Móglaí Bap Opens Up on 2020 Death Before Irish Goodbye — Kae Tempest
kae tempest appears alongside a deeply personal release as Móglaí Bap opens up about his mother Aoife Ní Riain’s death from suicide ahead of Irish Goodbye. Naoise Ó Cairealláin says the song came from footage of his mother in happier moments, and from the need to talk plainly about grief, shame and therapy.
“I never meant to write a song about this,” he said, adding that seeing her in a video for the first time had “a profound effect” on him. He described Aoife Ní Riain as happy in the footage and said the moment pushed the song toward memory rather than sorrow alone.
Aoife Ní Riain in 2020
Aoife Ní Riain died in 2020. She was an Irish language activist and traditional musician, and she had her own show on Raidió Fáilte. Ó Cairealláin said he never got the chance to play MAM for her, even though he had told her he had written a song for her and that it was not completely finished yet.
He said she was sick at the time with depression, and that the later song came from a different place: ordinary routines, not mythmaking. “I never realised it was the day to day stuff I would miss when she was gone; going for a walk in the park, her giving out to me or keeping me in line, offering me pieces of advice. It's all the small things that you miss,” he said.
1990s Documentary Footage
Ó Cairealláin said he was inspired to write Irish Goodbye after watching a documentary from the 1990s in which his family featured, a period when his father Geróid Ó Cairealláin was president of Conradh na Gaelige. He said he first saw his mother in that footage, which gave him a way to think about her beyond the final years of her life.
“Watching that footage of her and writing this song, unlocked a part of my brain that gave me the opportunity to override the constant sad memories. It allowed me to visualise happier times, instead of being so angry at the world,” he said. The song now carries that private history into a public release, and the short film around it extends the same frame: not spectacle, but remembrance.
Therapy and grief
“I didn't cope,” Ó Cairealláin said of his mother’s death. “It takes years.” He said therapy was what helped him eventually, and added that a lot of his parents’ generation do not believe in therapy. “We're different,” he said, urging people to ask for help and saying there should be services available for them.
He also said, “it's such a complex thing,” and argued that suicide should be spoken about “because we have to alleviate that extra burden of shame and guilt on top of the burden of grief.” For listeners, the point of Irish Goodbye is already clear: it is not just a tribute track, but a public way of saying the hard part out loud.
