Sligo's traditional music pedigree will be showcased at this month's international festival, its messianic director, accordionist Shane Mitchell tells Martin Doyle
As the accordion player with Dervish, Shane Mitchell has travelled the globe, spreading the good news of Irish traditional music to true believers and the merely curious from Rio to Calgary.
Despite the success of performers such as Dervish, Altan, Sharon Shannon and De Dannan, however, there is still the sense that Irish music is a prophet without honour in its own land.
Mitchell, in his role as artistic director of Sligo Live, a festival of Irish and world music now in its third year, is on a mission to change that, scouting for talent at every festival he plays to bring home and pair with the best emerging acts and to convert the native doubters to the possibilities of trad in a concert setting.
"The principle," says Mitchell, "is to put mainstream music and traditional Irish music on the same stage, to expose Irish audiences to the music." So when a revamped Sligo Lives takes place over the October bank holiday weekend - having moved from the June bank holiday last year - fans of the Buena Vista Social Club will be treated to a starter of John McSherry's At First Light and Alabama 3's audience will also get a taste of Sligo band Tucan.
Sligo Live had its genesis four years ago when Dervish met a delegation from Sligo County Council at the Milwaukee Irish Fest who expressed an interest in having a similar festival of traditional and folk music to celebrate their region's rich musical heritage.
The festival that resulted is grassroots as well as roots-based, as Mitchell explains.
"Playing at great festivals with Dervish, I've seen a lot of really big events run by people who are very passionate about music, volunteer-driven but professionally run. I've had many great experiences but for me one of the best things is people from a region who get involved - it's their event of the year, and they run it with such passion and commitment. It's the most attractive thing I've ever seen and that's what we're aiming to achieve in Sligo. We actually have it at this early stage.
"Every time I travel I see where Sligo Live could go. I can bring a lot of ideas to the table from my travels which would cost other festivals a lot in seeking out new talent. Rock in Rio was a serious buzz. To perform to 240,000 people was amazing, and being on the same stage as Neil Young, Oasis and REM was a great experience."
Musicians may once have been perceived as a feckless lot who wouldn't know a spreadsheet from a groundsheet, but Dervish have always managed their own affairs, running a label and organising tours.
As well as 150 local volunteers, Sligo Live also has some very experienced old hands, some of whom, such as Rory O'Connor, have been organising festivals since the 1970s.
"We did a very comprehensive feasibility study," says Mitchell. "The nearest model would be something between the Cambridge Folk Festival and Celtic Connections in Glasgow, but one thing I've noticed is you might set out to do it this way or that way but everything takes its own kind of shape from the personalities involved and the environment it's set in and I think we're developing our own very unique identity.
"Sligo is a great place to have a festival for there's such a tradition and such a love of music. The first major outdoor festival in Ireland was the Boys of Ballisodare festival with Planxty and the Bothy Band in the 1970s. This is just taking it that bit farther, doing a modern version of that."
Mitchell has fond memories of Ballisodare. "It still remains one of the best experiences in my life. I was 16 and had a band at school. Actually, Gay Byrne brought us on The Late Late Show around that time. The Flynn brothers, Philip and Kevin, who ran the Ballisodare festival, were always good at giving up-and-coming musicians a platform.
"They also had big international acts, the biggest was Chuck Berry, I would say. There was an international folk boom around then which helped what they did. Every festival is different. The only comparisons are that we were both located in Sligo and both had the Sligo style of traditional music as part of our programme."
IT WAS SOMEHOW apt that Michael Flatley, himself the son of a Sligo emigrant, launched this year's festival, for the American connection spread the local playing style far beyond the parishes of south Sligo, something the festival is celebrating this year with the revival of the long-running Fiddler of Dooney competition.
"Sligo is a very significant place in Irish musical history," says Mitchell. "South Sligo was very rich in traditional music. There's an old saying that if there was a fiddle produced outside a church on a Sunday in the 1920s in south Sligo, every third person could play a tune.
"In the 1920s Michael Coleman and James Morrison went to the US and made some of the earliest recordings which made their way back to Ireland and influenced a revival in the playing of traditional music which led to the whole playing in pubs culture.
"It's no coincidence that we have such a successful music industry in Ireland, the likes of the Cranberries and Van Morrison, for traditional music sessions created a platform for people to express themselves."
Fiddle and flute are at the core of the tradition but the accordion has become part of it too through people like Joe Burke and Alphie Joe Dineen, who taught Mitchell.
The session, of course, is still at the heart of the tradition and it too is being promoted throughout the festival.
"As well as the performance side of it, the pubs will be alive with music that weekend," says Mitchell. "It's becoming a regular gig for Dervish, I know the band are knocking great fun out of it, that all the friends that we meet abroad are now starting to arrive for Sligo Live. Every musician has a hunger to play in sessions and to play with other musicians, that's the weekend we let our hair down and meet all our friends and play tunes as well."
Mitchell knows from playing at top festivals around the world that the session is as fascinating but impenetrable to a classical or jazz musician as jazz is to him.
"That's the joy of the session, you don't know what's going to happen next. That's where the genius of Irish music comes from. It never fails to strike me how top-of-the-range classical or jazz musicians are amazed by the playing of Irish music, they can't figure it out, that sort of spark from a session. It baffles them how we do it, like I wouldn't be able to play jazz, I don't understand the structures.
"There's something within Irish music that's very uplifting, the mood changes, the energy that's in it. I should have framed some of the e-mails and letters we've got over the years, how Dervish's music has enhanced someone's life, cured their cancer or helped them through their divorce. These stories make it very fulfilling being a professional musician."
Mitchell is keen for audiences to follow the music from its source in the sessions to hear it in full spate in concert.
"The sessions are great and we all love it but the performance side of it is completely different and I don't think people in Ireland see that. I think it's important to expose Irish people to this type of festival. The production side of Irish traditional music groups, what they're doing on stage, is on a par with anybody now, in terms of lighting and sound production, it's developed hugely over the past 10 years. In the US, music lovers would be well aware of that, whereas in Ireland we would be more aware of Cuban bands and African bands. It's human nature to be attracted to what we don't have."
Dervish, who have now been together for 18 years, are launching their new album, Travelling Show, at Sligo Live. It's their 10th release, but their first in five years.
"We put a lot of work into our albums and they don't come out until they're fully baked," says Mitchell. "We had John Reynolds, who did a lot of work with the Indigo Girls and Sinéad O'Connor, producing the songs, so it's a little bit more of a contemporary sound.
"Dervish are constantly being exposed to music from other cultures and this keeps our music evolving. We start off with Cathy, Brian and Michael looking for songs while Tom, Liam and myself look for instrumentals. We then swap what we come up with then come together and work out the arrangements."
Highlights include a new arrangement of Lord Levett by Cathy Jordan with Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill on harpsichord, a thrilling cover of Suzanne Vega's The Queen and the Soldier, and new songs by Brendan Graham (Crucan na bPáiste), Nashville songwriter Sharon Vaughan (Gráinne), Dan Frechette (My Bride and I) and Sonny Condell.
DERVISH'S NEXT BIG project is a musical documentary to be directed by Philip King, with Cathy Jordan exploring the Irish connections and narrating the story of the Carter family, specifically the Carter women, whose songs and musicianship had such a huge influence on popular music, from country and bluegrass through to the folk revival, providing the original melodies for both Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' and Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land.
As well as the film, there will be a soundtrack CD featuring reinterpretations of Carter family songs by Dervish and other star guests, a book and concert tour.
Mitchell senses that there is great potential for something on the scale of Riverdance to emerge from Irish music.
"Many in the industry believe that a huge project will come again from the roots of Irish music. Industry figures see the success of Enya and Bill Whelan. Crossing roots with mainstream has been done for decades now in the US - Alison Krauss, the Dixie Chicks and the Gypsy Kings are all examples of this.
"We have been working on a number of projects, from the film industry to collaborations, and things look very interesting. A friend of mine who works with MTV said to me recently that the alternative music of today will be the stadium rock of tomorrow. Let's hope he is right and that Irish music will be central to this. It would be good for our native music and for Ireland's identity internationally."
