Now in its eighth year, Feile An Droichead has worked its way quietly, and with little fanfare, to a point where this annual celebration of Irish music and language arguably ranks as one of the signature events in Northern Ireland’s burgeoning cultural calendar. Beyond the confines of its An Droichead home, the 2016 edition has seen the festival extend its reach into the wider community, with performances in the Ulster Museum, Black Box and the Belfast Barge creating, at the very least, the possibility of bringing traditional music to a more general audience. The honour of closing An Droichead 2016,…
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“It’s important to do mad things. I don’t think it’s very wise not to do mad things.” So says Danny Sheehy, sagely. And what could be wiser than for a writer, an artist, a stonemason and two musicians to make a wooden-framed, canvas-covered boat and sail it, from Dublin, across a couple of seas, to join the route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella? Sheehy is one of five wise men on the stage in the Ulster Museum, along with Glen Hansard, Brenden Begley, Brendan Ó Mhuircheartaigh and Liam Holden. Middle aged, weather beaten, grey haired, and with a…