Soul searching unearths gems in festive treat

SENSUAL, gritty, raw, real — you could literally smell the soul in Counihan’s pub where Mary Stokes, arguably Ireland’s best blues singer, took to the stage several times over the weekend in a traditional series of free gigs as part of the Cork Guinness Jazz Festival.

If anything embodies the festival, it must surely be this kind of atmosphere — hot and sticky, where bodies are pressed up against each other, bumping and grinding to the passionate performance.

Soul, blues and jazz, whatever you want to call it, was alive and well when Stokes — looking suitably ungroomed — and her endlessly energetic band played.