Culture
02 Nov 20

PREMIERE: Folk singer Leah Sohotra shares poignant video for remastered single 'Tuam'

Leah Sohotra’s recently released 10-song debut album, 'Breaded Crickets', blends the folk singer’s powerful lyrics with the ingenuity of Martin Leahy, who plays well over a dozen different instruments on the LP. Sohotra has been working in music for the last four years, having started out as a poet and storyteller.

Cork-based musician Leah Sohotra has shared a remastered version of her haunting single 'Tuam', originally released in 2018, following her recent album release.

The song was written after the Tuam babies scandal came to light in Co. Galway, with historian Catherine Corless gathered death certificates for 796 infants linked to the Bon Secours mother and baby home.

Excavations of the mass grave site in 2017 showed “significant quantities of human remains” in a 20-chamber underground structure near a decommissioned sewage tank. DNA analysis confirmed the ages of the dead children ranged from 35 weeks gestation to three years and were buried mainly in the 1950s.

Leah Sohotra infuses her own musical work with a huge sense of empathy, gained from both personal experiences of hardship as well as her work with US homeless shelters, the Cork Simon Community and the Rape Crisis Centre.

Sohotra’s raw lyrics don’t hold anything back from the audience, bringing previously stigmatised subjects into the spotlight.

The evocative track 'Tuam' is dedicated to Leah's mother "and the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries and Catholic homes for unwed mothers."

"In loving memory of anyone who has been unceremoniously buried, in one way or another, by corrupt institutions that fed off them".

Speaking to Hot Press following the release of Breaded Crickets in August, Leah expands on the process behind writing 'Tuam':

“When I wrote the song initially, I didn’t have any intention of sharing it,” Leah adds. “I ran out of songs at a gig but had one left, so I decided to sing ‘Tuam’ to see how it would be received, and it felt so raw and visceral. I was invited to a tribute event held for survivors of Magdalene Laundries at Cork Institute of Technology last year.

“My mother is a survivor of rape and I can’t separate that from myself, it’s too big a part of who I am. One of the hardest aspects of being a survivor is the amount of shame that society puts on you, to make it so that you can’t even talk about it. We saw what happened with the Catholic Church and the abuse within it – if survivors are blamed for what was inflicted upon them, it’s impossible to heal.”

Watch the riveting black-and-white visuals for 'Tuam' below: