ve been playing with since I was a teenager, and it began to take on its own identity and become this solid tangible thing.”

The flock of BIIRDs is made up of Lisa on harp, banjo, vocals; Laura Doherty on fiddle and guitar; Zoran Donohoe on concertina; Sal Heneghan on fiddle and harp; Miadhachlughain O’Donnell on flute and vocals; Nicole Lonergan on fiddle; Niamh Hinchy on vocals and synth; Aoife Kelly on cello; Ciara Ní Mhurchú on fiddle; Hannah Hiemstra on drums; and Claire Loughran on fiddle and harp.

When these women are playing together—either on stage or piled into the corner of their local—a magic flows between them. It’s like watching a starling murmuration, the intuitiveness and fluidity that seems to defy thought or explanation. I ask Lisa if that’s down to skillful calculation, a sense of connectedness, or some kind of sorcery. The answer is of course a mix of all three. “There’s no formula to it at all, it’s just innately in the music,” Lisa explains. “It’s music that has stood the test of time, it’s bigger than all of us put together. And it never will die. It’s music that comes naturally out of a people, and magic comes out of that. Tunes can ebb and flow in energy, they pull you in and leave you off — there’s no formality to it. It’s just about all of us being in that space together. It’s an energy exchange.”

Our conversation turns to the Irish revival, because honestly how could it not? The reaffirmed sense of national identity and pride, language and heritage seems to be everywhere, from the music we listen to and the films we watch to the media we consume and the clothes we wear. It’s not so much that we were lacking in patriotism before, or that we thought it was ‘uncool’ to be Irish, but more so that we seemed to think the external world was a lot more alluring, outsourcing inspiration and mimicking profundity.

“For the last decade, it feels like Irish people were very much looking outward, and now that focus has started to come back in,” Lisa says. “I think we’re becoming more authentic. We spent so long building ourselves up and out into the world, trying to be a certain version of Ireland, but that wasn’t coming from our heart and soul.”

“It felt surface level, and what’s happening now is we’re creating artists who want to do what fuels their heart and soul. It’s no coincidence that it’s happening in parallel to all the sh*t that’s going on in the world. We’re watching so many of the artists we looked up to fail to speak up about Palestine, and then you’ve got the likes of Kneecap and Lankum, who are making true music and using their voices. That’s what’s breaking through now because the audience is so much more discerning.”

On Paddy’s Day this year all 11 BIIRDs will be playing the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, before embarking on tour across Ireland in May and heading back on the festival circuit this summer. In the coming months, they’ll be stepping into the studio to record their first studio album and the collaborations that have already been confirmed are incredible.

“We obviously wanted and needed Sharon Shannon on our first album—she’s the OG BIIRD—and she immediately knew exactly what we wanted to do,” Lisa tells me. “We’ve also got Kate Nash on board, who is such a legend. She has this punk energy that’s needed to be a woman in the industry. That felt like a natural fit.”

The ultimate goal? Getting Enya out of her castle and into the studio for a collaboration to end all collaborations. We are very intently watching this space.