BELFAST is set to transform into the global capital of Irish culture as three monumental events – Belfast TradFest, Féile an Phobail and Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann – all converge on the city in the coming weeks.

The Fleadh is the world’s largest celebration of traditional Irish music, song and dance.

For the first time in its 75-year history it will cross the front gates of Belfast City Hall, with over 800,000 visitors expected to visit over the eight-day event.

Alongside the 700 events of Féile an Phobail and the masterclasses of TradFest, the city will experience an unprecedented artistic takeover.

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I visited the GPO Museum in Dublin earlier this week and there is a section of the exhibition which looks at how the Gaelic Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries focussed on language, music and sports as a means to reshape Irish identity prior to the 1916 Easter Rising.

It strikes me that the massive cultural explosion Belfast is about to witness is far more than modern festival tourism. It is the evolution of the Gaelic Revival .

When Douglas de hÍde, Eoin MacNeill and their contemporaries founded Conradh na Gaeilge in 1893, their mission was defensive.

They sought to de-anglicise Ireland, rescuing the Irish language and traditional........

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