Enya

Leo Brennan (1925-2016) was the leader of an Irish showband named the Slieve Foy Band, before performing solo.

Baba Brennan (née Duggan; born 1930) has remote Spanish roots with ancestors who settled on Tory Island and she was an amateur musician who played with the Slieve Foy Band.

Enya's mother also taught music at Gweedore Community School.

Enya grew up in Gweedore, a region where Irish is the primary language.

Her name is anglicised as Enya Patricia Brennan, with "Enya" being the phonetic spelling of how "Eithne" is pronounced in the Donegal Ulster dialect.

"Ní Bhraonáin" translates to "daughter of Brennan".

Enya's maternal grandfather, Aodh, affectionately called "Gog", was the headmaster of the primary school in Dore; her grandmother was a teacher.

Aodh was also the founder of the Aisteoiri Ghaodobhair, the Gweedore Theatre company.

Enya has described her upbringing as "very quiet and happy".

However, she has acknowledged that there was "continual hustle and bustle and crying and chaos" amongst the nine siblings.

Their maternal grandparents were quite involved with the siblings' upbringing at home, as their parents were travelling with the showband; Leo entertaining at the pub, and Baba leading the choir.

At three-and-a-half years of age, Enya took part in her first singing competition at the annual Feis Ceoil music festival.

She also participated in pantomimes at Gweedore Theatre and sang with her siblings in their mother's choir at St Mary's church in Derrybeg.

At the age of four, Enya began piano lessons and was learning English throughout primary school.

She later said, "I had to do school work and then travel to a neighbouring town for piano lessons, and then more school work. I remember my brothers and sisters playing outside and I would be inside playing the piano, this one big book of scales, practising them over and over."

As well as traditional Irish music, Enya and her siblings were introduced to a variety of music in the 60s and 70s, and enjoyed watching musical films.

Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin (born 17 May 1961), known mononymously as Enya, is an Irish singer and composer.

Enya is noted for her modern Celtic music, and is the best-selling Irish solo artist (second-best-selling Irish music act overall, after rock band U2).

Enya was raised in the Irish-speaking region of Gweedore.

Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin was born in the Dore area of Gweedore, County Donegal, on 17 May 1961, the sixth of nine children in the Brennan family of musicians, born to Máire "Baba" and Leopold "Leo" Brennan.

In 1968, the couple took ownership of a pub in Meenaleck, Co. Donegal, naming it Leo's Tavern.

She said of Jesus Christ Superstar, "it was such an original piece of music in 1970 [...] played in my house every single day, and myself and my sisters would sing word for word".

From the age of 11, Enya attended a convent boarding school, Milford College, in Milford run by the Sisters of Loreto; her education there was paid for by her grandfather.

The boarding school, now Loreto Community School, was where Enya developed a taste for classical music, art, Latin, and watercolour painting.

She said, "It was devastating to be torn away from such a large family but it was good for my music."

In 1980, Enya (as Eithne Ní Bhraonáin) began her musical career playing alongside her family's Celtic folk band Clannad.

She left Clannad in 1982 to pursue a solo career, working with the former Clannad manager and producer, Nicky Ryan, and his partner Roma, as their lyricist.

Over the following four years, Enya developed her sound by combining multitracked vocals and keyboards with elements from a variety of musical genres such as Celtic, classical, church, jazz, new age, world, pop, and Irish folk.

The two earliest releases by Enya were instrumentals for the Touch Travel T4 (1984) cassette compilation, composed around 1982-83.

Enya composed most of the soundtrack and sang two songs intended for the film The Frog Prince (1985), and composed a body of work for the BBC documentary series The Celts (1986).

A selection of her pieces for The Celts were released as her debut album, Enya (1987).

Following this, Rob Dickins took interest in Enya's music, and so she signed with Warner Music UK.

The record deal granted her considerable artistic freedom and minimal interference.

The success of Watermark (1988) propelled Enya to worldwide fame, helped mostly by the international hit single "Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)".

This was followed by the multi-million-selling albums Shepherd Moons (1991), The Memory of Trees (1995), and A Day Without Rain (2000).

Sales of A Day Without Rain and its lead single, "Only Time", surged in the United States following its use in media coverage of the 9/11 attacks.

After Amarantine (2005) and And Winter Came... (2008), Enya took a four-year break from music, returning to the recording studio in 2012 to begin work on her eighth studio album Dark Sky Island (2015).

In a radio interview with Elaine Page in November 2008, Enya shared a selection of favourite songs from musicals.

Regarding a new project, there have been several mentions by close sources of Enya recording new music since her 2015 album.

According to her sister Moya, Enya was recording music, as of 2019.