Festival organiser Noreen Collins writes for Culture about this year's Drimoleague Singing Festival, a celebration of the human voice in the heart of West Cork, which runs from September 20th-23rd, and features acts like Glen Hansard, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Ger Wolfe and Cara O’Sullivan.
The festival is in its second year now, so we got over the difficult first year...
The highlight for me last year was the Pub Singing Competition. I pushed for that, as there had been a tradition of that in the village as I was growing up, and I have memories of being in a packed Parish Hall listening to locals singing their hearts out for the coveted prize. But nothing could have prepared me for the response to its revival. In many ways, this is the heart of the festival now; this year we had fifty-three locals taking part in the heats over the last five weeks. As importantly, the quality of the listening in the heats has been superb too, which shows that the people still have high regard for the ancient art of singing. The variety of songs and styles of singing is a joy, but at heart it’s the basic idea that allows us all to come together and sing that we most celebrate.
Drimoleague Singing Festival standing room only at the pub singing final. pic.twitter.com/uD24fjukAN
— Singing Festival (@SingingFest) September 20, 2018
We’ve been having heats in all the local pubs throughout August and September, and now we have 12 singers singing for their pub in the Drimoleague Inn. The singing is unamplified and unaccompanied, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s such a great leveller. Often, the person with the best technical voice may not get anywhere. The choice of song, the tone of the voice, or just capturing a moment can dictate things. Whatever about technical scoring, when you can hear a pin drop in a pub when someone is singing, you know that that singer is something special. Sometimes, it can be a song that triggers memories for people. It shows the hunger that there is out there to just come together locally and sing.
What a wonderful night of singing together. Tadhg Farrel receiving the Vin Forbes Perpetual Trophy from Mrs. Mackie Forbes. Not a dry eye in the house. #SingingMatters pic.twitter.com/XA6YsDhUyh
— Singing Festival (@SingingFest) September 21, 2018
The weight we’ve given to the pub singing competition is reflected we hope by the quality of the singers we’ve asked to judge the competition - Jimmy Crowley, Lisa O’Neill and Ger Wolfe - and they know a good singing when they hear it.
Personally I love all the old songs that I grew up with, while they may not be ‘trendy’ in some circles, for me they have great resonance and are evocative of times past. It’s so lovely to hear old songs like Come By The Hills, The Wild Colonial Boy or A Bunch Of Violets Blue being sung in the competition, with people whispering ‘Oh, that was Mary Driscoll or Micky McCarthy’s song' or whoever, and they now long dead. So it’s lovely to see these old songs still being sung in the parish. I think this continuity reassures people, so this evocativeness is part of the appeal too.
And we're off! Over 100 primary school children doing the first part of a 3-day choir workshop with @PeterStobart Lots of energy in the room. pic.twitter.com/0sFdjaIQKY
— Singing Festival (@SingingFest) September 19, 2018
This year, we’ve also run a number of open singing sessions in the pubs where everyone and anyone is welcome to come and sing. Locals are hosting some of them, and we have invited the Sherkin Island singers to host a session, too, so that should be a lively few hours.
The quality of the listening in the competition was also a highlight, and shows how the respect for a good singer and a good song is still alive and well.
The number of young people who took part was key for us, too. The initial idea of the festival was to ensure that a love of song and singer that we grew up with continued to be fostered, and in an age where loud music is being blared out in so many pubs and restaurants, paring things back to just the unamplified human voice feels like a real treat.
The mix of singers is very important for us, too. We don’t want to get pigeonholed into this type of singing or that; for us, it’s about the human voice in all its forms. We started the festival for the good of the village, so it feels completely right to have a mix of performers that reflect the tastes of different generations. This year we have tried to keep that diversity, with Cara O’Sullivan singing alongside Glen Hansard, Sean Tyrell, Katell Keineg, Don Stiffe, Ger Woolfe, Brigid Mae Power and the Cork Male Voice Garda Choir as well as the local National Schools Choir.
The greatest joy for me last year was the way the people of the parish embraced the festival. The festival could literally not have been run without our tremendous volunteers who couldn’t do enough to help us.
This year, one of the highlights for me is to hear Phillip King in conversation with Sonny Condell. No one speaks about singing in quite the same way as Phillip does, and I’m also hoping that he will also break into song in the middle of it all…unaccompanied and unamplified of course!
LISTEN: Sonny Condell & Brigid Mae Power on RTÉ Arena, ahead of their performances at the Drimoleague Singing Festival
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The original idea for the festival was started by my brother Pat, the aim was to bring a bit of life back into the village, as it had suffered a lot during the recession. This year, local people came together and got a Paint The Village scheme going, and the paint is literally breathing new life into the village again. The whole experience was almost life-changing - as Patrick Kavanagh famously said, 'All life is local’. I think he may have been right.
