I've just had a look at the 2007 Dublin Irish Festival entertainment lineup. Tucked in amongst the "Celtic rock," I found some pretty good reasons to attend, including the following out-of-town acts:
There are also some local bands I like. My teacher's band, The Kells, who played a great house concert in April will be performing. Occasionally-local Changeling is a husband-and-wife duo featuring the fiddle playing of Deborah Clark Colón. Aisling reformed last year after significant personnel changes; I haven't heard them in their current incarnation, but they were quite good in the past.
An intriguing-sounding group I'm unfamiliar with is the Armagh Rhymers, from, of course, Co. Armagh, who do folk theatre from the mummer tradition.
There's also a great deal of utter dreck on the bill. I'll elect to follow the "if you can't say anything nice about someone, say nothing at all" rule here, and simply write this off as the price of having a festival which can bring good acts in from overseas.
But since the festival generally has at least four stages running concurrently, plus session tents and other stuff, you can generally find something good to hear or see.
6 comments:
Teada is a wonderful young band. You won't regret seeing them.
There's no "dreck" at these festivals. All focus on traditional music, and the first 2 offer opportunities to learn from great players from here as well as from Ireland. Mary Bergin will be teaching whistle at the Irish Arts Festival in East Durham, NY. Dublin is more exciting that East Durham, I promise you - but it's a top rate festival.
Here's the Irish Arts Festival:
http://www.east-durham.org/irishartsweek/index.htm
Here's Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Center:
http://www.augustaheritage.com/irish.html
Annual Irish Connections Festival in August:
no info posted yet but here's the website
http://www.irishculture.org/festival/
P.S. the comment seems to have chopped off my URLs, but if you google the festivals just as I listed their names, you'll be ok. I was careful about getting the titles right.
Your URLs work fine; they're just not hyperlinked. Copying and pasting them into the address bar works. You have to use the <a> tag to create a link. You can see the whole URL in the post page.
Yes, I agree that those festivals have a much better trad content. Unfortunately, family obligations make it hard for me to get out there. I'd like to do it some day, though.
It's too bad that the organisers of the Dublin Irish Festival have gone overboard mixing traditional with Celtic rock. It's not that I have a problem with the two genres, but they put Gelic Storm on the main stage, followed by Eileen Ivers. This stage has seating for at least a couple of thousand people, I estimate, but the problem is that Gaelic Storm attract a crowd more used to rock concerts and, without any considertation for the people who got chairs near the front, they filled the ten yards immediately in fromt of the stage, and turned it into a mini mosh pit. At the same time they blocked the view of anyone in the front seats. That is bad enough, but when Eileen Ivers came on, some of that same crowd, well the worse for wear on beer, came in after she started and just stood in front of the people who had sat down well before she started. They we drunken, loud, rude to anyone who tried to get them to move out of the way so that they could see, and generally spoikled it for everyone near the front. By the middle of Eileen's set, the from three rows were basically empty - people simply gave up. There was, of course, no security to be seen, and this concert was ruined for many by a group of drunken loudmouths who thought they were funny. I would love to go see Eileen again tonight, but we have decided it's not worth it. Until the organizers of the DIF get their act together and decide what they want to be, I am inclined to avoid it.
It's too bad that the organisers of the Dublin Irish Festival have gone overboard mixing traditional with Celtic rock. It's not that I have a problem with the two genres, but they put Gelic Storm on the main stage, followed by Eileen Ivers. This stage has seating for at least a couple of thousand people, I estimate, but the problem is that Gaelic Storm attract a crowd more used to rock concerts and, without any considertation for the people who got chairs near the front, they filled the ten yards immediately in fromt of the stage, and turned it into a mini mosh pit. At the same time they blocked the view of anyone in the front seats. That is bad enough, but when Eileen Ivers came on, some of that same crowd, well the worse for wear on beer, came in after she started and just stood in front of the people who had sat down well before she started. They we drunken, loud, rude to anyone who tried to get them to move out of the way so that they could see, and generally spoikled it for everyone near the front. By the middle of Eileen's set, the from three rows were basically empty - people simply gave up. There was, of course, no security to be seen, and this concert was ruined for many by a group of drunken loudmouths who thought they were funny. I would love to go see Eileen again tonight, but we have decided it's not worth it. Until the organizers of the DIF get their act together and decide what they want to be, I am inclined to avoid it.
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