Feakle Festival celebrates 25 years

Feakle Traditional Music Festival celebrates its 25th birthday this year and will mark the evolution of this annual event, which attracts visitors from all over the world, with a commemorative DVD.

The DVD, which is currently being compiled, will document the wealth of musical talent that has come to Feakle over the 25-year period, as well as the enjoyment the listeners and visiting musicians have experienced in East Clare during this time.

 

Since its humble beginnings in 1988 the festival has grown from three to a six days, attracting vastly talented traditional musicians from the locality, and further afield and expanding to include cultural elements also.

Speaking about his involvement with Feakle Traditional Music Festival, chairman of the festival committee Gary Pepper, told The Clare Champion of the pride he feels for the festival by how far it has come.

“Our initial plan, when the festival first started was to use it as a platform to allow East Clare musicians to display their wares and bring musicians in from outside, gel them together and see where it went from there. There would be a great tradition of music in East Clare but we wanted to broaden that horizon a bit. It actually started in 1988 when we honoured Dr Bill and Tony Loughnane and proceeded to broaden the festival base to encompass all aspects of East Clare heritage. It has developed into a much wider entity.

“Over the years we’ve had a huge international dimension too, especially in the late 1990s when we had many groups over from Iceland and we had the ministers and leader of the Monserrat Government over in 1999 and the Oriole String Band from Monserrat.

“Feakle is a small intimate place and because of that people who came here out of musical curiosity found that there was something very friendly about it. They found in it a musical friendliness and a willingness to embrace visiting musicians. It is such a small village that people couldn’t but meet one another over the weekend, so it was an all embracing festival and continues to be. It is a bold claim by visiting musicians but they consider it their festival now and that’s the way we want it to be. They come because they feel welcome and people enjoy their music,” Gary explained.

He said in celebrating this latest milestone in the festival’s history the committee is anxious to go back and capture that all-encompassing feeling by producing a DVD.

Puddles Films, which is run locally by Hilary Dully and Joe Comerford, are at a very active stage with live interviews due to take place shortly for the DVD. The committee are seeking the help of former visitors to the festival who may be able to share material with them for this DVD.

“The DVD will include archival material of the concerts, of the sessions, it will include photographic memories and audio tapes as well so it has no closed agenda it’s a varied production. We are sure a lot of people have material from over the years and we are just asking for people to loan us that material and we will guarantee we will get it back to them safely. We then intend to have Áine Hennessy launch that DVD on the opening night of the festival on the Wednesday August 8,” Gary revealed.

Any material for the DVD needs to be handed into the committee by the end of June to ensure completion of the DVD prior to the festival.

The festival has come a long way in 25 years as Gary outlines. “it was basically a three day event with an opening night, a concert on the Saturday and a ceilí on the Sunday and three workshops. that’s what it started off as and now we have broadened it to include CD launches, festival walks, poetry recitals, historical talks, several concerts, a number of ceilís and about 18 workshops. We are using every available space, we start at the core with the church and branch out and include every room in the refurbished national school, where there are 14 rooms for the workshops and we use rooms in houses and Caher House, the community centre and open air facilities as well when the weather allows”.

While there is a sense of going back to the past to recount the festivals gone by, Gary said there is also a sense of going forward and there are some new groups taking to the festival stage this year.

On the Thursday night a double concert will be held with Peadar O’Riada’s group Triúr, which is made up of Peadar himself, Caoimhin O´Rathalaigh and Martin Hayes. They will perform in Caher House with Thrillogy another newly formed group which includes Kate Purcell, Yuki Nishioka and Denise Glass.

Meanwhile a young group of eight musicians drawn from all over Ireland by Dónal Lunny called Ciorras will also perform. The band have been put together for musical experimentation and include two Clare musicians, Dermot Sheedy and Tara Breen.

Another interesting aspect to this year’s festival is the premier of a documentary carried out by Art Ó Briain on Martin Hayes’ musical life.

This year the Feakle Traditional Music Festival is welcoming home all those who have shared many fond memories in East Clare over the past 25 years.

For more information log on to www.feaklefestival.ie, To submit  material for the DVD email info@feaklefestival.ie or garytpepper@eircom.net for further details.