Answering the call of the Wylde

Music, sound and photography have been in the Wylde family for generations and now a fourth generation of the Ennis line prepares to embark on a similar career.
Doireann Wylde, a 21-year-old from the Turnpike in Ennis, has many talents. A well as being a multi-instrumentalist, she is quite the academic and has recently graduated top of her class with a Masters in Radio and Television Production from NUI Maynooth. She also holds an honours Bachelor of Science degree in multimedia from Dublin City University.
Much of her passion for music and sound has been developed and inspired by those that have gone before her, as she explains.
“My great grandaunt and granduncle, Eva and George Meehan, were choir master and organist in the Cathedral. My grandad was Denis Wylde, he was photographer with The Clare Champion and he played the piano and organ mainly but also played piano accordion. He was a projectionist in the Gaiety Theatre and he was also a student of Ernest De Regge up until De Regge’s untimely death in the Carmody Hotel accident.
“My uncle, Donagh Wylde, completed some of De Regge’s works and recently released his mass St Oliver Plunkett Mass on CD,” she said.
Although Doireann’s dad Jim doesn’t play a musical instrument, he does have a musical ear and an interest and love of music. It was his keen ear that led him to a career as a sound man with RTÉ and he now works as cameraman for RTÉ news.
“Dad will hear someone out in our back garden walking around at strange hours in the morning and wake up instantly” such is his ear, Doireann revealed.
It is now up to Doireann to carry through the Wylde music tradition.She outlined how she was dedicated to music from a very young age.
“I remember when granddad passed away, I was eight, and I turned to my uncle and I said ‘what did he play?’ I wanted to know the list of instruments that he had ever touched and I went about finding out that, two of which were the pipe organ and the piano accordion, both of which I now play. Those were the instruments that he played and that’s why I went for those instruments,” she said.
Doireann is now an organist at the Cathedral in Ennis and her love of the instrument has taken her around Clare where she has played every pipe organ available. She’s even travelled abroad to play unusual pipe organs.
“I chased down pipe organ tuition and I hounded Fr Tom. I was a server in the Cathedral and I was looking at the instrument for years. I wanted to know how I could get up there and play and I studied for three years,” Doireann said.
Organ playing was also in the family, as Denis Wylde played the instrument and his uncle, George Meehan, was the organist in the Cathedral before him.  Doireann’s uncle Donagh was also extremely well known as an organist and so Doireann now continues the line four generations on.
The 21-year-old also plays the piano, and her first ever instrument was the violin having played it from the age of three to 16.
“Dad never had the music but I picked up on the music, it seemed to have skipped a generation, so myself and my cousin Conor are the only two that have kept it on,” Doireann said.
Her interest in photography and
all things technical was cultivated at home as she was intrigued by the cameras and pieces of sound technology her dad had.
“Dad had the photography cameras in the house, they all had cameras, Donagh and Jim would always have cameras. I saw them with cameras and I saw granddad with cameras and I got a camera when I was eight and it was a little Fugi Finepix camera,” Doireann recalled.
Doireann’s mother Mary outlined where the talent for photography came from and how that developed in the family.
“Denis always had a love of photography, it was his aunt’s husband Mr Neylon in Bindon Street that was into photography and sort of gave Denis a love for photography. Jim Wylde (senior) died suddenly so Denis had to stay at home with his mother and from that he went into the photography. I’d say of old Ennis there probably isn’t a house that hasn’t a communion, confirmation or wedding taken by Denis. Then he went to work with Shannon Development and he would have archived and photographed all of the development of Shannon Airport and the Duty Free Zone. He was known the length and breadth of the place. His two loves would be photography and music,” she said.
Doireann did her Leaving Certificate at 16 and was just 17 when she went to DCU to study multimedia, surprising everyone with her course choice.
“Everybody expected me to do music and that’s exactly why I didn’t do it. It is something I will go back and do eventually though. Dad was working in Waterford the first 13 years of my life,” Doireann said.
Jim Wylde started working out of the South-East as a soundman with RTÉ and it was sound that Doireann specialised in for her degree.
“I would have seen bits and pieces of technology equipment around the house. He was living in Tipperary and when we’d go down to that house he had proper stereo headphones and proper stereo speakers and a proper amplified sound system and a proper collection of CDs. You weren’t allowed to touch that stuff but you were allowed to listen, and I was always allowed to listen and I did.
“The camera was handed to me, it was something I wanted to do. It wasn’t necessary a raw talent it took me a long time to get my eye line but I worked at it, and I came second in a national competition when I was 12 or 13 in an under-16 category. I was into computers very heavily from a young age, technology fascinated me, taking things apart and putting things back together as did my grandfather. I always wanted to know more. Then I got into digital photography from the age of about 11, that all led into the computers, so then I had the analogue media down. I was into everything media without knowing it,” she said.
Doireann had put down speech and language therapy and art on her CAO form initially and wanted nothing more than to go to University College Cork but when the change of mind form came in the door, she had heard about the multimedia course in DCU and everything seemed to click into place.
She specialised in audio and then went on to study at Masters level in NUI Maynooth, graduating in November with the top marks in her year.
So what does the future hold for young Ms Wylde? “I’d like to further my studies. I’d love to do a PhD. The music is always there but I don’t ever want music to be my work”.
For now though, Doireann is setting about creating a choir and she is anxious for people interested to get in touch with her on 085 161 9147.
The new choir will form for a fun introductory evening on Tuesday, March 5, at 7pm. Thereafter, on Tuesday, March 13, those participating will audition to see which part they fit into best and Tuesday, March 20, will be the first full rehearsal.