Having their own festival gives Tory islanders the chance to celebrate a culture which has evolved over time to include the ancient and the modern, writes IAN KILROY
THE ASHEN COLOURED faces coming off the boat said it all. Sea spray soaked and jelly-legged from riding the swell of Tory Sound, the small crowd were glad to stand on terra firma again on Tory pier. Even in July, crossing from the mainland can be an ordeal. If you're going to experience Ireland's most northerly arts festival, you've got to earn it.
And on the pier as always is Patsy Dan Mac Ruairí."Welcome to Tory," he says as he stands smiling, the King of Tory Island. With a nautical hat upon his head, a gypsy-style ring in his ear, his broad smile and gold chain, he is royalty incarnate.
"The weather we thought might dampen it a little bit, but the sea has got better and there's only a little dampness in the air," he says, manifestly fired up at the prospect of the inaugural Féile Soilsí Thoraí (Tory Lights Festival) finally starting.
A three-day event within the wider Co Donegal-based Earagail Arts Festival, Tory Lights takes its evocative name from the sweeping beam of the lighthouse on the island. At night, it is a constant guide to ships at sea, as are the small huddle of illuminated houses where the 150 or so islanders live.
As Falcarragh artist Úna Campbell explains, Tory Lights grew out of a similar three-day event the year previously called Sean-nós Nua. Last year, the young people of the island collected and recorded many of the old sean-nós songs of Tory. Sean-nós workshops were held and singers aged eight to 80 stood up and sang the songs that they knew.
"The event was such a success that the islanders asked what was going to happen the following year," says Campbell, who is one of the organisers of the festival. "Therein was born a Tory festival," she says.
KEY TO THE festival existing at all is the support of organisations like Ealáin na Gaeltachta, the arts body set up 10 years ago to support the arts in Gaeltacht areas. Indeed, many of the events of the wider Earagail Arts Festival happen because of Ealáin na Gaeltachta support.
For Una Campbell and the others behind Féile Soilsí Thoraí, being part of the wider festival is vitally important. "In times past, maybe the islanders felt they were neglected," says Campbell. "Now they're part of the Earagail Arts Festival and they're showcasing their own culture." That culture is a living culture conducted in the Irish language. It is an ancient culture handed down over time, the songs and sean-nós dancing that feature as part of the festival programme. But it is also a contemporary and ever-evolving culture, as is evident in the new animated film that is projected this year as part of the festival.
Telling the history of Tory Island and its conversion to Christianity by Saint Colmcille, the film was made with great humour by the island's teenagers. Indeed, a new animation studio was officially opened on the island during the festival, and the teenagers hope to explore other aspects of the island's identity in further work that will be seen next year.
"These are young people taking ownership of their own culture," says Campbell, who describes the raison d'êtreof Tory Lights in the following terms: "To promote the culture of the island and to bring people to the island." People like Cork singer John Spillane, who played a generous three-hour set in a packed Club Theach Thoraí. With no language hang-ups, the songs flowed thick and fast in both English and Irish, many of them from his new album My Dark Rosaleen and the Island of Dreams.
Or people like Galway sean-nós dancer Ronan Reagan, who started an impromptu session on the Saturday afternoon outside the island's hotel, before describing to me the subtle differences between sean-nós dancing in Connemara and on Tory. Essentially, it seems it's the differences in the regional styles of the music that leads to the regional styles in the dancing.
As Reagan's fiddle playing gave way to a singer from the assembled crowd, it was clear anyone could contribute. The line between artist and audience simply didn't exist. In a culture like Tory's, the artist is one of the people and even the king is good for a song.
CULTURE IS DEFINED here in the broadest terms. Be it the inter-island soccer match, Tory's first currach race or an exhibition of work by local painters, it was all placed on an equal footing in the festival programme, which appeared to be merely a guide to what may or may not happen.
Starting times for events, in particular, were fluid. Time means something very different from the perspective of Tory Island.
Of course, Féile Soilsí Thoraí was only one part of the 10-day Earagail Arts Festival, the 20th such festival to be mounted. Other festival highlights included a new commission by Dónal Lunny of original music inspired by the writings of Donegal writer Seosamh Mac Grianna, the memorable light sculptures on Magheraroarty beach by environmental arts group An Cosán Glas, and the Victor Vasarely exhibition at the new and impressive Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny.
But as experiences go, Tory Lights offered what few arts programmes ever deliver - the spontaneous and transient moment of expression that cannot be engineered, that occurs naturally, and that lives long in the memory.
Be it Pól Mac Ruairí picking up his accordion and lashing out a tune, or a visiting Scotsman closing his eyes and delivering a song. The only thing that could possibly put a dampener on the festivities was the prospect of leaving the long white summer nights of Tory Island to face again the choppy waters of Tory Sound and the turbulent boat ride back.
