Culture Night in Gorey 2024
Gorey came alive with an incredible celebration of culture, creativity, and community last Friday!
The town was buzzing with energy as choirs, artists, performers, and more showcased their talents, offerthing a wide variety of events for everyone to enjoy. In this blog, Michael O’Callaghan shares his experience from the evening he hosted, giving a personal glimpse into the magic of the night.
Culture Night in Gorey is proudly supported by the Arts Council, Wexford County Council, Gorey Kilmuckridge Municipal District, and the County Wexford Arts Office.
As the auld saying in Kerry goes “You can’t bate the bit of culture’.
Culture was in abundance around Gorey on `Friday September 20th during culture night and it was great to be an active participant in it.
Before I delve into the specifics of the night, I paid a visit to my good friend Wikipedia for the true meaning of culture which they describe thus, ‘Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behaviour, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location’. So, there I have a meaning for my cultural activity. It encompasses a broad range of activities.
Two friends had approached me some months ago about doing something for Culture Night in Gorey with a suggestion that I might read from my book ‘The Boy Who Kicked the Nun’ or expand on some blogs from my www.aramblersblog.com . I thought that might be a rather narrow focus. My longtime friend Frank Gallagher suggested that he would ask his jazz band to perform for the night and I could provide the poet and writers as fillers.
The poet Seamus Kavanagh was delighted to join in because the three of us had worked on the launch of his poetry book ‘Reflections in Rhyme’.
I had met Margaret Sherriff’ at Wordsmith’s writers’ group and really liked her work. She was delighted to participate when invited.
Finally, we invited Ann Colgan author of Sing out loud to sing. This would encompass a broad enough range of music and literature while keeping them within our specific region. We were on the culture trail.
Now we needed a venue and so I approached Aidan Murphy of Murphy’s Restaurant, Gorey and he was thrilled to host the night with Liz Fitzgerald and the friendly co-operative staff of Murphys. They served tasty nibbles with wines and soft drinks through the night.
So now we had put our programme together and arranged for setting up and rehearsing on Friday September 20th, 2024, at 5.30pm
We started at 6.25 with immersion in jazz. The band ‘Jazz Token ‘with Frank Gallagher on vocals and guitar, Rory Adams on vocals and piano, Mairt Hanley on bass and Christy Stapleton on drums played three lively tunes to set the scene. The audience loved it. It was obvious that there were quite a. few jazz aficionados present.
After this jazz we changed the mood and listened to some lovely poetry from Seamus Kavanagh starting with his beautiful poem ‘The Village’ which he so lovingly described as being with houses couched like whitewashed blots on sloping hills. His poetry is inspired by his kinship with family and the Irish landscape. Everyone present had their own village memory which added to the poignancy and enjoyment of this poem, which he followed up with two more poems.
Margaret Sherriff read a most powerful piece of her writing about with her father-in-law and the 1948 London Olympics. It was highly emotive and was truly appreciated by the audience with sustained applause. Margaret later read another beautiful essay about her mother and other women of New Ross and the effect John F Kennedy’s visit had on them. I am sure that we will see more of Margaret in the literary life of Gorey in the future.
I read the section from my book about how I called Sr Immaculata a liar and then proceeded to kick her on my first day in Junior Infants. Later I read about bird life in our garden and feeding them fruit cake.
In the second half of our cultural night, I gave a rendition of ‘An Poc Ar Buile’. I would think that was a cultural first time for the pucker to be performed live at a jazz session.
During this part also Ann Colgan, author of ‘Sing Out Loud’ sang two songs accompanied by Jazz Token which were highly acclaimed.
The band continued with the best of jazz music till post 9.30 pm when artistic and physical exhaustion was beginning to set in after 3 hours and sadly it was time to dismantle all the gear and close the curtain on Culture night 2024. We then sat around for a while to chat, unwind, sample some more nibbles, sip a glass of wine and to reminisce on a fantastic night. We thanked Aidan and Liz for hosting the night so generously, the participants for taking part, the enthusiastic audience who attended ,Buíochas was also expressed to Love Gorey,The Wexford Culture Night Steering Committee and to Wexford County Council for funding it in addition to all the organisational back up that went into putting it all together.
Roll on Culture night 2025 agus Go mbeirimíd go léir beo ag an am seo arís.
