Once again Sligo’s dynamic musical heritage was celebrated over the October Bank Holiday weekend with the fifth SLIGO LIVE, Ireland’s foremost International Roots Music Festival, bringing leading Irish and International Artists to Sligo. SLIGO LIVE has enjoyed its best year to date with tickets to all concerts Selling out. The Festival had an attendance of over 38,000 people at the eighty different concert, club, session, café culture, street entertainment and market events that made up the festival weekend and brought an estimated €4.5 million into Sligo over the 5 days.
In 2009 Sligo Live Festival moved up a gear and enjoyed its most successful year yet. Over the October Bank Holiday it featured 170 Artists, 22 Café Culture Events, 18 Trad Sessions, Martha Wainwright, Imelda May, Josh Ritter, The Saw Doctors, Frankie Gavin, Comedian PJ Gallagher, Wallis Bird, Jinx Lennon and Miss Paula Flynn, Chris Meehan and his Redneck Friends, Tony De Marco, Oddsocks Revival, Oisin, Seamie O’Dowd, Fiddler of Dooney Competition, World Air Fiddle Championships, Fantastic Street Entertainment, Open-air Markets, and much more.
Almost every one of the 86 performances had a full house and the town was thronged with music lovers darting from show to show throughout the day and night.
This year’s Sligo Live firmly establishes the Festival as one of the top music and fun weekends of the year. Since its inception, the festival has been renowned for its warm friendly atmosphere and dozens of performances in every nook and cranny of the town. Artists mingled freely with the audiences and visitors found new friends among Sligo’s music lovers. The friendliness in the festival club each evening was amazing.
The Festival exuded a fleadh-like atmosphere by holding free traditional music sessions throughout the five day event along with spectacular Street Entertainment on the Saturday.
The big talking point of this year’s Sligo Live was the online web casts from some of the traditional music pub sessions where Sligo Live and the region gained thousands of new friends globally.
The on-line session webcasts were watched live by thousands which is phenomenal response for this medium. Texts and e mails came from music fans around the world including Finland, Pakistan, all over the US, Argentina, Canada, Germany. The webcasts are posted on www.sligolive.ie and on U Tube for those who were too busy attending events to see them.
If the reaction is anything to go by, this will increase numbers to the festival in the years to come and is a great way to kick off the overseas marketing drive which is now Sligo Live’s key focus
Visitor numbers and concert attendances exceeded even the most optimistic expectations and Sligo Live is now developing faster than imagined. This is a credit to the 100's of volunteer's and people who work on the event all year around, making the Sligo Live a truly special community driven festival.
Sligo Live 2010 will again present a wide and varied programme of music and ancillary activities under the 'roots and branches' banner. It will build on the success of this year. Whether in concerts, pub sessions, cafe gigs, street shows, fun competitions or club nights, the audience were 'up close and personal' with the performers, who spent time in town mingling and enjoying or participating in informal gigs and sessions. This is the spirit of Sligo Live upon which we will build over the coming years.
