Musical upbringing and Clannad

Enya was born in Gweedore / Gaoth Dobhair, County Donegal, Ireland in 1961 to a musical family, the sixth of nine children. Her grandparents were in a band that played throughout Ireland, her father was the leader of the Slieve Foy Band before opening a pub, and her mother played in a dance band and later taught music at the Gweedore Comprehensive School. Enya has four brothers and four sisters, several of whom formed the band An Clann As Dobhar in 1968. They renamed the band Clannad in the 1970s.


Enya on the cover of Clannad's 1981 album Fuaim.In 1980, Enya worked with Clannad, the band composed of her siblings M?ire (Moya), P?l, and Ciar?n and twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan. Enya played the keyboard and provided backing vocals on their album Crann ?ll (1980), although she was never officially a member of the group. Until the 1981 release Fuaim, when she appeared on the cover. In 1982, shortly before Clannad became famous for Theme From Harry's Game, producer and manager Nicky Ryan left the group and Enya joined him to start her own solo career. Enya then formed her own recording studio, named Aigle, which is French for Eagle.


Solo career
Enya recorded two solo instrumental songs called An Ghaoth ?n Ghrian (The Solar Wind) and Miss Clare Remembers that were released on the 1983 album Touch Travel. She was first credited as Enya (as opposed to Eithne) for writing some of the music for the 1984 movie The Frog Prince, which was released on a soundtrack album of the same title. Another early appearance on record followed in 1987, where Enya provided spoken (not sung) vocals on Sin?ad O'Connor's debut album, The Lion and the Cobra. The title of the album is a partial English translation of Enya's Gaelic reading of Psalms 91:11-13 on the song Never Get Old.

Enya was contracted to provide music for the soundtrack of the 1986 BBC television documentary The Celts. The music she produced was featured on her first solo album, Enya (1987), but it attracted little attention at the time. The B-Side single Eclipse is actually a reversed and modified version of Enya's song Deireadh An Tuath, from this 1987 album Enya. The song Boadicea, also from this album, would later be sampled by The Fugees on their single Ready or Not (1996), causing a brief stir because the group neither sought permission from Enya nor gave her credit initially, and by Mario Winans, who did give her credit (the Winans track, I Don't Wanna Know which features a rap by P. Diddy and is officially credited to all three artists, became Enya's highest charting single in the US, when it peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 in 2004).[