EVENT: ST. PATRICK'S FESTIVAL
The largest celebration of Irish culture and heritage in the world returns for the Bank Holiday weekend (March 15th - 18th) with a packed programme featuring too many events to mention - dive into the programme here - so let's go with a highlight: Garvey's Ghost, an evening of folk song, poetry and discussion, tracing the history of Marcus Garvey, the Harlem civil rights activist who took inspiration from the 1916 Rising, presented by Emma Dabiri and featuring Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, US musician Cedric Watson, folk artist Niamh Bury and more (TU Dublin Grangegorman Concert Hall, Friday 15th March 2024)
THEATRE: WAKE
From THISISPOPBABY, the makers of RIOT, WAKE is described by its makers as 'a home-grown arena party showcasing the very best of contemporary Ireland'. They're not wrong. Expect wild acrobatics, trad-with-a-twist, searing hot circus and outrageous cabaret in an electrifying night out. POPBABY's Philly McMahon talks to Ray D'Arcy below (National Stadium, Dublin, until March 23rd)
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BOOK: BARCELONA
In Mary Costello's eagerly anticipated new short story collection, we meet a cast of characters who live turbulent inner lives. In a Spanish hotel room a marriage unravels as a young wife is haunted by a past love. A father travels to Paris to meet his scientist son and is exposed to his son's true nature. A woman attends a reading by a famous author and comes to some painful realisations about her own marriage.The tales reveal the underlying disquiet of modern life and the sometimes brutal nature of humanity. Mary talks to RTÉ Arena below (Canongate, out now)
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MUSIC: MY GRIEF ON THE SEA
The Bring Your Own Hammer project brings historians and composers together to create new and original song cycles based on historical sources and to re-interpret song material rooted in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and of the Irish Diaspora. It is not a band, a group, an ensemble or even a collective. If anything, it is a faction but unlike nineteenth-century Irish factions, who met, armed with sticks and two-handed wattles in fairs and markets, it is armed with voices and instruments and dedicated, as no faction before, to the re-interpretation of historical material in song form. Their debut album My Grief on the Sea, showcases contributions from leading Irish and international composers, musicians and singers including Agu, Linda Buckley, Cathal Coughlan, Adrian Crowley, Neil Farrell, Eileen Gogan, Tony Higgins, Carol Keogh, Michelle O'Rourke, Wally Nkikita, Brigid Mae Power, Michael J Sheehy, Mike Smalle and Jah Wobble - listen to a sample below (Released March 24th)
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ART: SOMEONE DECIDES, HAWK OR DOVE
This fascinating new project from artist Niamh McCann responds to the 1922 institutionalization of the Northern and Southern borders of Ireland and the ongoing consequences and reverberations of this partition. Combining sculpture, collage and video, McCann mines deep seams of colonialist atrocities and legacies of The Troubles to present, subvert and reinvent assumed perspectives of social, political and geographical landscapes, allowing viewers access to a nuanced world of layered and co-mingled realities.
The project features collaborations with composer and singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and architect Peter Carroll on songs and soundscape and sculpture/site Turn Again. St Peter's Church in Cork is the venue for a live recorded performance, with Ó Lionáird joined by Ceara Conway and members of the Tonnta Ensemble (St. Peter's Cork, Sat 23 March — Wed 27 March)
Hear the Culture 5 every Friday on Aedín in the Afternoon on RTÉ lyric fm, from 1 pm - listen back here.
