Verdict on the Fleadh Cheoil, Belfast’s first ever. A triumph

Photo courtesy Pacemaker Newton Emersons’s verdict in the Irish Times can hardy be bettered as a rare and heartening cross community success … Pleasant streets can only partly explain the numbers in the city centre. What unionist visitors are discovering is that the Fleadh is not repellingly “political”, as that term is applied in Northern Ireland. Culture is always political, of course, but the songs are not sectarian, the atmosphere is not partisan and the...