Cork Folk Festival rounded off its 40th event in fine style at Cork Opera House

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Cork Folk Festival rounded off its 40th event in fine style at Cork Opera House, writes Eoin Edwards.

Some types of folk music are called ‘world music’ - by the conclusion of this closing concert at Cork Folk Festival we had seen world class music from box player Máirtín O’Connor, for me the stand-out star in a constellation of stars.

But this gig was a slow burner. Compere and Corkonian, broadcaster Pat Butler set the tone... ‘this festival is not an adjunct to the city, it is a celebration of a living tradition’. This concert gave expression to all that and much more.

Bandon-born fiddle player Nollaig Casey and Arty McGlynn opened proceedings with ‘Lios Na Banríona’ (Fort of the Fairy Queen) a tune composed by Nollaig while overseeing her twin three-year-old daughters at play. One of them said the tune was like a fairy, thus the title. The performance lived up to it, mesmerising.

Once Sliabh Luachra exponents Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly hit the first note in ‘The Tenpenny Bit’ jig were on lift off. They were later joined on stage by the Flannerys and immediately their youthful energy infused the music with extra magic.

A few reels and polkas later, ‘too much of anything is a bad job, too many polkas is just about right’ quipped Jackie, and then came ‘The Bluemont ’- I love a slow waltz, he said - regaling us with a line from a woman telling him once he was such a lovely dancer. ‘You’re very light on my feet’.

Cranitch

Then it was goosebumps time, courtesy of Iarla Ó Lionáird and Steve Cooney with my favourite ‘Fáinne Geal An Lae’, Ó Carolan’s ‘Eleanor Plunkett’ and Slán Le Máighe among the highlights.

The last delicacy was the sweetest though - Zoe Conway (fiddle, voice), Dónal Lunny (bouzouki, guitar, voice), and Máirtín Ó Connor (button accordion) - the latter two played at the first folk festival back in 1979. With tunes from The Goodman Collection, Lunny’s ‘The Tolka Polka’, and a song about a woman longing for a man who is in another relationship, ‘Bean Pháidín’, penned hundreds of years before the word stalker was first heard, this star trio were in another galaxy altogether.

But for me the piece de resistance was O’Connor’s mad-cap cartoonish tune ‘The Road West’, inspired by a journey from Galway to Clifden which he made in haste one day after discovering he was supposed to be playing a gig there. It’s fast, but not quite as fast as the Galway man’s fingers on the buttons. Special.