Why do we do it every year?

The Queen’s Birthday long weekend is celebrated, in Victoria, over the second weekend of June and for all but one of the last 17(?) years I have been heading to the little Bellarine Penninsula town of Portarlington to attend the National Celtic Festival. I am not Irish, Scottish or Welsh, though my ancestry has strong Irish leanings, however we are talking four generations back, if not further, and nobody in my family has a musical bent.

I only attended my first festival because my boyfriend at the time was a roadie for one of the bands, yet I find myself returning year after year. It is permanently marked on my calendar. I organise my Saturday work shift months in advance so that I am free that weekend and I have been a volunteer for a number of years now.

I’m not the only one who returns to this festival every year. There are dozens of us who, even if it is just for one day, make the annual pilgrimage to Portarlington.

Why do I do it? Why do we do it? Why does this festival have such meaning to so many people?

As I edited a selection of the 1500 photos I took over the weekend (I’m a volunteer and an official photographer) the meaning of the festival became clear.

It means friendship.

It means dancing.

It means fun.

It means music.

It means singing.

It means sore feet and losing your voice.

It means learning that you can attend a festival on your own and not be alone.

It means magical moments such as watching strangers lose themselves in movement.

It means a room full of people of all ages and abilities dancing a jig or a reel with joyous abandon.

It means men in kilts and women in hand knitted beanies.

It means fiddles and bagpipes and guitars and flutes and harps and pianos and banjos…..

It means seeing four generations of the one family enjoying a weekend together.

It means finding your ‘tribe’.

It means hearing ‘Whiskey in the jar’ a dozen times and loving every rendition.

It means discovering new artists from Australia and overseas and becoming fans for life.

It means seeing cultures that seem to have no connection come together in music and love.

It means seeing the same faces from last year and being so delighted that they are there again.

It means having bands you know stop their set mid-song to have you take their photo.

It means watching craftsmen in action, passing on their knowledge of the old arts.

It means watching young musicians flourish and develop.

It means witnessing a room of adults sit in silent weeping as a gifted singer/story-teller hypnotises them with words.

It means knowing that we have history and traditions and stories and songs that mean something.

It means that I will be back there again next June.

 

 

Did ya miss me?

Well, the sun has set on another Queen’s Birthday long weekend National Celtic Festival.

Is it just me, or can you all see the irony in holding a Celtic Festival on the Queen’s Birthday weekend???

Anyway………..my feet are killing me because I have walked and danced 500 Miles, my body is weary because I slept in the top bunk of a set of bunks, and it is a miracle that I have any voice left because I have talked and sung my way through four LONG days. I can tell you for certain, that there are one or two singers who don’t have a voice left. 🙂

I can also tell you that there are more than one or two people who have been self-medicating the last couple of mornings with ‘the hair of the dog’. How these folk even managed to remain standing the ‘next morning’ is a testament to the fortitude of the Celts. Hangover? What hangover? Bar man!!! Pour me another Guinness!

Honestly, these folk are unstoppable. The drinkers drink until they close the bar and the musicians play until they fall asleep where they stand. Every year the sessions continue on till the wee small hours of the morning. Long after the last gig has finished for the night these dedicated (crazy) individuals meet up back at the Grand Hotel and sing, talk and play until they drop. Then, with only a few hours sleep, they make their way back to the stages and start their official music commitments all over again.

I guess the mere fact that they come from all over this wonderful country of mine and rarely get such an opportunity to ‘play’ means that they grab the opportunity with both hands. Not to mention the overseas performers who have flown out from Ireland, Scotland and Wales…….they want to share and socialise with local musos.

Good Lord, it’s nearly 11:30pm!!!! I was going to bed early.

One last parting comment before I retire to the bliss of my own bed.

I have enjoyed another wonderful National Celtic Festival. I made new friends, I caught up with old friends I see this time every year, I discovered wonderful musicians, I ate wonderful food, I danced, I sang and I loved being a volunteer worker at this brilliant event.

The weather was kind, considering that it is winter in my marvellous Melbourne and we even enjoyed some gorgeous sunshine.

Thank you Portarlington for being the perfect host town for what is my favourite weekend of the year.

 

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!!

I’m OK folks. I’m not dead. I’ll give you two posts today.

Welcome to Australia young man. 🙂 Nice sporran. 🙂

I love my friends. They look out for me. They worry if I miss or am late for a daily blog posting. And if I haven’t posted something by early afternoon of the following day, they’re texting to see that I’m still alive.

It’s nice to be loved. 🙂

Now, the reason I didn’t get my blog post done yesterday was that I took myself down to the National Celtic Festival in Portarlington for the day. I couldn’t stay away. Injured ankle or not I was going to go and see my friends and see some performers. And by the time I got home it was late. It was late, I was tired and my ankle had had enough.

So I did the only sensible thing. I put my health before my blog.

Shower, pyjamas, cup of tea and bed.

As for my photo of the day……………… Many will be aware of my love/obsession/fantasy regarding a man in a kilt. (This could be one of the main reasons why I love the National Celtic Festival so much. There is never a shortage of men in kilts.) And Sunday my eyes spied a young man who could easily become Mr January, Mr February, Mr March …April….May….June of the Men in Kilts Calendar 2016. He also happened to win the Festival’s piping competition. Talented AND good-looking.

I unashamedly share some eye-candy with you.  Take a number ladies.

The troops have been assembled

Una rallies the troops this afternoon.

In two weeks Portarlington will be the place to be if you are a lover of things Celtic….especially the music. The June Queen’s Birthday long weekend is the weekend of the National Celtic Festival. Every year for the last 12 years (this is the 13th year), this beautiful town on the Bellarine Penninsula has opened its arms, hearts and doors to musicians and dancers from all over the Celtic world.

And every year for the past 13 years, this festival has relied on a smallish but dedicated and enthusiastic army of volunteers to operate. These people help set up the site or pull it down at the end. They might sell entry tickets, or man the venue doors, or sell merchandise, or MC, or drive the buses, or clean up in the venues between acts, or shovel wheelbarrows of tan bark. There are a multitude of task, more than I can even contemplate, and it is the volunteers who are there, year in year out, to see that these tasks get done and this festival prospers.

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to be a part of this festival too. I had been coming down every year to enjoy the music (and the men in kilts) and felt that I should “do my bit” as it were, so I volunteered and this year will be my fourth year as a volunteer. (actually, it could even be my fifth. I can’t remember. I just do it)

Today was our information session day. The day we volunteers get our official t-shirts and our rosters and are informed on any important changes. It’s also the chance to ask any final questions we may have and often just say hello to people we haven’t seen since the last festival.

So, for me, the final countdown begins. Two weeks to go. Two weeks till MY weekend. My weekend. The one weekend a year when I am not a mum. The one weekend a year when I do my thing. Are you getting the sense that I’m looking forward to the Queen’s Birthday long weekend?

The accommodation has been booked. #1 son has been ‘enlisted’ to feed the beasts while I am away. I have started to plan what food things I will take down with me. I’ve been thinking about what clothes to wear. I’m ready.