Cobh Maritime Song Festival
June 2nd – 5th, 2000
A weekend festival celebrating the romanticism of the sea through traditional sea songs and stories of immigration.

Featuring Liam Clancy, Cyril Tawney, Jimmy Crowley, Mick Moloney, The Canniffe Family, Marie O Reilly, Kalamazoo and more.

Until quite recently, Cobh presented a limonal stage to the weary emigrant, a chapel-of-ease between disparate cultures. Fleeing famine, cultural eclipse and excessive rents, the very heart of Ireland passed through these ancient streets and landing stages. A berth on a heaving hulk presented a better prospect to millions of Irish people borne along in the mighty exodus of the 18th and 19th centuries to the New World.
Today, the town of Cobh is alive in a new reality. Thriving with tourism, the town boasts an international sailing school, a world famous cathedral, a Titanic and Heritage Centre and many fine pubs and restaurants.
What better place, therefore, to stage the first Maritime Song Festival, which begins on Friday June 2nd at The Sirius Arts Centre, featuring
veteran English folk singer and composer, Cyril Tawney. An ex-submariner, Cyril’s work is imbued with the undulations of the ocean.
Songs such as Sammy’s Bar, The Grey Funnel Line and Sally Free and Easy have long made up the repertoire of folk - singers around the world.
This is Cyril’s first appearance in Ireland, and he will be joined by Jimmy Crowley, who has used the theme of the sea for his new album, “The Coast of Malabar” (which will be launched at the festival). Jimmy is now well known for his work on the Urban Cork Ballad, and has collected a wonderful body of folksongs in his native Cork. A keen sailor, he is best known for his composition My Love is a Tall Ship, inspired by his time on board Asgard 2. Jimmy and Cyril will be joined by The Canniffe Family and Kalamazoo for what looks like being a quintessential folk concert.
Another household name in Irish music, Liam Clancy, takes the stage at the Cobh Heritage Centre on Saturday June 3rd. Liam has been a seminal influence on the entire folk process from the early village movement in New York in the late fifties with Dylan, Seeger and Baez, right through the resurgent ballad boom of the sixties in Ireland to the present day.
Sunday at The Sirius Centre provides a rare opportunity for folk fans to enjoy yet another anchorman of the international folk scene, Philadelphia based Mick Moloney. A former member of The Johnstons, an influential folk band of the sixties which also featured Adrienne and Lucy Johnstons and Paul Brady, Mick has divided his life’s work between touring and recording in America, and his acclaimed academic career
which centres on the development of Irish music in America. He has been a consultant for many film and television documentaries including Bringing it all Back Home and The Green Fields of America, and he will be joined for the Sirius concert by fiddle player Marie O’Reilly of New York Riverdance fame, and by Jimmy Crowley with whom Mick has worked with regularly in America.
On Monday, June 5th, Mick Moloney will present a special on-site illustrated lecture on emigrant Irish musicians who came through Cobh, and he will deal with the way in which the recording process saved so much of the repertoire in the New World.
Finally, an informal session of Irish music and song will take place on Monday in The Roaring Donkey, featuring local and festival musicians.

Further information from cobhmaritime@ireland.com

Cyril Tawney