20 full-time volunteers, a hundred gigs, a thousand t-shirts sold, ten billion visitors, family events, whiskey tasting, and the Irish Professor Of Poetry. Matti McCambridge attends three days of Irish festival.
I. Monday 28/09/09 I’m not quite sure about going to the festival. When I was a kid, my Dad used to prod me out in front of my relatives to sing tunes by Percy French, an Irish songwriter. These included: one, Adbul Abulbul Amir, a song about a Russian and a Mamluk fighting; two, Phil the Fhluter’s Ball, about a broke musician throwing a party to raise money. I loved singing and still do. As a kid I’d sing everywhere, including the street, and would walk dreamily about then burst out into spontaneous passionate song, until one day the neighbourhood kids I played with took unction at my doing it, and chased me up and down our hill for a week.
II. Wednesday 07/10/09 There’s kind of a ruckus about the press passes. I’ve talked to at least three people now on at least twelve occasions, and though I’m fairly sure we’re getting two passes, getting to them seems comparable to a political process.
In the end they’re delivered to our office by hand.
They are pretty though, laminated and with “65 Degrees North” on one end.
III. Friday 02/10/09 Friday. Brent Cassidy, festival director, stands in front of about sixty Finns and ‘foreigners,’ in green, white, and orange-marked t-shirts, to announce Jeffery Arnold, political officer to the US embassy in Helsinki.
I met Brent on the way in. “Did you get the pass?” he asked. “Yes,” I answered.
The big, black Valve theatre hall is a slope of black leading down to a wide, black floor, with a screen the size of an apartment block at the other end. Many of the audience, mostly between eighteen and thirty, display shiny memorabelia reading “The Irish Festival of Oulu 2009.”
"WEL-come to the Irish FESTival of Oulu,” he says, in a booming North Carolina accent with a slight upward lilt and a tilt of the head. “Céad MíLE Fáilte, Tervetuloa,” he says, in Gaelic and Finnish. The political officer, blond, thin, in his early thirties, sits beside the Irish ambassador in the front.
“I’d also like to thank the ambassador for being here,” says Brent. “This is the product of a lot of work. I mean, we’ve probably talked three times a day on the phone for the last six months.”
Gut-laughter. The audience is obviously completely at his mercy.
The film starts. Frederick Douglass And The White Negro, which compares Irish attitudes to black slaves in and out of the US, is interesting, if a little heavy handed. Douglass, an ex-slave escaped from his plantation, educated himself, found friends in Ireland – who became effective competitors in the states, or–in the case of clergy, oppressors, when he returned – and eventually ran for US President.
An after-movie question and answer session, typical of the festival’s healthy fetish for detail, has the political officer saying how Douglas was a forerunner of Obama and that this is a historic time. A young commentator asks whether Douglass’ run for presidency caused uproar at the time.
“No,” says Jeffery Arnold. “It was a small party. But Obama definitely wouldn’t be possible without him.”
IV. Friday 02/10/09 22.30. The line of people in hats and scarves queuing outside 45 Special, Oulu’s hard rock club, seems menacing. Fingering my press pass, I convince the bouncer to let me in without paying a service charge. “I’m working,” I say. “You know this article is going to mention you as well?”
Several smart suits are guzzling chicken-and-chip dinners. On a table to one side, volunteers sell cds and t-shirts. Iida-Maria Luhta, Irish society treasurer and accountant, looks a little flustered. How are things going?
“Well, fine. I’ve just been to get the band chips from Amarillo,” she says. “And we have all these cds and memorabilia to price and sell for Neck.” Iida waves away my suggestion to help. “There’s nothing.” “We’ve got everything under control,” adds Sari Ojala, Irish society secretary.
“It's always hair-raising,” Iida continues. “I've counted all the tickets a hundred times, but you think, what if someone somehow got a ticket and it's not down on the list; say they returned a ticket but there was a mixup and someone got an extra one!"
How much have you slept, I ask. “Last night? About an hour. But I’m okay.”
The situation seems okay later on. Though I’ve always thought 45 Special is too small.
Neck turns out to be a six-piece “Celtic punk” outfit from Holloway, North London. They sing traditional Irish tunes, loud, slightly out of tune, and through a fuzz pedal. They play The Star Of The County Down, about a good-looking brunette with a nice smile. “Everyone jump up and down. It’s Friday night!” cries Leeson O’Keefe, spike-quiffed with a white-and-pink striped shirt that looks a lot like the one in their promotional photo, and makes obscure British TV references.
At the back, Cassidy and Liam Kenny, development director, and a man who I‘m told is a ‘whisky ambassador,’ leap about, and even do a very convincing twirl in the space beside the men’s toilets. Towards the front of the stage, a wave of dancing spectators whoop and shuffle.
Later I hear Neck played for three hours. “They must have really liked us,” Iida-Maria says.
“That was a really great gig,” says Bruce, a large entrepreneur from New Zealand.
V. Friday 02/10/09 I go out with friends later, to One Bar. One Bar is the sort of place you see executives and project managers and exquisitely well-dressed upwardly-mobile business chiques (not chicks) drink tequila at, or have meaningful conversations about music at.
”You’re from Ireland, really? Are you part of the Irish festival?” a girl asks me.
It turns out her mother has lived in the Isle Of Man. I don’t know anything about the Isle of Man. “So what is the Irish festival about, really?” asks the guy sitting beside her.
VI. Saturday 03/10/09
Michael Longley, Professor of Poetry for Ireland–come here especially for the festival–appears a little like Father Christmas, with a pair of black hare’s eyes behind low-perched glasses and a ruffled white beard in the promotional photo. In Cultural Centre Valve, he seems benevolent and dignified – and still looks like Father Christmas.
Soap Pig, one of Oulu’s stalwart Celtic outfits, is in Valve too: Cassidy in the middle on bodhran, a piper and guitar player on either side, and Anthony Johnson, the head of the University’s English department, to the far left, holding a fiddle, looking like a slightly younger Santa Claus.
The sheer proportion of beards is enough to impress.
Soap Pig play several tunes, one–entitled ‘No Man’s Land’–they’ve written for Longley and dedicated to Harry Patch, who features in Langley’s work and who before his death this year was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War.
The poems themselves are the real treat, full of local place names and luminous stories of symbolic otters and the ghosts of locals travelling miles to hear music in old houses – part openly romanticized, part set against a cold, stark landscape.
Images of his grandchildren, of Finnish cloudberries, of his father embodying greek philosophy through a harmonica in the trenches of the first world war, dead hares and dead friends, a relationship between his daughter and an ice-cream man killed by the IRA. He does this with a disarming openness.
The Finns listen especially closely to the lines about the cloudberries. The images – of the poet and his wife picking cloud berries together–ending in ‘cloudberry kisses’–seem particularly touching.
When Longley finishes talking, the room is reluctant to let go. “Poetry,” he tells the audience, “is a brain-rattling bramble song inside a knothole.”
VII. Saturday 03/10/09
“I just love the swear words,” a twenty-something audience member in Valve’s cinema screen, which seats about 40, and in which every word is audible, explains to her friend before the film starts. “Like bollocks.” “What’s that?” says her friend. “Bollocks!” she says. “Boll-ocks!”
Adam and Paul are junkies in Dublin. They wake up in an effective dump outside Dublin, Adam unglueing himself from a mattress–“Some f**ker glued me to this!”–then set off into the city to find their next hit, and money to eat.
In the afternoon, they decide they want to shoplift a convenience store. “I’ll wait for you by the river,” says Paul. Inside, Paul hovers shiftily around the dairy section; manages to put a milk carton in one pocket before the shopkeeper steps up after oogling him on the security camera. “Anything I can help you with?”
“Oh…….no,” says Paul. “Well, I was thinking of some bread.” “Bread, is it?” says the shopkeeper. “Bread’s over here.” He walks over to a basket of baguettes. Adam shuffles up behind him, and pauses as if looking at a sculpture of a holy gofat. He starts turning a baguette around in a hand covered in dirt.
“You gonna buy that?” drives the shopkeeper. Paul pauses and looks abashed. “No, well, I don’t think so….was just checking to see it was fresh, like.”
“You’re banned!” the shopkeeper shouts. “F**k you!” shouts Paul, when the proprietor’s safely inside.
A man in a grey coat walks out of the shop, carrying a baguette. “Here’s your baguette,” he says. “He might as well have given it to you anyway, the stingy f’***ker. He’ll only throw it away in the bin.”
VIII. Saturday 03/010/09
At Saturday’s Kíla gig, for which everyone and their auntie in Oulu seems to have put on their best black evening shirt, tie, wristband, cap, and flower-covered scarf, everyone has a good time. The music, which Sinéad Ó Connor is reported to have called ‘brilliant’ and Bono ‘extraordinary,’ differs enough from Neck’s to warrant the 19€ entry fee, and from the more straight traditional cáileh to make them more than distinct. The list of instruments, which includes djembes, congas, bongos, mandolins, bazoukis, guitar, fiddle, dulcimer, accordion, pipes, tin whistle, shakers, clarinet, and bones, is enough to put a grade 3 music teacher into apoplexy. The venue itself’s perfect, though the Guinness costs €7.50, which is–according to Iida-Maria–nothing to do with the Irish society.
Oliver Hussey, Irish society chairman, stops me for a chat in front. “When I heard these guys were coming over, I was like a little kid. I couldn’t believe it,” he says, speaker blasting behind him.
I go upstairs to bump into some more Oulu expats – the place is full of them –and see a table full of reconstituted breaded chicken and fish pieces called “Irish goujons.”
“Can I try one of those goujons,” I ask, smiling and showing my press card.“Which one,” asks the girl behind the table in Finnish, after checking with her boss. “Or would you like some of both?” She sets a mound of them on the plate, sandy-coloured crows’ feet and frogs’ hands, a dollop of thick pink mayonnaise over it. They taste like a breaded chicken piece would in Ireland – greasy, unhealthy – and moreish, if you’re in the mood.
Iida-Mariabrings me to see At First Light, tomorrow’s act and the festival’s headliners.
Alan Burke, the lead singer, and Michael McCague, bouzoki –both with long hair, in their 40s and late 20s respectively, are leaning against the 7.50€-a-Guiness bar in leather jackets. What do they think of the festival?
“Fan-ta-stic,” declares Alan. “Really great.” What separates a good festival from a bad one? “This is really well-organised,” they say. “We’ve really been made to feel welcome.” I ask what their worst experience of a festival has been, joking that ‘of course they don’t have to name names.’
“Our worst experience, well…sometimes you go places and you get there and they say this publication and that publication has cancelled, and the audience has no idea what you’re there to play. And the worst that can happen is you don’t get paid. That’s only happened to us twice, though,” explains Alan.
Their first time in Oulu? “First time in Finland,” states Michael. “I hadn’t heard of the place at all until they asked us.” “I had,” says Alan. “My daughter’s studying with someone from Oulu, and when I said we were going over, she told me about it.”
At the First Light gig the next afternoon, another near sell-out, Alan has learnt several phrases in Finnish.
As I pass the band on the way out, sitting in the lobby, they’re pointing to one of the band members, who’s looking a little sheepish. “Bertie Ahern!” someone remarks (Ahern was taoiseach of Ireland until last year). “Bertie Ahern!” they say again, laughing and pointing.
IX Sunday 04/10/09 Doiminic Mac Giolla Bhride, friend of Brent Cassidy and a ‘real sean-nos’ singer, steps up to the microphone in Pohjankartano hall, a hall big enough for a New York ballet. “Hello,” he says, and taps it, and tells the audience his name. He looks like the sort of guy your grandmother wants to meet on a Sunday afternoon over scones.
Doiminic, serious but somehow intensely loveable, explains what he’s about to sing, as if it was a tray of sausages and chips or an apple lunch.
“The songs I’m going to sing are all love songs, really,” he says, conversationally, as if to a best friend. “This first one, you see, this is a conversation between a man and a woman. They’re talking about, well, love, but they see it in different ways. The language they use is kindof…different.”
When he starts singing on the next breath, unaccompanied and without a trace of nerves, the audience goes turtle quiet. Every face I see in the room is glued to the stage: whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t this.
Though the Gaelic tunes, some ‘a bit happier’ and a one ‘a bit raunchy,’ unquestionably gain inscrutability for very few members of the audience being able to understand them, the words soar and bend and shimmer. On the low notes, Doiminic sounds like pipes, gravelly and nasal, while the upper registers hang there like birds.
From song to song, the applause is deafening.
About a minute into the first song I start blubbing like Simba’s about to die in the Lion King. Thankfully it’s dark enough so no-one sees.
X Sunday 04/10/09 The after-party reads ‘Festival Closing Session, Petrelli Pub’ in the programme, without ‘Live Irish Music’ in the title, which is probably why the place is half empty, though by all accounts all the other music sessions have been ‘packed.’ Nearly all those here are volunteers or organizers, or as Annamari Martinviita, also the vice-chair of the music society, puts it, ‘festival producers.’
Though as it turns out, ‘a german guy’ –“I think he’s the dad of a student at the university who combined a visit with the festival,’ says Annamari–is playing the accordion with the concentration of a bear, and has been at every session in the entire festival. Also, ‘a Russian girl, she’s come over just for the festival,’ is smiling non-stop and chatting to Brent like Brent is Berty Ahern.
I passed Doiminic on the way down, and Iida-Marja, who still hasn’t had any sleep, bringing him to Troija for a kebab, and apologizing at least five times in thirty seconds that Doiminic hasn’t had anything to eat before that.
“He’s lovely,” she says later, when I ask her did he get enough to eat. “He’s just such a genuine guy.”
Oliver Hussey and Liam Kenny, the festival’s development director, bray at each other: both have lost their voice shouting over the noise in the front row of the Kíla gig, and every utterance sounds like the last gasps of two dying, long-lost brothers.
Liam tells me about the family event on Saturday afternoon, which had two ‘Connemara’ ponies–‘they came from 300km away…we have contacts through the embassy,’ hurling, and a sheetful of other events on 15 minute rotation. “We were blessed with the weather; I must have checked the forecast about 100 times last week, and we had 100 families!” he says excitedly, but hoarse.
Annamari makes a tour around the room asking for signatures and love on the back of her name tag.
Why do people like the festival, I ask her? “It’s something positive and fun. People come with that in mind.”
As if to underline the sentiment, Liam gets up with a hatful of raffle tickets for a two day trip to Dublin, tickets to a show, dinner in Matala, and festival t-shirts. These are won by Mirja Peltoniemi, whose eyes literally bulge, and clutches her chest, saying ‘who, me?’ in a shocked voice.
A hundred hours later, Alan Burke from At First Light is singing a dirty song about ‘a little ball of yarn.’
All photos by Marko Törmälä
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