2008 Pete Seeger
(Singer Songwriter)
2007 Steve Cooney
(Songwriter and Composer)
2006 Ralph McTell
(Singer and Song writer)
2005 Michael O Suilleabhain
(Composer, Musician and Broadcaster)
2004 Tom Newman
(Record Producer)
2003 Liam Clancy
(Musician and Author)
2002 Tony McAuley
(Broadcaster and Author)
2001 John B Vallely
(Artist)
2000 Seamus Heaney
(Poet)

Pete Seeger

CREATIVE ARTS AWARD, 2008, PETE SEEGER

The Fiddlers Green Festival, in association with BBC, UTV, RTE and Downtown Radio,  sets aside a special day each year to pay tribute to a major creative artist.
The Creative Arts Award, a beautiful statuette in bronze carved by leading Irish sculptor Caroline Mulholland, which was first presented to Nobel Laureate Poet Seamus Heaney in 2000, will this year be awarded to the legendary American Folk Singer Pete Seeger.
 
Pete Seeger, regarded as one of the most influential musicians and social  activists in the world, has received many awards in his time but when hearing of the Irish tribute from his musician friend and Rostrevor resident Tommy Sands he was quietly happy. 'My great grandmother came from Ireland’ he said, ‘and I have long admired the musical tradition and widespread influences of that small but inspirational land'.
 
Pete Seeger was born May 1919 in New York City to parents   Constance de Clyver Edson, a prominent classical violinist and Charles Seeger, a famous musicologist who played a unique and central role in tying musicology to other disciplines and domains of culture.  
Little wonder then that Pete who would become the world's most famous folksinger with strings of hit records would relate his music to the world around him and use his music to try and better that world.
Space here does not permit to even begin to assess the immense importance of this man. Books have been written and will be written. A new movie about his life "The Power of Music", currently on cinema release in US will receive its Irish premier at the Festival.  Pete now 89 will be with us in spirit at the award concert on Thursday which will also encompass this year’s celebratory "Music of Healing". His grandson Tao, a wonderful singer songwriter, who has performed with Pete for many years will be the special guest. It will be a night to be remembered.

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Pete Seeger's singing has fulfilled the high classical expectation that poetry be both sweet and helpful. His art managed to take the strain of his activism, the banjo in his hand was his his hammer of justice, and his music was more than equal to the music of what happened.

Heaney's reference to the "the music of what happened" is a nod towards the legendary pre christian mythical Irish giant Finn McCool who when asked what was the most beautiful music in the world he replied "The music of what happens".

Seamus Heaney