ABOUT 35,000 people attended the return of the Irish-orientated London Feis music festival in London at the weekend.
A huge portion of the crowd included established Irish people living in Britain along with younger, more recent emigrants who turned out to see headline acts Van Morrison and Bob Dylan.
The new Feis Festival is taking over from the annual Fleadh that ran for 14 years at Finsbury Park in north London, between 1990 and 2004. Following a six-year gap, the two-day multi-stage festival returned with the added significance of celebrating its 21st anniversary.
Promoter Vince Power described the large number of people emigrating to Britain as a “nice bonus” but said it was not the main reason for reinventing the festival.
“The Irish people who come to the UK now are not the same as 21 years ago,” Mr Power added. “This is a special anniversary and there is also a fresh appetite for an Irish music festival in Britain.”
He did not envisage a reason to invest in music in Ireland in the near future but said his company, Music Festivals, was looking at the possibility of expanding in Europe.
“The market in Europe is quite fragmented and there is a great opportunity there,” he said. “Small independent companies like us can be more creative and that’s what we want to do with the Feis for years to come.”
More than 50 bands performed on three stages including the Cranberries, the Undertones, the Waterboys, Thin Lizzy and the Saw Doctors.
The line-up also included a number of folk acts such as Christy Moore, Clannad and Shane McGowan and international performers such as the Gaslight Anthem and Nanci Griffith.
The Cranberries reunited last year after six years. It was their second time to play the festival, having first appeared during the height of their fame in 1994.
Band members Noel Hogan and Fergal Lawler said past differences were firmly settled, adding it was now a “crazy experience” to play at the Feis in front of a new generation of Irish emigrants that “sing along to every word”.
Country rockers the Saw Doctors said the festival was “one of the best around”. Some of the other newer acts on the line-up included the Coronas, Ham Sandwich, Waterford band O Emperor and Declan O’Rourke.
Coronas lead singer Danny O’Reilly said the band “couldn’t turn down the opportunity” to play as a supporting act at a festival headlined by Dylan and Morrison.
The recent bad weather in London was not enough to dampen the spirits of the diversely aged crowd, many of whom wore GAA jerseys and donned all types of Irish paraphernalia. For the most part, the rain held off apart from the odd occasional showers.
The new wave of young Irish people to recently leave for Britain was evident, with some members of the crowd discussing the difficulties of finding work at home as well as being enticed by friends departing and the lure of a new experience.
Alan Power (26), a business graduate from Rathfarnham, Dublin, said he came to London last October to experience “one of the most diverse cities in the world” and to “explore work options.”
Emma Down (23) left Dublin for London in January because she had difficulty finding work after graduating last year from UCD.
Meanwhile, the return of the Feis meant a little bit extra for Jo and Ann James from London who first met during Dylan’s headline performance at the last Fleadh in 2004. They were married in 2005 and seven years later came back to the place they first met to again see Dylan’s performance, this time with their one-year-old daughter Elin Aisling.