To signal the new year and to highlight the wonderful musicians we’re welcoming each month here at CreativeMornings/Dublin, we’ve decided to revive our blog. Each month, we’ll share an interview with our musician.

This month, Dani Larkin is taking to the stage. Dani hails from the Armagh-Monaghan border and is widely receiving praise as one of Ireland’s finest songwriters. A natural storyteller, her music is heavily inspired by the folktales she was raised on, intertwined with elements of traditional melodies and rhythms from around the world. 

On the live music scene, she’s opened for Rufus Wainwright, Lisa O'Neill and performed at Ireland Music Week, Output, and at Other Voices Belfast and Ballina. This year, she’ll debut at Folk Alliance International and release her debut album, ’Notes For A Maiden Warrior’. 

Michelle sat down with Dani to ask her all about music, creativity and everything in between.

I’m going to kick off and jump straight in! I’ve read that you use music as a baseline for peace-building, is that right?

Big question to start with but we’ll for it!

Where does the story begin? I did a Masters in International Conflict and Cooperation in Scotland and came back to Belfast in 2015 and I realised it was all well and good sitting in an academic environment talking about change and conflict and thinking and writing about all of the ways change can take place. But for me, I realised music had to come in there somewhere.

It began as an absolute need for myself to reconnect with myself and realise that writing things down and thinking wasn’t the only way to change things. That then opened a new world for me. I did an internship with an organisation called Beyond Skin and I learned how to transform conflicts through sound and through songwriting. I remember my very first day; I was very nervous, working with various school groups from throughout the North and I remember seeing the change in those young people from when we started the day to when we finished it. 

So I came away thinking not only are they energised but I’m coming away in awe of their energy. And that is, for me, that’s it really: purpose on the planet - making music and creating change. 

Q: Had you always played music or made music for yourself throughout your adolescence? Or was it something that happened around this time after you graduated?

Music is something that’s always been there. My mum’s family are musicians and I’m so grateful to them all. From when we were very young, we got together every Sunday and the people who could sing, sang and the people who could dance, danced and the people who could tell stories, told stories. Music for me was something that was very living and very much a part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I started making music in 2013 before the Masters so that first year of writing and performing music for myself was so explosive. I hadn’t encountered anything like it and I can honestly say that when I started making music for myself, that’s when I started to uncover things about myself.

It’s a gift for me, it’s served me so well. It’s brought me to places I thought I would never ever get to go. And it’s allowed me to delve into worlds that are soulful that are full of the soul and are full of magic and I think that’s really beautiful. Maybe sounds quite naive. But it’s just the truth. 

Q: Do you think then that creativity and creative pursuits can be a catalyst for change? 

Yes, unequivocally, unequivocally. I love kids, I love working with kids. I love how creativity can really bring out the childlike imagination in ways that adults, we seem to starve ourselves of, for some reason. For me creativity and the power of the imagination are such incredible agents of transformation. It’s not only one kind of transformation, you don’t transform only once, it’s an ongoing process. If we can do that in healthy and sustainable ways and by having a bit of craic, why wouldn’t you?!

Q: What does promise mean to you? 

I guess the thing that’s so beautiful about promise, is that it’s almost of another age or another lifetime, like a child’s lifetime. I used to promise things a lot more when I was 5,6,7,8 than I do know that I’m 30. And I think there’s something beautiful in that. I think there’s something so freeing about being able to promise. 

If I think of it in my adult head it’s something to do with sincerity. Sincerity for me is acting according to one’s values or morals. 

Q: Your album is coming out in Spring, is that right? 

Do you know what? I’m just going to be brutally honest; I am in awe of the album and how it has developed from me just recording it in the studio in Half Bap Studios in Belfast last March just before we went into lockdown, to where I am now as a musician and a human being. And how listening to the songs on the album now and the different meanings that they have for me. 

It’s really amazing and I’m really excited. But it’s my first ever album.  

It’s called Notes for Maiden Warrior and the first half of the album is slightly more dark. And it moves into a kind of lighter, lighter side in the second half, and then it finishes in mystery. And for me that narrative or that kind of arc that is created through the album is something that is very true. 

This album for me is a homecoming and a discovery at the same time, so it blends this element of folklore and myths and story. But in a very personal sense and very connected to place and very connected to who I am and where I’m from. It’s taken me quite a while to grapple with all of those things like identity and home and place and I feel like this album really demonstrates that, and I hope people get a lot from it. I hope they enjoy it. And that’s being left in a state of mystery with the last song isn’t too disconcerting. 

Q: Do you think that the meaning has changed because the world has changed so much since you started writing it or because you’ve changed? 

Have I changed? I don’t know. Yes is probably definitely the answer. Personally, I’ve been in various swells of transformation for quite some time, sometimes related to pandemic, sometimes not. And as chaotic as the world is right now and as much pain and suffering and grief that we are experiencing collectively, I also have hope. 

I have hope because I can see things changing in ways that I have never seen in my lifetime before. I think that changes the meaning of the album for me a little bit, because it’s called Notes for a Maiden Warrior. 

The notes are the songs, not musical notes, but it’s my experience of the world and how I move through it and kind of like a guide for it. And the maiden is the first aspect of the three aspects of womanhood in Celtic mythology of Maiden, Mother, Crone. And warrior reverts back to the idea of Ulster, the Warrior Province. 

The world has changed so much from when the album has been recorded but I know that in sharing this music and in sitting in these songs that we can come together and create the spaces that we need to create to move on and move through this life. 

Q: Do you think if you started making it now, it would be a totally different album?

I don’t know because the album was made at the time and I had a very clear idea when I went into the studio of what I wanted it to sound like. I worked very closely with George Sloan and Half Bap Studios, he’s an incredible engineer and we co-produced the album together.

And the key thing for me was telling the story and keeping it simple in the way of not going heavy on production, not going in with lots of instruments and lots of synthetic sounds. It was very important that it’s like this album is guitar, banjo, harmonium and voice. That’s what this album is. And we use those things sparingly.

I’ve certainly found my voice as a folk musician as Dani Larkin with this album. The next album is being written and I can’t tell you how that’ll sound because I haven’t recorded it yet, but I get the feeling that these are the voices that sound true and it’s about keeping it as truthful as possible at every possible stage for me. 

 I took on Larkin as a surname in the summer of last year and before that, I’d been performing as Dani. But Larkin was my great grandmother’s maternal maiden name that disappeared when she married and it’s also that sense of coming home. Taking on that name, finding out that for me my album is predominantly voice and predominantly story and rooted in place. All of those things came together at the time, and so I can’t say if I were to do it now would I do it any differently. But I can certainly say that this album is a foundation and I’m excited for what comes next. 

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You can listen to Dani’s music on Spotify here.