Hundreds of artists and acts from more than 80 countries will descend on Dún Laoghaire for the town's annual Festival of World Cultures this weekend, writes Denis Clifford
By any reckoning, Dún Laoghaire's Festival of World Cultures (FWC) should not be the success that it is. On paper, the event sounds like a mass of contradictions. It celebrates diversity - without the naffness so often associated with such worthiness. It is (mostly) free - without the lameness so often associated with such philanthropy. It is organised by a local authority (rarely the most progressive of bodies) and relies heavily on the support of volunteers. Yet, the FWC can claim to be one of Ireland's best festivals.
Oxegen might be more hyped, the Electric Picnic might be cooler, but the FWC has an astonishingly wide scope which makes its groovier siblings look positively cloistered.
The event has grown exponentially over its six-year history. In 2006, more than 220,000 people (almost twice the population of the host town) turned up for the party. This year, more than 800 artists from 80 countries will perform during the festival. The range of musical styles on offer grows more eclectic with each year. This year, audiences can sample everything from mariachi to Malian swing, and from bhangra to Basque folk.
Festival director Jody Ackland says that the event developed through a meeting of minds. "I had been working with the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown arts office doing promotion for various music gigs. A world music event was a proposal I gave them to expand on that idea and turn it into an annual festival. At the time, the county manager was looking to put something on annually in Dún Laoghaire and he was very keen on the idea of a festival. Being a bit of a world-music fan anyway, it was a natural development.
"After the initial festival in 2001, they offered me a permanent position to come on board and develop the event. It wouldn't be the festival it is had it not been produced through the county council." The world-music theme coincided neatly with Ireland's emergent cosmopolitanism, which Ackland sees as a key aspect of the event's success: "[ Ireland] has only really experienced an influx in the last few years, it's quite a new thing. On many levels, I think that's where the council is coming from as well; they have a new purpose, a new vision which is about social development. It's very much part of their agenda. You have to commend them for what they're doing, it's pretty amazing for a local authority. They're supporting this. It's a natural development, it's timed incredibly well."
While the council was no doubt determined to put Dún Laoghaire on the map, it may not have anticipated the global reach of the festival or the importance that many attach to it. People now travel to Ireland each year specifically to participate in the event's organisation, while immigrants have begun to treat it as a focal point.
"We get so many calls from people abroad," says Ackland. "We get calls from Nigeria, from Poland, people wanting to volunteer, wanting to get involved. People say, 'I just arrived here three months ago and I want to be part of this'. They seem to see it as an anchor. There's a great sense of ownership over it. They want to get involved in the organisation, they want to support it, they believe in it. Ultimately, what it's doing is creating a great atmosphere and an opportunity for better understanding."
Over its short history, the FWC has developed into the Irish equivalent of London's Notting Hill Carnival. The latter event, initially organised by Caribbean immigrants as a response to the race riots of 1958, has become an enormously popular celebration of British cultural diversity. While the FWC lacks the grassroots evolution of the west London carnival, both events tap into deep desires for cultural expression and exchange among those who find themselves living in newly heterogenous societies.
"The ethos of the festival is very much about inclusion," agrees Ackland. "It's about accessibility, giving people an opportunity to exchange, meet each other, learn a little more about each other's culture. We feel having it as a mostly free event gives that, it's an open door. Once you start putting a price on things, it's really limited to people who want to go see that particular artist and can afford to do that. It's very much a family festival during the day as well."
The event's rapid growth has not come without problems. With 150 events taking place across numerous venues this year, the festival's line-up presents something of a logistical challenge to its organisers.
"It's heavily, heavily scheduled," explains Ackland. "We're not set up like a regular festival, we've got 40 venues. We feed artists in numerous different locations. It's much more complicated than your regular festival site because that all happens in one compound. You might have two eating areas and five stages.
"This, in terms of its logistics, is a bit like [ gruelling 1980s game show] The Krypton Factor. But it's good for the brain, it keeps you young."
Some 350 volunteers will keep events running smoothly throughout this year's festival. Besides 75 technical assistants, over 270 volunteers work in such roles as artist-liaison officers, drivers, workshop facilitators and ushers. Many of these are fanatical world-music fans and have been working at the festival for several years.
"I'm from Dún Laoghaire and it's an amazing thing to see the world coming to the town," says volunteer Susan Barr. "I've been doing it every year for the last six years. The volunteers are a mixture of Dún Laoghaire locals like myself, people from other nationalities who happen to live in the borough of Dún Laoghaire, and volunteers from the other side of town and other counties. It's such a great thing to do, to meet the artists, to get involved with all the different arts, to meet the public, the people on the streets."
Fellow volunteer Nawel Cherifi, a Dubliner of Algerian descent, also works for the FWC each August: "This is my third year working for the festival. On the festival days I work on the information boxes, as I am multi-lingual. I liked the festival the first year I saw it - I saw so many people needed help with it and there were not so many volunteers."
Neither woman hesitates when asked to name the main perk of volunteering: the opportunity of seeing, or perhaps meeting, your musical idol. Cherifi is keenly anticipating Sunday's concert by the celebrated French-Algerian punk-raï fusionist Rachid Taha: "I can't wait because it's my dream to see him. I really want to see him singing and dancing, he's the King of Raï." Barr, meanwhile, will spend Friday attending to the needs of Mariza, the Portuguese fado singer who regularly reduces world-music critics to gushing sycophancy. "I was in the Algarve recently and everybody raves about her," says the Dubliner. "When they heard she was playing in Ireland they couldn't believe that I was going to meet her.
"Everybody talks about Mariza and they want to see her but it's very hard to get into her shows in Portugal - but not in Dún Laoghaire." Not only does the festival bring in big names in world music, it also features several locally based performers. These include rumba collective Congomania, the North Strand Klezmer Band, and Ariel Hernandez and Dermot Dunne, a duo specialising in Argentinian folk and dance music.
Hernandez, who teaches jazz guitar at south Dublin's Newpark Music Centre, believes that much world music has an instinctive appeal to Irish audiences, partially due to the continuing presence of traditional music in the Irish consciousness. "We play a lot of traditional Argentinian music," says the Buenos Aires native, "a lot of roots which has that passion that traditional music has. I think Irish people appreciate that roots, that tradition - that's the key."
Balancing tradition and modernity is one of Jody Ackland's main goals for the festival: "We aim to attract a very wide demographic of people through age and interest. We would deliberately programme your club nights, your fusion, your contemporary digital stuff all the way across to your more indigenous traditional music. We have the throat songs, a very pure type of singing, with a musician from Lappland, a musician from Siberia and Inuit musicians from Canada."
Those who find themselves listening to harmonic guttural chanting performed by indigenous Canadian musicians in Dún Laoghaire's Methodist Church this Sunday may find themselves pausing to consider their circumstances. The WCF offers both a glimpse of our seemingly infinite variety and the knowledge that music knows no boundaries. The festival ultimately succeeds because its organisers and its audience recognise this. This weekend, Dún Laoghaire, that most English of Irish towns, will simultaneously vibrate to a thousand different beats and a single global pulse.
The Festival of World Cultures takes place throughout Dún Laoghaire from Fri to Sun. www.festivalofworldcultures.com
