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Read a daily account from the 2003 Festival
The festival will not take place in 2004
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Read a daily account from the 2003 Festival
The festival will not take place in 2004
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The Song Collector
 By Mary Barnecutt. June 2003. This man has a bag full of voices he's carried for ages in the rain, the sun, snow and hail. Through years he's been travelling to the edges of the land softly gathering, even as echoes ring on, before mouths have closed on the last word of song he has held his net wide and ready and caught. He keeps them turning in the black, heavy bag, waits for the time when it seems song is lost: when the world is covered with bone and ash when not even birds or breeze can recall and the only rhythm is the fine - patterned small, fingertip track of the rain. Then He will set himself down and shake the bag empty: wails, cat calls, laments, jambouries nights in cellars, round fires, weddings and battles half won. These songs will scatter the earth and with seeds of telling descend to the ground, take root and grow, feed mouths that will open and call across clouds, fields, years. The sky will be full and he'll be looking on, smiling, humming quiet but ready, keeping the bag open. |
| The Tommy Makem International Festival of Song invites the song people of the world to gather around the Slieve Gullion in South Armagh, heartland of Irish myth and legend, for the third annual event in June 2003. The festival, named in honor of the area's most famous musical son, will involve a week of lectures, sharing of ideas, singing and presentation of old and new songs and will work toward a further understanding of the dynamics of the song tradition and its universal centrality in the cultures of the world.
The festival invites all to enjoy the culture and hospitality of the local people and experience the living inheritance of the song tradition, perhaps the strongest of any part of Ireland. The whole area of South Armagh is a unique place of outstanding natural beauty. Its landscape and people mark it out as one of the few small areas in Ireland to have retained its culture and identity so clearly. During the 18th century, South Armagh was known as the "District of Songs." It is also famous for its association with "File agus Filiocht" (poets and poetry). All the major poets from Ulster, in that period, came from the Slieve Gullion area of South Armagh and all worked during a period of sixty years in an area of about eight miles radius, a record unequalled anywhere else in Ireland. The Ring of Gullion, of volcanic origin, is the heartland of Celtic legend and myth. In the great epic Tain bo Cuailgne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), Cu Chulainn defended Ulster here single handedly against Queen Maeve of Connaught. Another legend tells of Fionn Mac Cumhaill bewitched by Miluchra, the daughter of Culan the Smith, on the summit of Slieve Gullion at the Lough of Cailliagh Bhirra. People have lived here for six-thousand years and left their traces in stone, in megalithic tombs, burial chambers and cairns. Says Tommy Makem, "South Armagh has been denigrated and darkened for the past thirty years. True to the ancient wisdom, the deeper the darkness, the brighter the light. South Armagh's cultural brightness is dazzingly brilliant. Being at the heart's core of Irish mythology, it is filled with ancient sites and monuments and has an unsurprassed song tradition and musical heritage. It has produced some of the finest native speaking poets in any Western European Culture. The light has already started to dissipate the shadows. "The festival will work to help restore the great South Armagh inheritance to its former centrality and reopen its riches for the benefit of the wider world. The school will merge lectures and learning with sight seeing and evenings of singing, music and storytelling in this most historic of all Irish places. Participants will be given the opportunity to visit the outstanding sites of the district and beyond with tours of the ancient monuments, the poets graves, and other places of interest . The tours are being organised so that all the participants can enjoy the opportunity of visiting the entire range of sites on offer. However, the organisers are adamant that the heart of the festival must involve evenings and nights full of music, song, and storytelling around Slieve Gullion and environs, where visitors and locals merge into what promises to be truly memorable events. The festival's motto is: rare lectures, lively debate, good sightseeing and great craic. Honorary Patrons: The school is endorsed by the following honorary patrons: Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, David Hammond, Seamus Heaney, Delores Keane, Liam Neeson, Pete Seeger, Odetta, The Milwaukee Irish Fest Foundation Inc.
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