Singers can serve an apprenticeship. Years spent listening to the radio, straining to catch every nuance and vocal gesture of broadcast artists; re-winding the tape player to hear that quirky phrasing; harmonising with the great and the good in the privacy of the back room. And then the time comes when those vocal cords, honed, spit-polished and shining, come into their own. The delivery is tentative at first, and then bold, raising the rafters for a small gathering, a local fundraiser, and finally lifting to the gods of the concert hall - as long as the gods smile on you, of course.

Waterford singer Karan Casey served her apprenticeship in the cosy confines of Ballyduff Lower where the voices of Aine Ni Cheallaigh, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday mingled seamlessly. It was a tapestry that wove its way into Karan's subconscious, buoying her for the day when she would hold the microphone in her own hand, and ready her lungs for the audiences who would want to hear her voice, singing songs of fairies, love-lorn suitors, cross-dressers and the sundry other inhabitants of the Irish singing tradition.

Surely the gods were smiling on her when Seamus Egan and Winifred Horan, chief cook and bottle-washers with Irish-American group Solas, came knocking on her door back in 1994. Joining them as lead vocalist, she spent five years on tour, criss-crossing the United States, Europe and beyond, learning the ways of the road and, more importantly, discovering how to survive the demands of the tour bus. In between, they recorded three albums with Casey carrying the torch. Baptism of fire, it may have been, but Casey found her rhythm and soared on the back of the challenge of it all.

"It was a fantastic experience", she says, "and I couldn't have asked for a better mentor than Seamus Egan. He's a consummate musician, takes his music very seriously. Touring with Solas taught me so much."

Seven years on, Karan Casey has released a second solo album, her first since parting company with Solas (a debut album, Songlines, was produced by Egan, and recorded while she was still with the band). This new recording, The Winds Begin To Sing, sees Casey taking flight, navigating her own path through murky as well as crystalline waters. She admits that the album lays down a definite career marker for her. "I felt more confident and more mature about how I approached it. I didn't feel I had to prove a point and I could do whatever songs I wanted. I suppose in the band setting, we went for more up-tempo material because it suited the group. But on this album I was able to choose songs which weren't particularly traditional." Like Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, a remarkable bare-boned tale of lynching, rendered new by Casey's stark reading of it.

"I felt a huge freedom in recording that," she says. "When you start out singing, you don't want to stop, or take a breath or a pause, because you're afraid of the silence. I suppose that momentary silence was somehow threatening. But with this song, I found I was able to relax and breathe and leave some space there."

The song's inclusion is searingly apt, given the schizoid reactions there have been to the arrival of immigrants in this country in recent years. Casey is hopeful the song might trigger more thoughtful reactions to the questions of multiculturalism facing us over the coming years.

"I think in singing it, it's possible to touch on racism in a way in which it can be tackled emotionally, as opposed to this very distant thing, a word that is talked about on Questions and Answers - trying to draw people into the emotional reality of racism. And I think that it works at that level, but it's kind of frightening how vivid the song is, and how frightened people are when they hear it."

Casey believes that tiny pinpricks, such as singing Strange Fruit are more likely than poster campaigns to strike at the heart of the matter. "It needs to happen in the workplace, and in the home, and on the street," she suggests, "as opposed to Government level. I think that's where we need to tackle it, and I suppose that's why I'm doing it with the songs, because in a way, that's my workplace."

With Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone exerting a strong influence on her from an early age, Casey is clearly a singer who likes fire in the belly, passion in the heart. Not for her the watery warblings of Moon-in-June singers. "When I first heard Nina Simone, I couldn't believe what she was singing about," Casey grins. "Racism, equality, she was incredible. And she's as full of passion now as she was 30 or 40 years ago. When you see how some people wind down and lose their fire, you really appreciate her even more. She's unbelievable."

But the English folk tradition has also left its mark on Casey. "I suppose I listened a lot to June Tabor over the years. And of course Dick Gaughan and Ewan McColl. I think it all just seeps in over time."

Does Casey think that the songwriting is less powerful now than it was generations ago? Has songwriting's golden age long passed? Are there contemporary equivalents of Who Put The Blood? emerging from the pens of today's writer's? Casey barely hesitates before leaping to the defence of contemporary tunesmiths. "Well, years ago, you had Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger visiting the factory workers and the miners and collecting all the songs, which had been sung for generations," she explains. "So it might have felt like there was a lot of material that hadn't been tapped before. But there are plenty of people writing great songs now, like Kate Rusby, Dick Gaughan and John Spillane. And then, it's hard to write songs when you have such good songs already in the tradition. I mean, you might feel like you've got to be a writer like Bob Dylan before you write a line."

One thing capable of riling Casey is the constant assumption that, as a singer, she should always seek to write her own material. Interpretation and writing are separate artistic activities, and should not be presumed natural bedfellows, she insists. In this age of multi-tasking, the two are not necessarily intertwined.

"Singing and songwriting are two completely different skills. People work at their singing and others at their songwriting. I feel I'm better at singing than at writing, but that's not to say that I don't write my own material. I do it in my own time, but it's not something that worries me. Anyway, there are so many great songs out there, I don't think I'll be stuck for material!"

Casey's main co-conspirators on the album are her partner, Niall Vallely, on concertina and Robbie Overson on guitar. The trio has been touring extensively over the past couple of years, and the road miles have paid off handsomely in terms of the intuitive interplay between them in the recording studio. These are no session musicians on an hourly rate. "We had to draw on the resources that we had, with just the three of us," she explains. "We had to come up with ways that the concertina can be versatile. So we had time to work out all these arrangements. It was fantastic to have the luxury then of recording all those songs together. I think we've all found it was really enjoyable. Now we'll see what everyone else thinks of them."

The Winds Begin To Sing is on Shanachie Records.