The Philadelphia Ceili Group is preparing to celebrate its 50th annual Irish Traditional Music and Dance Festival Oct. 10-12 at the Commodore John Barry Arts and Cultural Center (the Irish Center) in Mt. Airy, and two local women are lucky enough to have grown up around those spirited annual revivals of Irish tradition since childhood.
Courtney Malley, 57, Chestnut Hill, and Rosaleen McGill, 38, Germantown, are now not only seasoned festival veterans and the best of friends, but they also occupy leadership positions in the Ceili Group, which is dedicated to the perpetuation of traditional Irish culture. The women succeeded their parents as leaders on the committee that spearheads the annual festival.
That means that Malley and McGill have led the effort to create the rollicking three days of Irish traditional music, dance, song, instrumental and dance workshops, vendors, and kids' activities that are the event's hallmark. The festival, with this year’s theme “Our Legacy and Our Future,” will be capped off by a stellar Saturday night concert.
The first festival in 1974 was sparked by a conversation among friends at a bar. In the early days, Rosaleen's father Jim McGill was one of several people who helped get the festival going, together with Frank Malley and the late traditional Irish musician, folklorist, humanitarian and raconteur Mick Moloney. "It just kind of grew into a festival," Malley said, "and it could have just died. It could have just been a conversation at the bar."
Two years after the festival’s start, Malley became interested in the Ceili Group. She was 11. "I had already been taking Irish dancing lessons at the Irish Center for about five years with Pat O'Donnell, and one night I begged my parents to let me stay for the festival's Friday night ceili," Malley said.
McGill has been a denizen of the Irish Center since just a couple of days after she was born at Chestnut Hill Hospital. One of the young musicians playing at the festival, 11-year-old uilleann piper Tim Britton suggested Rosaleen's name, further cementing McGill's association with the Ceili Group and the festival. Since then, McGill says, "I have never missed a festival."
In some of its earlier incarnations, the festival was held in a variety of locations, including Fischer's Pool in Towamencin, the Cannstatter Club in the Northeast, Fairmount Park's Memorial Hall and even the grounds of the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Bucks County. Eventually, due to having to deal with often capricious weather, the festival moved to the Irish Center, where it has been ever since.
After years of celebrating Irish tradition and music, the original festival organizers and Ceili Group officers began to age out. A new, younger generation – including Malley and McGill – took on the mantle of leadership. Without the next generation of leaders, McGill says, "things would just fizzle out."
That would be hurtful to both in any number of ways, because, as McGill adds, "We are tradition bearers. That word 'tradition' is so important to us. I have a responsibility to the festival committee and all of my friends, who are also tradition bearers."
Since then, the festival has continued to draw crowds every fall, until the COVID pandemic hit and ended the Ceili Group's long, unbroken string of money-raising concerts and workshops held throughout the rest of the year – all of which helped underwrite the cost of the festival.
The Ceili Group hosted a virtual festival online in the interim, but all the same, the Ceili Group was nearly broke when it came time to sponsor succeeding in-person festivals.
"The pandemic cost us a lot of money," Malley said. "We are a niche market and not well funded to begin with. We didn't have a lot in the bank to meet our vision."
So, the festival organizers – with leadership by board member Denise Foley, of Oreland, whom the pair credit for her immense contribution to the cause – held a fundraiser, ultimately raising more than $21,000. The money came through online contributions and donations by many other organizations, including Irish county associations, and even Steamfitters Local Union No. 420.
This year's festival called for a memorable theme that would not only memorialize the contributions of the pioneering musicians and others who sustained the festival in its earliest days, but also spotlight the next generation of Irish traditional talent.
With luck – and ample promotion – Malley and McGill hope that this festival will draw its share of longtime attendees like themselves, and perhaps a new generation of festival-goers.
"We really do need a lot of those people who have families, or who maybe have grandkids, to start coming back," McGill said. "So, we have been doing a lot with our Second Saturday Ceili Og (a dance party meant to draw in youngsters), trying to get people not just into our events, but back into the Irish Center."
"Part of the reason we love Irish music is because we've been listening to it since we were in the womb," Malley added. "It's in our blood. And I think that a lot of people of Irish descent hear it and feel something deep within their DNA. And so, we need to call those people back and make a space for them. And having a lot of family-friendly events is going to be helpful to bring in the next generation of Malleys — or whoever else will be the ones to carry us through the next 50 years."
For tickets and more information, visit philadelphiaceiligroup.org.
