Friends! The summer is still young, but the 21st Edition of the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival (September 17-21), already has the makings of a vintage year, combining an attractive mix of established talent with emerging artists.
Giving a rare public performance is one-man supergroup Roy Harper, still hitting creative sixes at an age when most cricketers have left the crease. Americana/folk trio The Raines will bring their poignant songs and stirring harmonies, while veteran Kurdish singer and bouzouki player Mohammad Syfkhan’s transcendent virtuosity is another unmissable highlight. The trio of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Dónal O’Connor and Gerry O’Beirne channel pure yearning musicality. Classically-trained guitarists Fandango Duo (David Keating and Colin McLean) transport fortunate audiences across cultures, centuries and genre.
One of the youngest musicians on the programme is Muireann Bradly, a gifted Donegal blueswoman for whom the word ‘prodigy’ is no stretch whatsoever. Dublin’s Macdara Yeates is a youthful folksinger of power, vulnerability, rawness and refinement. The Bog Jazz Duo create sonic landscapes of eerie beauty. Pôt-Pot is an hypnotic Irish-Portuguese groove’n’drone combo with Velvet Underground in its DNA, and Hussy Hicks are a rootsy, gutsy, saline duo from Australia. Irish three-piece Adore perform with superhuman mosh-pit energy, and Cork city’s very own Babyrat command stages with their own brand of caustic exuberance.
Also confirmed for the 2025 edition are Paula Bilá, a truly exquisite performer from Spain; George Lowden, master luthier of Belfast; and Martin Leahy, multi-instrumentalist, singer and activist, and widely respected on the Irish music scene. SurfSide 61 bring joyous, bracing, scorching, surf music to our seaside town. The David Christy Jones Trio of Four guarantee convivial shows and an eclectic repertoire of irresistible bangers.
Guitartown wouldn’t be Guitartown without John Spillane, Cork’s songwriter-laureate. This year His Spillanic Majesty will charm birds from the trees with The Band of Wrens.
The Clonakilty International Guitar Festival is a community-powered, not-for-profit, evergreen antidote to the news cycle. Its main stage is the bars, venues, premises and spaces of our weatherproof Irish town, and the fabled DeBarras Folk Club (and spacetime anomaly.) No corporate messaging, no quagmires and no pestilential PortaLoos are entered into – just life-enhancing music, made by humans, for humans, to enjoy with other humans – close enough to the artists to see their feet keep time and to spot the callouses on their thumbs.
Music is part of a life well-lived. Come along.
CIGF is a volunteer-led community group of passionate music fans and can only continue this year thanks to the support of the Arts Council, Cork County Council and as ever our committed local sponsors.
Read more about the Clonakilty International Guitar Fest at FRUK, Broadsheet.ie,Hotpress,The Corkman,The Echo, and Eile.
