Enya Biography - Profile
Birth name:
Eithne Ní Bhraonáin
Birthday: May 17, 1961
Place of birth: Gweedore, Donegal, Ireland
Nationality: Irish
Raised in: Gweedore, Donegal, Ireland
Natural hair color: Brown
Eye color: Brown
Height: 157 cm (5'2)
Nicknames: The Silver Lady
Education / Profession: Musician
Labels: Reprise, Atlantic, WEA/Warner, Alex
Music styles: New Age, Celtic
First released record:
Album: The Celts (1987)
Claim to fame: Album: Watermark, Song: Orinoco Flow (1988)
Awards:
> Grammy Awards: 1993, 1997, 2002, 2006
How it all started: Enya, or Eithne Patricia
Ní Bhraonáin, was born on May 17, 1961 in Gweedor, county
Donnegal, north-western Ireland, as the middle of 9 sibblings.
Her family was very musical – father a musician, mother taught
music at Pobalscoil Ghaoth Dobair, and some of her sibblings and
uncles started up a band called An Clann As Dobhar in 1968,
changing their name to Clannad in the 70s. She joined them
briefly in the 1980s but when the group’s producer Nicky Ryan
left, she went along to start her solo career.
She moved in with Nicky Ryan
and his wife Roma Ryan, who reportedly became something close to
her second parents – also in music, Nicky Ryan being her
producer and his wife Roma writing her lyrics – and gave piano
lessons to get some money coming while working on her stuff in a
recording studio she formed in a shed.
She was encouraged to write
film music – and some of her songs appeared on the soundtrack to
a 1984 movie, The Frog Prince. In 1986 she signed a contract for
providing music to a BBC documentary The Celts. She published
the songs on her first album in 1987 which however went
relatively unnoticed. Her real breakthrough came in 1988 with
the album Watermark containing the playful Orinoco Flow, topping
the UK and some European charts and selling an impressive 8
million copies.
Her music continued to be
recognized and loved since, and in agreement with her initial
focus, used in many films such as Green Card, Far and Away, The
Age of Innocence, Lord of the Rings and others. It is a rather
well known, yet notable fact that she really creates almost all
the music and instruments in her songs herself – the instruments
on a synthesizer, the choruses by singing the individual parts
and layering them over as much as 80 times to achieve that
characteristic Enya sound.
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1987 - The Celts
1
Only Time
