DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: Forging magic though music as Other Voices returns to Derry
After the death of Kurt Cobain, his friend and bandmate Dave Grohl, travelled to the west of Ireland to find peace.
He was driving in the wilds of Kerry when a young hitchhiker in a Nirvana T-shirt thumbed a lift.
He went home and formed the Foo Fighters. In February, 32 years after that fateful encounter, Grohl brought the band to the Kingdom to play St. James’, Dingle, for Other Voices.
Philip King, who founded the festival in 2001, cites it as an example of the power of musical connection. Grohl knew of Other Voices because it has been a platform for such stars in the firmament as Sineád O’Connor, Amy Winehouse, Hozier, St. Vincent, DC Fontaines and Florence and the Machine over the years. Derry had the opportunity to savour Other Voices twice before when the festival travelled to the city in 2013 and 2014.
This weekend it returns for the first of a three-year-cycle with established names and new and emerging talent, including Kate Nash, Muireann Bradley, Bleech 9:3 and Westside Cowboy set to draw music lovers to venues across the city over Friday and Saturday. True to the Other Voices ethos the festival programme is replete with local talent including Tessio, Our Krypton Son, The Marra, Eimile, Cartin, Autumns, The Celluloid Escape, The Fully Automatic Model, Declan McLaughlin, Tramp, Ramper, Gabriel Paschal Blake, McGrath and George Houston. As Mr. King has suggested, get out this weekend and experience musical connection and an ‘antidote to a purely digital world’.