Voice of women to be heard as Féile na Laoch festival looks to future
Peadar Ó Riada at the Aeríocht during the opening part of Féile na Laoch 2025 in Cúil Aodha. Picture: David Creedon
Seven ‘heroes’ from each of seven cultural disciplines took the stage on the opening weekend of Féile na Laoch, held once every seven years in honour of composer Seán Ó Riada and other heroes.
An all-night Aeríocht in a riverside field in Cúil Aodha celebrated heroes of song, dance, poetry, and more, culminating in an orchestra playing Ó Riada’s film score as day broke on his birthday, August 1.
The anniversary of his death, aged 40, on October 3, 1971, is marked on Féile na Laoch’s closing weekend by reflection on the past and a broad-spectrum look forward to the seven years ahead.
This weekend’s event in the Cork Gaeltacht village sees a reprise of Ó Riada’s Ceoltóirí Chualann, including singer Seán Ó Sé, perform pieces from the original band’s repertoire. Presidential candidate Catherine Connolly addresses a celebration of ‘Fuinneamh na mBan’, or female energy, where Cór Ban Chúil Aodha women’s choir performs , the major work of Ó Riada’s son Peadar, architect of Féile na Laoch.
“It’s a time to reset every seven years, to look back and look forward, to reassess,” explains Peadar.
Artificial intelligence, climate change, and employment are among discussion topics at a public gathering in Cúil Aodha’s Árus Éamonn Mac Suibhne, which during the féile becomes ‘Halla na Laoch’, hung with pictures of 100 cultural heroes.
The féile’s diverse elements create a project immense in its scope, but which Peadar feels is crucial given the challenges facing a rapidly-changing world.
Considering ‘An Ród sa Romhainn’ or ‘Whitherto we Go’ towards 2032, those gathered will put questions to artificial intelligence on topics including the future of farming and security.
“We look forward seven years, and my God what changes are going to happen in seven years,” says Peadar. “On the stage we’re putting a huge screen, and putting artificial intelligence on it. We’ll invite people to ask it questions from the audience about the future and we’ll have [specialists] in the audience to guide the response.
“In the next few years artificial intelligence is going to change completely what sort of jobs and work is available. ChatGPT is up to version 5 now. It’s asking its own questions; it doesn’t wait for humans to ask questions to research, and we don’t know what control is on it.
“Politics is broken, finance is broken; there is a chance that we will have war. These are all questions that are hovering in people’s minds, and rather than having experts talking down at us, we want people to ask the questions and find the truth themselves,” says Peadar, who in 2001 founded Gaeltacht research group Acadamh Fódhla.
“We will try to tease out, to fish for the knowledge to arm ourselves for the next seven years. The Acadamh was in preparation for this… to plant seeds so a community can have the resources within itself to research and retain knowledge.” However, he notes: “What can’t be replaced is creativity. AI can’t create anything that hasn’t already been created.”
The energy and creativity of women is to the fore as Féile na Laoch resumes on Friday with Fuinneamh na mBan, featuring singers Lisa O’Neill and Nell Ní Chróinín, Cór Ban Chúil Aodha, and speaker Catherine Connolly.
“One of the things that I felt that over the last seven years has not improved since the last Féile na Laoch is the position of feminine power or strength,” says Peadar, pointing to inequality in pay and political representation.
Connolly, who he says was invited as speaker before her presidential bid was confirmed, “was somebody we felt could speak with dignity, truthfully”.
“That’s what we’re searching for, truth without fear, and very often when women do that, they get ‘clobbered’,” he says.
The voices of women will be raised together for , Peadar’s Irish-language setting of the Biblical Song of Songs, which he terms “the most complicated piece of work I ever composed in my life”.
Both men’s and women’s Cúil Aodha choirs perform in Féile na Laoch’s closing concert on Saturday, as do Ceoltóirí Chualann and Ó Sé, singer with Ó Riada’s original band in the 1960s.
After pictures of the 100 heroes are returned to storage and a ceremonial torch quenched, a wreath-laying at the grave of the composer who inspired Féile na Laoch concludes this festival of cultural celebration and contemplation until 2032.
- Féile na Laoch, October 3-5. Tickets free via Eventbrite or at door. See: feilenalaoch.com
