Life

Traditional music helping to strike a new note in Portadown's Garvaghy Road

Fasttrad students Catriona Carmichael, Elsie Allen, Cara McKernan, Siobhan Quinn, Colin Donnelly, Jazalyn Martin, Grace Farrell, Aileen Litter, and Dillan Gosney at the People's Park, Portadown
Fasttrad students Catriona Carmichael, Elsie Allen, Cara McKernan, Siobhan Quinn, Colin Donnelly, Jazalyn Martin, Grace Farrell, Aileen Litter, and Dillan Gosney at the People's Park, Portadown Fasttrad students Catriona Carmichael, Elsie Allen, Cara McKernan, Siobhan Quinn, Colin Donnelly, Jazalyn Martin, Grace Farrell, Aileen Litter, and Dillan Gosney at the People's Park, Portadown

A TRADITIONAL music programme for children in the Portadown area is bringing both sides of the community tunefully together in a locality that made headlines around the world in the 1990s as a sectarian flashpoint.

Now, the only tension is in the strings of the fiddles which are regularly tightened and tuned for the Fasttrad music programme running in Garvaghy Road.

Young musicians from both sides of the community are coming together to learn and play music in the programme which has outgrown a local primary school and is moving to St John the Baptist College later this month.

Supported by Arts Council NI, Children in Need and the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavn Borough Council, the initiative has grown significantly from it's Garvaghy area base to surrounding towns and the rural hinterland, according to project manager, Mary Fox.

"Fasttrad is striking the right note in Portadown and is filling in the gaps left by 30 years of traditional arts poverty in the area," she says. "The growing numbers interested in learning traditional music will now be accommodated at the rebranded secondary school, itself regenerated after years of negative perceptions linked to the 1990s blighted landscape of Garvaghy Road."

And, as well as being culturally redeveloped, she says the landscape has visually changed for the better, as well – an EU Peace Three funded People's Park now the focus of an area where "the world's media once descended in July to learn about tribal politics".

"There is a great buzz about Portadown's new music circle," Mary enthuses. "Learning music is one of the most positive ways to bring people together who want to develop a skill, make friends and have the craic with like-minded people."

One parent, whose daughter attends Birches Primary School and who does not believe in religious labels, was quick to agree.

Naomi Allen's daughter Elsie (8) is learning to play the tin whistle and fiddle in the group while making many new friends from the "other side" of the community.

"Elsie's school was already doing outreach classes with St Mary's Primary School, Maghery, so now she meets children from different backgrounds both outside and inside the classroom which is great," she says.

"Traditional music is for everybody and this project is proving that it's not specific to one religion. It's brilliant what Fasttrad is doing in the area."

Fasttrad weekly classes run on Mondays after school hours for tin whistle, fiddle, flute, bodhran, button accordion, mandolin and banjo for all ages from six years to pensioner age. For information, call 0771 1987 182 or email allset@btinternet.com