Clonmel Junction Festival Festival Director recently returned from a three week visit to Zambia and Malawi with the five University of Limerick students, who together make up the trad band Goitse. The trip was part of an ongoing youth music exchange programme being run by Clonmel Junction Festival and Music Crossroads funded by Culture Ireland and Irish Aid.
For the last two years Junction Festival has invited the winning band from the Music Crossroads InterRegional Finals to Clonmel for a week and in turn Junction Festival has brought an Irish band to Africa to perform as guests at the three-day festival where the winning band is selected for the following year’s European tour. The Music Crossroads organisation supports the running costs of music schools in five South African countries, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. With limited recourses and staffing the organisation runs music workshops and offers rehearsal facilities and instruments to aspiring musicians between the age of 18 and 27 and facilitates programmes on healthcare and women’s empowerment
In addition to this the organisation runs annual competitions throughout their respective countries to find first the regional winners in each country and then the two bands to represent the country at the InterRegional finals. From the ten national winners one band is selected for a years musical training and development. They also get a CD made and are given training on promotion, stage craft and managing their band in a global market.
On August 4th David Teevan flew with Goitse to Livingston, Zambia for the 2008 InterRegional Finals. Goitse performed their first African concert at the three-day festival on the second day and the response was magnificent. The band members were very nervous before going on stage. How would this multicultural African audience of over 1500 people receive their music? Already they had learned that many of the other musicians had no awareness of Irish music and were fascinated by the banjo, fiddle, accordion and bodhran, which many of them had never seen before.
The smile that broke on Aine McGeeney’s face when the crowd applauded her sound check on the fiddle brought a further cheer from the crowd and the band members relaxed, they could feel the warmth of the audience. The performance, which included two sets and a song, was greeted throughout with cheering clapping and the many hoots and hollers of approval.
Over the three days in Livingston the members of Goitse attended workshops organised by Music Crossroads on a variety of themes from music rights to aids prevention. They also had the opportunity to see twenty other band performing.
Goitse played two further sets in Zambia one on the Saturday while the judges were deciding the 2009 European prize winner and one on the following day at Mafuni Village, 5km from Victoria Falls, where the whole community gathered with the Chieftain and Chieftainess present to hear the 14 bands perform 2 songs each.
Goitse then travelled on by bus with the young Malawian musicians the 1100km from Livingstown to Lilongwe, stopping in Lusaka where the Irish band played a concert for the Wild Geese, the expatriate Irish community. This concert was organised by Fionnuala Callanan and Mark Brogan. The concert was attended by over 100 people including the Irish Ambassador, His Excellency Bill Nolan, who was finishing his three year term of office that week.
In the Malawian capital Goitse visited the Music Crossroads Centre each day to rehearse a collaboration with the members of Mafilika, one of the organisations most promising bands that earlier this year spent one month in the Netherlands. Mafilika and Goitse members continued to work together during a three day break at Cape McClear where they also performed their collaboration for the villagers as the sun set over the lake. This collaboration was most successful. The nine musicians gelled very well together and the collaboration moved beyond the boundaries defined by the programme. While at the lake Tadhg Ó Meachair set up a My Space site for the African band, thus sharing skill and assisting in capacity building.
On returning to the Lilongwe the musicians prepared for a performance at the Irish Embassy in Lilongwe hosted by His Excellency Liam MacGabhann, and attended by a gathering of diplomats and dignitaries including Ambassadors from seven countries, A representative from the Malawian Department of Arts, Music Crossroads personnel and local media.
This collaboration, which is funded by Culture Ireland and Irish Aid, and sponsored by PJT Insurance is an investment in the future. The performances by Goitse were PR opportunities for Ireland in the region, where the country is already held in high esteem. They have also offered the Irish Diaspora, many of who are involved in voluntary work in Malawi and Zambia, the opportunity to connect with each other and their native music, which brings comfort in what can be very lonely and trying circumstances. But most importantly the journey that these young musicians have made will stay with them forever, influencing their music and perhaps also their politics.
As performers these young people will have a voice, a voice that may influence others who hear them perform. The experience the five members of Goitse have had in Africa transcends the politics of white and black, western affluence and African poverty. The language of music, which they have been trading in, transcends politics enabling these young people, African and Irish, to meet as equals, sharing not just music but their youth and experiences and with hope contributing in some small way to changing the dysfunctional dynamic that has existed between the two continents for far too long.
Clonmel Junction Festival would like to thank the following people for their help in organising this venture
His Excellency Bill Nolan : Irish Ambaassador to Malawi,
His Excellency Liam MacGabhann : Irish Ambassador to Zambia,
Brian O Brien : Third Secretary Irish Embassy, Lilongwe
Fionnuala Callanan: Third Secretary Irish Embassy, Lusaka
Mark Brogan : President of The Wild Geese, Zambia
Professor Micheal O Suilleabhain : UL Academy of World Music and Dance
Eugeen Downes : CEO, Culture Ireland
Dag Franzeen and Viviana Garuz Walcher : Music Crossroads Barcelona
Mathews Mfuni: Music Crossroads Lilongwe
Humphrey Saka: Music Crossroads Zambia
Peter Thomas : CEO PJT Insurance
Gecko Lounge, Cape McClear
Chameleon Bar: Lilongwe
Staff at Clonmel Junction Festival
