In the space of just nine years, the Festival of World Cultures has gone from a niche event to one of the biggest on the festival calendar
IN 2001 A NEW festival appeared on the Irish stage. It ran to 36 events, and some 20,000 people turned up to check out what was billed as a late-August splash of colour in south Dublin. Nine years on, the Dún Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures has become a major fixture on the summer calendar. Last year’s programme boasted 180 events, and the attendance reached a quarter of a million.
The pocket guide to this year’s festival – which is on this weekend – runs to a whopping 36 pages, and offers a breathtaking diversity of activities, from street theatre through exhibitions and markets to workshops, clubbing and, of course, concerts.
The latter will include evening appearances by the French chanteuse Jane Birkin and the Malian superstar Oumou Sangaré, but though these and many other acts on the programme are big names from the international world music scene, that’s not really the point of this festival. Rather, the idea is that you can come to Dún Laoghaire and spend a whole day travelling the world – and interacting in a playful way with an astonishing array of different cultures.
You could, for instance, start your Saturday with a spot of African drumming at the world dance plaza in the harbour. Then you could head to the Pavilion Theatre to check out the exhibition of photographs of Ireland’s Islamic community by Noel Bowler, after which a stroll to the South Asian market in the People’s Park or the festival of world food in Clarinda Park might be in order.
There are demonstrations of martial arts and Mexican dance. There are workshops, for both children and adults, on everything from Indian percussion to Russian beadwork. Come 8.30pm each evening, the festival club at the Kingston Hotel will bring traditional Irish musicians such as Dermot Dunne and Steven Cooney on to the same stage as the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan and Niwel Tsumbu’s Jazz Trio; the Purty Kitchen, meanwhile, will play host to Afronova Project and Orient Express, a collection of African and Eastern rhythm merchants and DJs.
And that, trust me, isn’t even the half of it. “It’s like one big shop,” says the Argentinian tango dancer Monina Paz, who has performed at the festival for more than five years in a row. “In a second you can have the opportunity to see artists from parts of the world you’d never think to go to – Japan or Turkey or Argentina. In just one weekend you can have contact with all these different cultures.”
IT ALL BEGAN when the festival’s director, Jody Ackland, put a proposal to the then county manager at Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Derek Brady.
“I was working in the area of world music promotion anyway, and I had been bringing a number of artists to the Assembly Rooms at the County Hall,” Ackland recalls. The council was on the lookout for a festival which would address the changing demographic of the county, and this multicultural ethos is, she says, one of the reasons why the festival has grown and prospered.
“It’s really about community, about culture and about spirituality,” she says. “That’s definitely where I’m coming from. It’s the heart of the festival.” Each year the programme is put together through a series of consultations with local communities and there is, she says, a terrific sense of ownership among those diverse groups from all over the world.
“It’s amazing, the conversations you have with people. They get very, very passionate about wanting to represent their culture. The process of putting the programme together is one of consultation, advice and exchange. We’re not just a couple of white people from Ireland deciding what to programme.”
For both Ackland and the festival’s technical manager, Kieran Loftus, working on the Festival of World Cultures is not so much a job as a passion. Both of them also have a particularly strong emotional connection to the music.
“I was brought up with music and we did travel a lot when I was young,” Ackland says. “But I don’t remember being exposed to music from around the world. I do remember seeing the Human Rights Now tour when I was living in England – I think it was in 1987 or 1988 – and I saw Youssou N’Dour perform as a guest of Peter Gabriel. I was blown away. I’d never heard anything like it in my life.”
Ackland subsequently moved to Edinburgh and got a job with one of the top world music touring agencies in the UK. “I’ve been doing it ever since, and I thrive on it.” For the past 10 years or so, she has been spending as much time as she possibly can in Africa – specifically in Mali. She worked with Toumani Diabaté 20 years ago when he released his first album, and her enthusiasm for Malian music knows no bounds. “Have you been out there?” she asks. “They’re gods. Just the way the people hold themselves. And the clothes are amazing. Everything about them is amazing. They’re like gods.”
Loftus says his ears were opened to world music when he went to live in France a number of years ago. “I left Dublin when it was The Cranberries, and when I went over there I was opened to the whole world of what I thought was just ‘French’ music,” he says.
It was French, but it was also hugely influenced by France’s African and Asian colonial past.
“I soaked it up for about five years. When I came back to Ireland they were still listening to The Cranberries. Then this festival popped up out of nowhere. They were looking for volunteers. I just jumped on board – and made sure I stuck to it as long as I could.”
NOW IN HIS eighth year with the festival, Loftus must make sure that all goes smoothly on the technical front while more than 100 bands perform on 17 different stages. “It’s not just about plugging in speakers; it’s about rostering the various technical crews – there will be about 60 people working on this year’s festival – so they can cope without getting overloaded,” he says.
But as he points out, a great deal of the festival’s very special vibe is down to Dún Laoghaire itself. It is, he insists, the ideal venue for a celebration of inclusiveness and accessibility.
“I’m a parent, and to go with your kids to a big festival is kind of a no-no,” he says. “But if you go to the People’s Park you can see some of the big headline acts perform on the smaller stage for a half-hour – just to introduce kids to world musics. To show them there’s more to life than a four-four beat on a rock track. This festival has got something for everybody. But what it’s not, is a field. It’s open to everybody to come in, whether by Dart or by bus. You can walk in – you can even sail in – and just enjoy it.”
As for a favourite musical memory from the past nine years, Ackland has no hesitation. “In terms of tingles down the spine, it has to be the gig with Transglobal Underground and Trio Bulgarka in 2005,” she says. These were the original singers of the Voix Bulgares albums, introduced to the West by Kate Bush.
“It was so funny to see them on stage, because they’re so elaborately decorated with all their flowers and their beautiful Bulgarian outfits. But – well – they’re elderly ladies, you know? One of them was in her 80s. So when they sit down after singing, they look like they’re waiting for a bus.”
At that concert, she says, there was a strong sense that it wasn’t just a cultural collaboration but some kind of synthesis of generations – history as a dynamic, life-giving force. She also recalls the fado concert with the Portuguese superstar Mariza at Monkstown Church two years ago. “That was a bit of a gem. It brought the festival to a whole new level.”
Loftus has a host of good memories – the North African masters Ethiopiques from last year, the Spanish band Ojos de Brujo from three years ago. And from this year’s programme, the French band Babylon Circus.
“Ska meets punks meets north Africa,” he says.
“They play an amazing range of music all squeezed together. They did a gig when I first came to the festival as a volunteer. I remember being up beside the monitor desk, and there were 3,000 people just bumping up and down, loving what this band were doing. Pure energy was coming off the stage – and when you looked at the audience, it was such a mixture of cultures and nationalities, from men in turbans to those kids who have black hair and eye make-up and hang around the Central Bank in Dublin. And everyone was enjoying it.”
Monina Paz aims to tap into this audience diversity this year when she conducts two tango workshops, one for adults and one for children or teenagers who can bring a partner from their own family.
“Like a grandfather or grandmother,” she says. “It’s gonna be really interesting for me, because it’s two completely different energies – opposite energies.”
Which, she adds, just about sums up the Festival of World Cultures. “It has to do with the energy of the artists, of all those cultural traditions coming together. It’s like – what is the opposite of a culture clash? A culture implosion. That’s what it’s like.”
Three of the best at the Festival of World Cultures
Jody Ackland "I'm very excited about the Sain Zahoor gig. He's a very famous Sufi devotional singer from Pakistan and we're bringing him in with a guest from Morocco, Bachir Attar, who's the leader of the master musicians of Jajouka." Pavilion Theatre, Sunday, 9pm.
Kieran Loftus "One of the free events this year is Hotel Kiev, which will project images by Ciaran McClelland over the entire façade of the Royal Marine Hotel, together with music by DakhaBrakha. They're three woman and one guy from Kiev who have this amazing trance rhythm." Royal Marine Hotel Gardens, Saturday, 10.30pm.
Arminta Wallace "Imagine traditional Ethiopian Azmari vocals smashed together with laid-back reggae and overlaid with a sheen of incandescent Afropop. You can't? Then you need to check out Dub Colossus. This year they got Glastonbury dancing, they got Edinburgh dancing and it's a strong bet they'll get Dún Laoghaire dancing too. And it's free."
Newtownsmith Main Stage, Saturday, 6.30 pm
The festival of world cultures runs from Aug 29-30
See festivalofworldcultures.com
