Who would have thought?

The surprise package of the Festival

Something surprising happened at the National Celtic Festival yesterday and I am so very fortunate to have been one of the people who witnessed it.

Every year there is a Festival highlight. That one performer, that one band, that one ‘thing’ that stays in the minds of festival-goers for years. For many, Claymore is the annual highlight. (Deservedly so) A few years back it was Gaelic Storm from the USA. Last year, for me, it was Sasta from Brisbane, the year before it was Taliska. Being able to give the late Jimmy Moore from Claddagh a hug only a few months before he lost his battle with cancer is a Festival memory I will treasure.

I would never, in my wildest dreams, have imagined that the little Irishman who won Australian Idol in 2006 and sort of disappeared off the music charts a couple of years after that would be the performer to give the 2015 National Celtic Festival a performance so perfect, so magical and so vocally sublime that I am compelled to write about it today.

And to be brutally honest, words would be inadequate to describe the power of what Damien Leith achieved yesterday. Parks Hall was filled to capacity, as it usually is, but 80 percent of the audience had no real idea who Damien Leith was. Until yesterday, I had completely underestimated what Damien Leith was capable of.

Yesterday, the capacity crowd in Parks Hall, Portarlington, were taken on a journey. This was a performance piece. A combination of story and song that was completely unexpected and completely mesmerising. As Damien wove his tale the audience was silent. The last time I felt such silence was at the Anzac Day dawn service. Everyone, infant and adult alike, knew in their bones that reverence was required.

The tale told was captivating.  When we expected the narrative to take us down one path Damien took us down another. We journeyed through laughter and tears, life and death. I witnessed grown men and women so moved by the story they cried.

But the singing………….

Damien Leith’s voice was sublime yesterday. When the point in the storytelling called for song, Damien sang like an angel. I can’t believe I just wrote that, but it’s true. He sang like an angel. His voice was pure, it was breathtaking, it was magical. Irish tunes that I have heard sung a hundred different ways, by a hundred different performers over the thirteen years I have been going to Portarlington were transformed into something new and divine. I was only one of many who could but close our eyes and allow our ears to devour the notes.

We listened, we sang along with him, we silently mouthed the well-known words so as not to break the spell with our own voices.

And when it was over we rose as one to acknowledge a performance that was truly amazing. Bravo!!