It’s Fun To Stay At The CQAF

I would argue that this has been the best Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival ever. Fourteen years in Belfast and still the programme delivers. I’ve already blogged about some of the early attractions, notably, Dexys , John Grant ,  The Fall and British Sea Power and the Jam Jar Sessions . Here then, is a resume of some other tremendous moments.

1.Bronagh Gallagher selling out the Black Box on a Sunday afternoon, transforming this utilitarian place into a sanctified assembly, encouraging her crowd to holler and respond while she approached lift-up with ‘Love Will Find You’. Amen.

2.Bronagh introducing her support act, 15-year-old Jose Savage Newell, playing his first ever public gig. She primed the audience for maximum empathy and then let the boy do the rest. Winsome folk ballads and cool arpeggios a speciality.

3.Joe Boyd at the same venue on the Saturday. The man who accompanied Nick Drake through his short career, came here to put the art and the person in context, and notably blamed the British class system for Nick’s inability to relate to one of his other gifted acts, Sandy Denny. He also countered the notion that Joe had somehow coerced Drake into getting string arrangements on his work, and cited the signature arrangements of Robert Kirby.

4.And So I Watch You in the festival Marquee, setting faders to stun while the lights strafed and strobed the canvas.

5.Edwyn Collins on the Friday night. A hugely emotional return. Playing Orange Juice hits way back from the Postcard era, and getting emphatic with the later beauty ‘Rip It Up’. Laughter and joy, a spirited rematch of ‘A Girl Like You’ and an overwhelming connection to ‘Low Expectations’. We cried.

6.Will Self earlier in the week, gurning and sardonic. Riffing about French Situationist Guy Debord, about the dérive, the flaneur and the bid to negotiate the city in a non-commercial manner.

7.The Gramophone Disco. Oh man, we cut a few rugs. We may have cut a carpet warehouse.

8.Andrew Maxwell in the marquee on a fine, sunny Tuesday. Very sharp with his accents and hilarious on the subject of the posh Protestant. Vividly illustrated with surnames for forenames and the boating diorama on Belfast Lough. ‘The natives are restless,” they quip in Cultra tones, while Belfast burns.

9.Soak celebrating her seventeenth birthday with a Pussy Riot themed cake.

10.The wonderful CQAF team of programmers, workers and volunteers. Such an asset to the city. Onwards to the fifteenth victorious year.