Questions 71 to 80 are based on the following passage.
Enya was born in 1961, 17 May, and spent her childhood in Gweedore. There are nine brothers and sisters in the family, four other girls and four boys. All the family have won many competitions and are famous in national traditional music circles.
Whilst at school, Enya studied the piano and classical music. Three of her brothers and sisters, formed, together with their uncles, a folk music group (at first with a certain American feel and then more purely Irish, though influenced by jazz and by others such as Pentangle). The group was named Clannad, a contraction of “the family from Gweedore” in Irish. In 1980, at the suggestion of their manager, Fachtna O’Kelly, Enya became a member of the group. She performed with Clannad on many occasions, until, in February 1982, on completing a European tour, she left the group, no one really knowing why.
It was also Fachtna O’Kelly who suggested to Enya after she left Clannad, that she devote herself to composing for films. And so, in 1984, she approached her first important task. Roma Ryan had sent a cassette of Enya to film producer David Puttnam. Puttnam asked her to compose dreamy and romantic music with a sixties feel for the feature film The Frog Prince.
Having a studio at her disposal, Enya worked almost always at home with the Roland Juno 60 synthesizer or the Kurzweil sampler, and then added piano and voice. Nicky Ryan recorded everything and helped to put the compositions into their final form.
Enya’s first record subsequently climbed to number one in the Irish charts, which started the commercial rise of Enya. She collaborated with the singer Sinéad O’Connor reciting a short text on “Never Get Old” from her album The Lion And The Cobra.
She signed with an important multinational, and had a resounding success with her second album Watermark, which has passed 10 million sales worldwide, and has gone platinum in 14 different countries, helped by the single“Orinoco Flow”, a No 1 hit in Britain. Then she repeated her world success with Shepherd Moons, which spent an amazing 199 weeks on the Billboard charts in the USA and has sold over 11 million copies.
Statements:
Enya worked together with the singer Sinéad O’Connor reciting a short text on “Never Get Old”.