The 2nd Irish Folk Festival presents the audience with several facets of Irish folk music in a documentary and anything but dry way. The spectrum ranges from ancient forms of oral tradition to modern sound experiments. The representatives of both directions are by no means in an irreconcilable dispute between purists and progressives against each other, but can interpret their traditional folk music together despite all the differences in style. And when the old and the young Irish make music full of joy and vitality in the final session, the audience breaks away from the passiveness of listening and actively participates: it dances, clap and stomps the rhythm of the jigs and reels and "sometimes increases to to ecstasy".
This 90-minute live recording of the "2nd Irish Folk Festival" has captured the atmosphere of such a concert with high musical quality and lets the listener experience a folk festival of lively Irish folklore.
Ted Furey — 74-year-old patriarch of Celtic folklore and fiddle virtuoso, who settled in Dublin after his musical journeyman years, is accompanied by his youngest son George (guitar). Ted is "a folklore monument that is not only worth hearing but also worth seeing, a delicate burgundy on karstified cheeks, the wild, white-yellow beard flowing so over the violin that you can no longer separate the strings and hair". (Baden Latest News.)
Jerry Bourke — Tutor for Sociology at Trinity College, Dublin, hails from the Mediterranean area of Cork. With his full, fascinatingly confident voice, as a singer committed to pure tradition, he performs ancient ballads in Gaelic and English without any instrumental accompaniment.
The Buskers are a young folk trio formed by George and Paul Furey and Davey Arthur. The "Buskers" give their music so much fresh impetus with an imaginatively used set of instruments (accordion, tenor banjo, mandolin, flute, guitar, spoon) that the exuberantly vital component of Irish gypsy music comes to the fore. Of the listeners are immediately carried away by the rhythms and wit of the "Buskers".
Micko Russell — sixty-year-old farmer from Doolin on the steep west coast of County Clare plays an unaffected, completely unique and unmistakable style on concert flute and tin whistle. Micko was All Ireland Champion Of Tin-Whistle in 1972. He also inspires audiences as a singer of old ballads and satirical songs. He has also mastered the art of "lilting", i.e. he can recite a melody without lyrics in scat-like singing.
Clannad are five related young musicians from the harsh, rugged shores of County Donegal in the far north of the Republic of Ireland, where the Gaelic language has survived unbroken. Clannad exposes Irish-Celtic music to new, foreign influences, for example by processing classical, jazz and rock elements. A special feature of the group is the singing and playing the harp of Máire Ní Braonáín, the sensitive flute playing of Pól Ó Braonáin, the filigree and partly jazzy guitar and mandola tones of Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin, as well as the solid rhythm of the bassist Ciarán Ó Braonáin.
Original German translated via Google Translate.