Despite the huge love of music in Clare, the Irish language song tradition suffered a haemhorrage with the sudden and rapid loss of language in the County. While tiny Gaeltachtaí such as Rinn and Cúil Aodha managed to retain a vast and varied store of song that sustained and motivated them, places such as Clare, where the language did not survive as a broadly spoken community language fell silent. What happened the songs and the singers? With the help of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) and Clare Arts Office, Diarmuid de Faoite began to dig. Not only do hundreds of wonderful songs containing the loves, losses and lore of the county exist, wonderful singers continue to breathe life not only into ‘lost’ songs but new songs penned to this very day that embrace every facet of our existence. This is a well restoration project. Water is life, language is life and songs live in their singing. Airs, old and new, words not spoken nor sung for many’s the long year and other lines only imagined the other day, hear our voice restored and the story behind the journey in a bilingual evening of the best of singing, music and dance from our native home.

Diarmuide de Faoite was appointed the Duala 2021 Creator in Residence by Clare Arts Office and the Irish Traditional Music Archive.