Bean Feasa's final song and video released for Christmas

Áine O'Regan

At the end of any year, it's a pleasure to look back on some of the adventures it held. For 2023, one of these has to be the Bean Feasa singing group experience. Our diverse group of wise women was invited together to create original music, an adventure that was to mix the homegrown and the professional, the local and the global.

Blessed with capable and experienced directorship at the hands of Kara Richards and Bianca Fachel, there was a volume of organisation and of work by them, often unseen that made the group's songwriting process feel relaxed and fairly seamless.

The friendship and musical openness established at our first get-together, remained. Compositions grew somewhat organically, pulling in the people, skills and places, according to the nature of the song. Group members stepped into the studio, and directors stepped into the lives and homes of the singers. And hence the lovely fusion, that's apparent in this 'The Gift' - our final video by the group.

Composing together was a revelation - singers’ and wordsmiths’ styles getting melded together, to formulate a song we were each in, and in some way, represented by. And so our final song speaks of 'The Gift' - so appropriate in title at this time of year - but in this Bean Feasa song, devoid of the trappings of the season and of commerce. And wonderfully, this particular song will be part of the next Siamsaíocht production: a film viewable at Christmas time.

Each of Bean Feasa songs can be view on the YouTube page of Athlone Family Resource Centre. View 'The Gift' below.

The project was funded by the Arts Council 'Artist in the Community' scheme, managed by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.