Ciarán Sweeney

Ciarán Sweeney has been playing Irish music for his entire life. A carpenter by trade, he had a six year stint between Australia and New Zealand — travelling around, living in hostels and using his guitar to educate the other guests about Irish traditional music. “That really gave me a bit more confidence in my presence as a musician,” he remembers. “I was playing to different people all the time and getting good responses.”

Out of the various adventurers from a host of different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds and countries that passed through the hostel circuits, Ciarán made a lot of German friends. They told him about how multi-cultural Berlin is and how great it is for artists starting out, which made him wonder if the capital might be somewhere he could make a career as a full time musician.

A brief spell back in his hometown of Killygordon in Donegal only encouraged this idea further. Upon his return, Ciarán spent his time perfecting his guitar-playing skills and becoming more comfortable on stage by playing in local bars, and he noticed there were a lot of German tourists in the crowd. “The Germans have this song that has the same air as Wild Rover called Nordseeküste, and anytime I played that they were able to tap and clap along,” he tells me. Based on this Ciarán thought that there might be a market for Irish traditional music in Berlin and decided to make the move. Right off the bat, he jumped in two feet first and infiltrated the Irish pub scene, gigging at The Irish Times and The Irish Harp. Here he met Liam Blaney and a host of other Irish session musicians, and soon after, was invited to play at The Irish Festival. He played alongside a collage of artists from Ireland and mainland Europe, all of whom share an affinity with Irish music. “It brought loads of people from all walks of life to witness what we do, and raked in a few more fans of our culture,” Ciarán says, before telling me about a Greek friend of his who has a passion for Irish Dancing.

Although Ciarán mainly performs covers by the likes of The Dubliners, he also writes his own songs. Working with Ken Deburca — a pioneer of the Irish music scene here in Berlin — Ciarán recently released his track Éireann Mo Ghrá. The tribute song to Martin McGuinness, “A great man who did a lot for Ireland,” has been cut from 12 minutes to 5 for the sake of recording, but was received well when played in its entirety back home. He’s looking forward to debuting this song to a German crowd, which he credits as being a very engaged audience who show a genuine interest in hearing about the culture and really tune in to the story you’re trying to tell.