Ireland as guest of honor at the Lorient Inter-Celtic Festival? At first glance, the idea seems a bit redundant, too obvious. And yet, this is only the fourth time in almost three decades – ever since the world's largest gathering of Celtic music celebrates a specific country each year – that the Emerald Isle has been placed at the center of the lineup. The last time was back in 2014. The morning of Sunday, August 6, featured the popular rendezvous that is the grand parade, a procession of over 70 music and dance ensembles marching through the streets of the city of Morbihan to the Stade du Moustoir. The famous Bagad de Lann-Bihoué, traditionally in the lead, was followed by the turquoise and ochre kilts of the New Ross & District Pipe Band and the Planxty O'Rourke troupe. They represented the provinces of Leinster and Munster, in Ireland's east and southwest.

Present from the very first edition in 1971, when The Dubliners shared the bill with Alan Stivell, Ireland has recently strengthened its ties with Brittany, with summer flights from Quimper and Brest to Kerry. Lorient has also been a sister city of Galway since 1975. The western Irish city's mayor, former Gaelic footballer Eddie Hoare, has made the trip, and does not go unnoticed in the streets, carrying around his neck his imposing golden chain of office. For Lorient Mayor Fabrice Loher, who swung this Socialist stronghold to the right in 2020, Ireland holds a very special place. "My first collaboration with the festival dates back to 1983, when I was a ticket checker at a Pogues concert, and it was complicated," he recalled.

"Ireland ticks all the boxes of Celtic music and culture. It's an imaginative world in and of itself," explained Jean-Philippe Mauras, who became the festival's artistic director in 2021 after long overseeing the Cornouaille Festival in Quimper, which celebrates its centenary this year. Meaning to offense to the other seven Celtic nations (Brittany, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Galicia and Asturias), Ireland is also the country with the most universal musical heritage, having blended into American folk, country and even rock music through its diaspora. Mauras illustrates this point, as this flutist has played with a fest-noz (a Breton traditional festival) ensemble, Follenn, as well as Irish tunes with the group Drumlin.

This spirit of appropriation lives on in the "off" part of Inter-Celtic. At the Australia Street bar, a quartet (fiddle, accordion, guitar and percussion) played under two Irish flags emblazoned with the shamrock. In impeccable French, the singer presented a repertoire of "rebel songs" aimed at driving the English out of Ireland. Like Mauras, Inish Dew hails from the Brittany town of Vannes.

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