East London Calling

Cathryn Green was born in the South African seaport of East London, a town heavily dominated by industry, with accountancy the number one career of choice and no serious music scene to speak of. So when this classically-trained pianist, an avid pop music fan through listening to her mother’s LP collection, decided to seek to develop her artistic tendencies elsewhere, Ireland was the obvious option.

“My great-grandmother was from Ireland, and my mother’s father was from Scotland. My mother used to talk a lot about Scotland, but I’ve always been drawn to the music and culture of Ireland. I always felt there was something in me that’s strongly Irish and that was beckoning me. There was nowhere else I even considered, so I moved here in 2008,” she explains.
In Green’s teens she sang in church choirs, but her mother’s vinyl collection appealed to her even more than her classical or choral work.
“I especially loved Kate Bush, the Electric Light Orchestra, The Carpenters, The Hollies and Enya. I also became familiar with Riverdance, The Cranberries and Clannad and played them all the time. I used to rewind the Riverdance cassette to play the soprano part that goes, ‘I am living to nourish you, cherish you. I am pulsing the blood in your veins,’ in ‘Cloudsong’.” She laughs at the memory.
Of course, Green was also aware of the political turmoil in Ireland.
“It used to sadden me. I’ve always wanted to be on the side of the underdog and it used to get to me whenever I saw what was going on from South African TV or the press. I also watched a lot of Irish movies, like The Wind That Shakes The Barley and Angela’s Ashes, so even though East London was quite isolated, I was aware of Ireland and its history. It all struck a chord with me as I looked at my future as a musician. Coming from a working-class family, going to university was not really an option, so I trained to be an accountant. East London is full of accountants! So there was little future for me there except to get a nine-to-five job, go steady, get married, and have kids just like a conveyor belt. That prospect was too restricting for my artistic spirit, and the draw of Ireland became too strong,” she elaborates.
Thus Green relocated to Dublin, and found Ireland much as she expected it.
“If there was any culture shock it was only that East London is quite small and Dublin is so much bigger. Coming to Ireland has given me the opportunity to build on my craft as a musician and to learn and be inspired by a community of musicians who are so talented. I didn’t realise there were so many musicians here! To meet them, I just went out and played open mic nights in places like Bruxelles and The Bankers.”
Cathryn had by then a bunch of her own songs and remembers debuting them in Dublin’s Button Factory not long after arriving on these shores.
“I was very nervous and excited but also very insecure, to be performing in Ireland, singing my own songs in a way I would never have been able to do in East London. But the audience was really respectful. They gave me a good hearing and the response was encouraging and very welcoming. I met Gillian Verrecchia from Hot Press who did a set that night too. I really enjoyed her songs and she gave me some helpful advice. I also met another singer Suzanne Savage from Belfast there, and we keep in touch,” she says.
One of her songs, ‘Can You Understand?’, became the title-track of her recently-released debut EP. Its lyrics (“They put you in your box and hopefully it stays locked/They teach you all the same and then you will forget your name”) reflect her views on the life she wanted to escape from. She recorded the EP in Cauldron Studios with Bill Shanley, and explains how that came about.
“I did one earlier recording session in a Dublin studio, at the end of which the guy told me my songs weren’t really finished. I wish he’d told me that at the beginning instead of wasting a week! Maybe as a foreigner I was susceptible to being taken in, so I put that down as a lesson. He obviously saw me coming! But I was determined to press on and make sure I wasn’t fooled again. About eighteen months later I got the Hot Press Yearbook and read about all the producers. I narrowed them down and went to see them. Bill was the first person who seemed to have a real connection to my music.”
Can You Understand? is now available through 15 different music stores across the globe.
On the live front, Green has wowed them at Whelan’s, the Grand Social, The Cobblestone and Peadar Kearney’s, and there are superb live versions of her singing her own ‘Your Lies’ from the Zodiac Sessions and ‘I Wonder’ from the 50cent Sessions available on YouTube.
“When I perform on my own I just use my Yamaha piano, and I like to vary the set by trying new songs. I have some wonderful Irish musicians who play live with me whenever we can get suitable gigs; Liza Delaney from Rialto on violin and Joby Browne from the centre of Dublin on cello.”
As for the future, Green hopes to become a naturalised Irish citizen as soon as the process allows, and is currently working on material for her debut album. At a time when many young Irish people are having to contemplate emigration, it’s encouraging to know that the reverse process can still work, and that a vibrant artist from a distant part of the planet can be so fulfilled by settling here.

Cathryn Green’s debut EP Can You Understand? is available now. Listen to the title-track on hotpress.com.