Safe Harbour review: Opening ritual gives a bit of pagan rave and a masked Cillian Murphy
Opening ritual at Elizabeth Fort for Sounds from a Harbour. Picture: Bríd O’Donovan
Everybody who entered the sold-out Elizabeth Fort for the Opening Ritual of Sounds From A Safe Harbour on Thursday night was given a green wristband and a handful of magic mushrooms. Ok, the fungal gift is an exaggeration, but in truth it mightn’t have been out of place at the first night of the biennial Cork festival.
The brainchild of folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn felt a bit like Clannad had been spiked by the Rubberbandits and run off to join Spiral Tribe.
Among the early performers in the rain-soaked courtyard of the 17th-century fort is Róis, the Fermanagh drone-princess whose ghost-of-Celtic-past synth-sounds set the ideal atmosphere. And though there was talk of a pagan rave, we also hear snippets of Seán Ó Riada’s mass. “Ag Criost an Siol, Ag Criost an fomhar” (With Christ of the seed, with Christ of the harvest).
A bunch of wonderfully-costumed beings join the fray and a ceremonial flame just about takes purchase in the gusty conditions. “Tá an tine ar lasadh,” chants the druid-like figure on stage. The fire is indeed lit for the fifth incarnation of an event that had kicked off earlier in the evening with an emotional tribute to late Cork musician and festival stalwart Talos (Eoin French).
Up on the ramparts, another masked figure starts ranting. Probably some crusty down from Clare for the weekend? Au contraire, Rodders. It’s actually our very own Academy Award-winner. A few days previously, Cillian Murphy had been questioned on Stephen Colbert’s CBS show about his lack of a strong Cork accent. Here, the Balintemple native turns the Leeside twang up to 11 as he chants the demented words of his fellow-Safe Harbour organiser Max Porter.
“There’s a fuse in you, there’s a dozen fucking ghosts in your pipe,” he screams at a mostly oblivious crowd. How liberating that brief moment of anonymity must be for a 49-year-old who never looks too chuffed with the celebrity obligations of his craft.
In the wrong hands, the night’s mix of genuine tradition and new-age party vibe could easily descend into misty tweeness, but all concerned here look to be having great fun. That energy flows into the audience.
With a backdrop of pounding beats, rabble-rousing MC’s Dyrt and Súil Amháin add further invocations to the mix before the crowd are gradually left to get into their own groove with a succession of DJs.
The ongoing rain has a few scurrying for the exits as the spectacle element of the show recedes, but this is still a fine example of the creative collaborations Safe Harbour has become renowned for. Festival well and truly open.
