Fleadh in Belfast: A City Will Travel

Two months ago I stood in a cafe in a tiny fishing village in Albania in total disbelief. I was travelling in the North of the country at the time and we had decided to cycle to a tiny fishing village called Zogaj, near the border with Montenegro. We stopped in for a coffee in a small cafe. I noticed that the eyeline of each member of staff was firmly fixed on the TV mounted on the rafters beneath the low ceiling.

When I looked up at the TV I saw the unmistakable PSNI Land Rovers followed by footage of masked thugs torching cars and houses. The disgusting race riots had people stopping in their tracks in places you would’ve never imagined.

I’d always been very proud to say that I am from Belfast, but at that moment I felt a kind of deep shame that I can’t put into words.



Two months after that, the same city hosted the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann for the first time in the event's 75 year history. It turned out to be the largest Fleadh ever. 1.6 Million visits into the city-centre, which brought with it an atmosphere I’d never felt in the city before.

One of the best things it did was create a massive amount of discourse about the future; licensing laws, pedestrianisation, more cultural events.

These are things campaigners and regular punters have been crying out for, and now they are finally being taken seriously. For a place that is often too marred by its past to look forward to a future, the hope for a better city has become an infectious feeling that is as new to me as it is to many others.

I joked to my family that the Fleadh was probably the best thing that happened to Belfast since the Good Friday Agreement. Instead of the laughs and head shakes that I expected, there was a delay followed by a: ‘aye, maybe it is’. The success of the event can’t be measured by the extraordinary amount of attendees it pulled in (double what was expected), or the tens of millions of pounds it generated; it was the ineffable feeling of joy it brought to the huge crowds bustling and singing through the city that ultimately made it such an important event.

An event that brought people together in a city where 20 foot walls of brick and corrugated iron still scar its topography and keep communities separated.

As the reels trickled through the air and the thuds of bodhráns instilled a beating rhythm to the streets around Maddens, the Sunflower and even Royal Avenue, you got the sense that the people of Belfast were acutely aware of how important it was whilst it was happening around them. Unsurprisingly this was felt by the generations that came before my own most of all. My generation, born during or after the ceasefire, knows very well the endless horror stories of the past, how you couldn’t do this, that, or the other, walking down here or there. When I was a teenager it would almost make me groan hearing about how lucky I was and how bad things were in the past. Of course, the older I got the more I understood that I was indeed lucky beyond my imagination, and that there is an enormous value in remembering the past to appreciate the present.

The reactions of my family, of those generations who remember the past the most, were what impacted me more than anything throughout the whole week. Seeing how much it meant to them to see their city transformed, their memories given new meaning. When I went with my family to the large marquee that Irish language broadcaster TG4 had set up on Castle Street, my mother reminded me that that very zone was where her and any other Westie that ventured into the centre of their city was rigorously searched at a military checkpoint that stood for twenty years.

Passing through the ‘Ring of Steel’ became an almost daily ritual for her as she tried (and succeeded) in becoming the first of her family to get a university degree, meaning that she had to travel from Ballymurphy to town to get to Queens. This would become even trickier when British soldiers became suspicious of her fiddle case. Here was that same zone, full of Irish speakers chatting away and enjoying an outpour of talent from some of the best traditional musicians in the country.

Where once there were turnstiles and steel barriers to restrict the movement of people through their own city, was a free flow of language and culture without a trace of inhibition, moving from every generation and from every corner of Ireland. Without my mother’s memories, I would have enjoyed this for what it was; great music and laughter. With it, I could also understand just how much it took for this space to become one of joy.

On the first day that the Fleadh ever took place in Belfast, I was walking through the Cathedral Quarter with my family, amazed at the buzz all over the city. We were with my Granny, who has a deep love for trad. As we passed through the cobbled streets of the Half Bap, she called me over to one of its many red brick door archways. She pointed at something scrawled into one of the bricks and told me to read it. It read:

‘JOHN HARTIGAN WILL TRAVEL, MAR 69’.

She explained to me that my granda John had written it at that date and it has been there ever since. He was sixteen at the time, full of wanderlust. Of course, the year that he inscribed his wish into that wall was the same year that the conflict erupted across the six counties, which would then go on for nearly three decades. Some time after he wrote it, he was arrested and interned without trial under the Special Powers Act, like almost two thousand other young men. Simply because they were born in the wrong part of their country at the wrong time.

In a strange coincidence, the day my Granny showed me my Granda’s graffiti - the first day of the Fleadh - was also his birthday. Among my many fond memories of my granda, who passed away eight years ago, were his constant singing and humming. Music seemed to run through his mind at all times, trad and the folk songs of Ireland in particular.

I knew that he would have been very proud to see the first ever Fleadh in his native Belfast on the day of his birthday. I felt proud in the knowledge that he was right when he etched his name into brick 57 years ago, and that he did indeed travel.



The Fleadh has created a vision for the future of Belfast, one of acceptance and diversity, that welcomes every community to enjoy a shared love of music and craic. It has created an optimism that was impossible to envision even two months ago, never mind forty years ago. The future and the present are only made possible within the context of what has already passed; it’s the knowledge of the suffering and discrimination gone past that will help us in working to keep it there - behind us.

I will never know for certain, but when my granda wrote onto the walls of Belfast that he will travel, I like to imagine that he knew that his city would travel with him. That the different street corners and avenues would gain new experiences, see new things.

The joy of the thousands of incredibly talented kids, singing, dancing, playing instruments like true virtuosos transformed those spaces that had seen so much pain. It was a powerful moment - but just as powerful, was the sight of the generations that lived through the oppression and conflict of the past. The proud hidden  smiles as they watched a new generation express themselves freely, without fear.