Philadelphia Céilí Group

The Philadelphia Céilí Group is a music organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, known for an annual Philadelphia Céilí Festival. The Group claims that its festival is the only in the area that is "truly a traditional festival" and it is "one of the oldest continuous (if not the oldest) traditional Irish music and dance" festivals in the United States. The Ceili Group began in 1958 when a group of young Irish immigrants and Irish-American step and figure/ceili dancers gathered at The Irish Center (also founded in 1958) to formally promote Irish lively arts traditions.

Many of these founding folks are still with the Ceili Group after five decades! The PCG’s successes started with Friday night ceilis, for all who wanted to learn Irish figure dances and musical instruments, and went from there to Irish theatre productions, Irish-Gaelic language lessons and much more, to its present-day yearly festival of all things Irish, for all ages!

In 2008 the Ceili Group expects a reunion of hundreds of folks who’ve learned dance or music through this organization. Newcomers, of course, are heartily encouraged to become fans of the wonderful traditions of Ireland by attending (and participating) too!

The annual festival began in 1975, when folklorist Mick Moloney decided that our local Irish music and dance talent should be shared with a larger audience, and in a larger setting, than just the Friday night ceilis.

In short time, the Ceili Festival featured many of the finest Irish performers from around the globe, became the largest-attended one-day Irish festival in this country. It has expanded to a three-day festival in recent years.

The 2005 Festival initiated a new feature called an “Irish Circle of Song”, such a smash success of singers in both the accompanied and the un-accompanied -“sean nos” - singing styles, that it brought forth even those from the audience to join the singers on stage!

In 2007, “The Spoken Word” program was added to the festival to highlight the Irish contribution to poetry, drama, and prose. Volunteers can read or recite from their original works inspired by the Irish tradition, or from famous works by Nobel-prize winners like Seamus Heaney and W.B. Yeats (the Irish beat the English at their own language, winning more Nobels in literature than any other country on the planet). Audience members are encouraged to come onstage and say a few words – no dearth of those among the Irish!

Always mindful of its mission, the Ceili Group encourages artists of every generation, and brings to the stage our area’s youngest Irish step, ceili, and set dancers, singers in every Irish style, and instrumentalists on harp, bodhran (an Irish goat-skin drum), accordion, violin, flute, tinwhistle, guitar, banjo, mandolin and more.

References

* [http://www.philadelphiaceiligroup.org/ Philadelphia Céilí Group]