Mary Black may be one of the few music fans who don’t enjoy sitting back listening to Mary Black sing.
“When you’ve grown up in Ireland, surrounded by music, it’s always in your life,” Black says. “And it’s nice to hear your songs on the radio once in a while. But I don’t like to listen to concert tapes or anything. I’m very critical of my own voice. I cringe.”
Black has a new album, “The Holy Ground,” which further establishes her as a popular singer who hasn’t lost her connection to the traditional music she sang with the Irish group De Dannan.
“I don’t consciously include traditional elements in my music,” she says.
She was pleased she could fit a traditional song onto this album (it’s the title track), in part because it’s something she might not have done a few years ago.
“For the first year or two after I left De Dannan in 1986, I think people perceived me as a singer of traditional songs,” she says. “That was a bit frustrating, and something I had to shake. But I think that’s over now.”