>> Stephen Winick:
Welcome to the American Folklife
Center's 2024 Homegrown Concert
Series. I'm Stephen Winick, and
for many years, this series has
brought the best of traditional
folk music and dance to
Washington, D.C.
And this year we are very
pleased to have the Skye Consort
with Emma Björling in our
series.
And so we are here with members
of the Skye Consort and 
Emma Björling to have a
conversation about the concert
that they just performed here
in the Whittall Pavilion in the
Library of Congress.
So welcome and thank you for
being in the series.
>> Seán Dagher: 
Thanks for having us.
>> Stephen Winick:
And what I'm going to do is just
so that we get everybody's name
pronounced correctly, I'm going
to ask you to go through and
say your names for the
interview.
>> Seán Dagher:
My name is Seán Dagher.
>> Emma Björling: [foreign 
language] Emma Björling.
>> Amanda Keesmaat:
Amanda Keesmaat.
>> Simon Alexandre: [foreign 
language] Simon Alexandre.
>> Stephen Winick:
Thank you all very much.
And I'm going to start by
asking some questions to each of
you about your musical
background before forming the
group, like how you came to the
point where you would join a
group like the Skye Consort.
So I guess we'll just go in
order and start with Sean.
>> Seán Dagher:
I was really interested in
Celtic folk music and other folk
musics when I was late teens,
early 20s, yet studying theory
and composition and classical
theory and composition
I guess I should say, and I was
really looking for a way to
bring those two things
together, to do one in the
manner of the other.
And then I met up with the
other co-founders, Alex Keeler
and Matthew White, and we
started this project.
>> Stephen Winick:
And you were also involved
in La Nef in Montreal.
So explain a little bit about
what that is.
>> Seán Dagher:
So it was actually Skye Consort
that led me to La Nef
after having done several
projects with Skye Consort, you
know, by then Amanda was in it
from the very beginning and we
had lots of different
collaborators. And eventually we
sort of as a collective got
poached by La Nef to participate
in their concert series.
And that was really great
because La Nef had
funding and administrative
infrastructure, and they could
put on concerts that we would
have otherwise been doing, sort
of in people's barns or
whatever.
They could put them in concert
halls and stuff so that it was
nice to work with La Nef.
And then ultimately the La Nef
project led us
to working again with Emma.
>> Stephen Winick:
Great. And I would also just
mention that you're well known
in another field, which is sea
shanties and explain your
Sea Shanty projects and
particularly how you brought it
into the modern world of video
gaming.
>> Seán Dagher:
It was the about ten, 12 years
ago I got hired by Ubisoft to
sing Sea Shanties on a series
of video games,
the Assassin's Creed series 
of video games,
and it was really their
initiative. They wanted sort of
something that sounded
authentic. And one of the
producers said, you sort of
sound like a folk singer.
And so come and sing these
songs.
So I went and sang the songs
and it proved to be hugely
popular, and I took a great
interest then in Sea Shanties
as well, and have been running
with it ever since.
>> Stephen Winick: All right.
Well, thank you, Sean, and we
will now ask Emma some questions
about her musical background.
>> Emma Björling: Well, 
I come from a musical family.
My granddad, paternal 
granddad played the fiddle and
played traditional music, so I
sort of grew up with it.
But I did study both
classical music and jazz before
I sort of, well, gave up and
and started doing folk music,
like or found my way.
Found my home in music, I
should say.
And since then, it's
basically only been folk music
in many, many different bands
and constellations 
and groups. Yeah.
>> Stephen Winick:
Well, we'll mention two of them,
because a little secret.
Emma has been in our
concert series twice before, and
we've done two of these
interviews before, though this
is the first time we've been in
the same country while we were
doing them. So 
Emma's group Kongero
is in the series 
from a couple of
years ago, and then she was in
this series as a duo with Petrus
Johansen. So look for those
videos too, on the Library of
Congress website. All right.
And so talk a little about your
other musical projects.
What are the...
>> Emma Björling: Oh, well, 
so Kongero is a vocal quartet.
We sing Nordic traditional
and original folk music.
All female.
And then I play also in Lee,
which is folk pop, Swedish folk
pop, which is where I play with
Petrus.
So yeah, and I have
various other, like a Danish
band that wants to play Swedish
traditional Christmas music, for
example, and in all kinds of
and a duo also that does
Nobel Prize winner, winning
author and poet.
His lyrics or poems that we set
music to.
And that's an classical like
organist and me. So all good.
>> Stephen Winick: All right.
Well, look for Emma
online as well.
And we'll ask Amanda, I
guess you can tell us a little
bit more of the background of
life since you were in it for
>> Amanda Keesmaat: Of
La Nef or Skye Consort?
>> Stephen Winick:
Yeah, all of that. Yeah.
Just begin with wherever you
want to talk about your
background.
>> Amanda Keesmaat:
So I studied cello and it
brought me to playing at in my
sort of post undergraduate
playing Baroque cello.
So I actually played Baroque
cello most of the time.
And I play in a Baroque
orchestra in Montreal called
Arion. So when I was at
McGill University, I was going
to McGill University with
Matthew White and with
Alex Keillor, who were friends
of Sean, that decided to do
this Skye Consort project.
And the first project was with
like, Baroque instruments and a
countertenor. So they were
like, oh,
we should have a man to come
play.
And I guess it just sort of
stuck after that.
I've been in all the projects
since then, but now
we say since the beginning, but
it was kind of the beginning, I
guess. But yeah.
And then the other things that
I do I have a group of my
own called Space Time Continuo,
and it's the lower instruments
of the Baroque, and we throw
together projects where we,
like, listen to the harp or the
organ or the harpsichord or of
the Livonia, the viola da
gamba and bassoon and stuff like
that. And we do projects like
that.
So those are my
big ones.
>> Stephen Winick: Great. Yeah.