Moya Brennan, the voice of Clannad and one of the defining singers of Irish folk music, has died aged 73. Her family said she died peacefully in the company of loved ones in her native County Donegal.
Born Máire Philomena Ní Bhraonáin on 4 August 1952 in Dublin, Brennan grew up as the eldest of nine children and went on to study at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. With her brothers Pól and Ciarán and her mother’s twin brothers, Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin, she formed Clannad in 1970. The group made its live debut that year at the Slógadh Youth Festival and won the prize that came with a Polydor record contract the band was too young to sign.
Clannad’s commercial breakthrough came in 1983 with Magical Ring and Theme from Harry’s Game, which reached No 5 in the UK Top 40. The group became the first act to perform in Irish on Top of the Pops and later won a Bafta for its music for Robin of Sherwood, making it the first Irish band to take the award. Brennan’s singing helped earn Clannad credit for contemporising Celtic music, and she became known as the first lady of Celtic music.
Her reach went far beyond the band. Bono praised Brennan and later duetted with her. Her voice also appeared on the soundtracks to Titanic and King Arthur, while her solo career began with Máire in 1992 and continued until 2024, when she released Voices & Harps IV with Cormac de Barra. Along the way, her sister Eithne Ní Bhraonáin sang with Clannad in the early 1980s before leaving to become Enya.
In later years, Brennan had been living with pulmonary fibrosis and faced the possibility of a double lung transplant. She also worked with Christian Blind Mission Ireland in countries including the DRC, Rwanda, Brazil and Tanzania, and supported people affected by drug and alcohol dependency. Her private life included an 18-month marriage to Pat Farrell from 1985, a miscarriage in 1987 and a marriage to British photographer Tim Jarvis in 1990.
Brennan once said attitudes to Irish had made singing in the language feel, in effect, as though the group was being told it was letting people down, but Clannad fell in love with Gaelic melodies and Irish was her first language. That is the part of her legacy that lasts: a singer who took a language once dismissed as poor man’s speech and turned it into a world sound.
