![]() Members of the audience know the song well, and as Rita’s voice rings out, I have a feeling I’m surrounded, indeed, by the soul of the place, finding its expression through the diva on stage. This song must have special resonance for those who’ve had to leave this Maritime Province to find work as mines and fisheries faltered. I caress you oh Cape Breton in my dreams.” It was a perfect, regal setting for Rita and the parade of Island Women that followed.įrom Rita we heard her song, what seems to be an almost anthem for the Islanders, “Home I’ll Be.” We’ve heard it at other concerts, but never with the power and authority with which Rita sings it: The Savoy is a restored vaudeville theatre in Sydney, Cape Breton Island. The audience members were delighted and entranced. The show continued that night and so did her performance at the Savoy.Īnd can she sing! Rita MacNeil commands an incredible vocal instrument with which she produces sounds that rise with seeming ease from the bounty of her whole body. “It took ten minutes to get me up,” she tells us. The large Rita, the massive curtain, and her green dress, all rolling out into view of the audience. (We learn throughout the week of the festival that we are in a story-telling culture and come to expect lots of humor and bantering from musicians on stage.) She says that she was about to perform at a concert recently, but as she strode toward front and center, her dress tangled with the stage curtain and the curtain entered with her. “I’ve got one bad leg and soon to have another,” she says, explaining her need to stay seated. Though she was compelled by a malady to sit for her performance, her voice did not suffer. She appeared with Madison Violet, The Once, Cathy Ann MacPhee and Kathleen MacInnes, Mary Jane Lamond and Wendy MacIsaac, Nuala Kennedy, and Sylvie LeLievre. I saw her for the first time during the Island Women concert, an event featured as part of the 16th annual Celtic Colours, 2012. Rita MacNeil, a native of Big Pond, Cape Breton, has had a stellar career with songs that have soared to the top of the charts in the UK, Canada, and Australia. I attended this fulsome festival with a few friends, but the notes and opinions that follow are solely mine. Just cross the causeway and you too will feel something magical on the other side of the Strait of Canso. In fact, the reds, oranges, and yellows (that become more intense during our more than a week in our Belle Côte residence) are almost as delicious as are the butterscotch pies, biscuits, baked beans, and fish cakes at the Cedar House in Boularderie. Still, it is a festival of music that, for the most part, represents Cape Breton and the Maritime Provinces, and it is the lusciously fall-flavored Cape Breton hills and highlands that welcome us the moment we reach the island. Its mission, as Joella Foulds, founder and artistic director told us at one evening session, is to “promote, celebrate and develop Cape Breton’s living Celtic culture.” However, it has also become an acclaimed international festival and most assuredly extends tourist dollars and fattens Cape Breton pockets well into the autumn. The Celtic Colours Festival, named for the adornment of brilliant fall foliage that cloaks the hills on Cape Breton in October, recently finished its 16th year.
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