The rapper, thinker, poet and collaborator has announced a solo tour of Ireland playing Cork, Galway, Limerick & Kilkenny ahead of a new album in 2027.
Denise Chaila brings the An Seo Tour to fruition this September and October, sharing a message about the upcoming dates, which are:
Sat 19 Sept — Connolly’s of Leap
Sun 20 Sept — Cyprus Avenue, Cork
Fri 25 Sept — Róisín Dubh, Galway
Sat 26 Sept — The Commercial, Limerick
Sat 3 Oct — Set Theatre, Kilkenny
Tickets from the venues.
I chatted to Denise on the Podcast in January.
♡ Nialler9 is independent and reader-supported. Support us on Patreon →
The old English word for ‘dream’ didn’t mean ‘seeing visions while asleep’ until the 13th century. It originally meant “joy” or “music”.
As someone who spent over a decade doing everything I could to avoid singing in earnest, learning that to sing means to dream altered something fundamental about the way I understood what I wanted from music. I began my life in Chikankata singing in three-part harmony with my loved ones, and slowly retreated into rhythm and words as I grew into adolescence.
An Seo as a tour, is a small glimpse into the subterranean work I’ve been doing in my quiet corner of the west coast of our isle. A reintroduction. An invitation to meet me with some of the people I’ve encountered on my way who have left their fingerprints on me permanently.
This tour – hilariously my first solo one in Ireland – and the music that comprises it both old and new, lives somewhere closer to my heart than I’ve allowed myself to share in my work thus far. Which is interesting.
Everything I’ve learned sitting at the feet of jazz musicians in restaurants and warm living rooms in Mexico City. Sessions in crowded pubs, fleadhs and smoky studios along the west coast of Ireland. Sharing a home with my Irish-Brazilian family in Dublin with all the samba, fractured Brazilian Portuguese and heritage they have shared with me. Half-remembered notes from the classical singing lessons I took during my adolescence, and all of the eclectic beauty of discovering the richness of the Zambian music I took for granted as a child.
All while still on a road forward. Here I am, in all of the wildness and dreaming. And I hope to meet you in a room of harmonies and space with the stories and songs I’m carrying in my beat up 7-year-old duffel bag.
It’s a pleasure to meet you again.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
