Fiesta time for local trad group Buíoch in Spain

Local musicians win ‘Battle of the Bands’ at prestigious Spanish Festival

Festival De Ortiguiera is a prestigious Celtic Music festival which happens at the beginning of July each year. Ortigueira is a small town on the North west coast of Spain, in the province of A Coruña. It is a stunning area, most known for its pilgrim route along the Camino. The town itself is about two hours by car from Santiago De Compostela. 

The festival promotes the shared Celtic Music heritage of the European western seaboard. Its slogan is ‘eight nations, one culture.’ 

Buíoch, was founded in 2020 during the height of the covid pandemic and has gone from strength to strength in Ireland with our first album dropping in August of 2023. It is made up of Ruaidhrí Tierney (Button Accordion), Kurt Dinneen Carroll (Uilleann Pipes and Whistles), Dale McKay (Guitar) and David Harte (Double Bass). We write all our own music and this originality is the keystone of our band. During our short time together, we were delighted to play at such festivals as Electric Picnic, Forest Fest Emo, Temple Bar Tradfest, Ennis Tradfest and Kilkenny Tradest to name but a few. 

We had always dreamed of playing our music at festivals abroad and with this in mind Ruaidhrí entered us in the ‘Runas competition’ of Festival de Ortigueira 2024. This battle of the bands competition takes place at the festival each year. It requires bands to submit recordings of original music. Three finalist bands are then picked by a rigorous judging process. This happens with a combination of public vote, critical analysis from musicians, music critics, publishers, press, music producers and the council of Ortigueira who fund the festival.  

We entered and gave it a go, not expecting to be considered. We all have ‘day jobs’ and life went on. One day, There was a missed call on Ruaidhrí’s phone from a Spanish number. He called back and it was the Festival de Ortigueira Press Office. They told us we had been chosen as on of the three finalists. We were astonished and very excited! The Press office said that the judges were “most impressed by Buíoch’s original tunes, strikingly progressive arrangements” describing us as “a breath of fresh air” in modern celtic music. 

So off we went. We flew to Santiago on 10th of July. While waiting in the line at passport control in the airport, people came up to us asking if we would be performing at the festival. It was all so surreal. We rented a car and drove for two hours up to Ortigueira.

Our gig was Thursday 11th July. We arrived at the Estrella Galicia stage expecting it to be a small stage on the outskirts of the festival but quickly realised it was the main stage! We were treated so well at the festival. Everyone was so nice. We had our own dressing room, catering and it was lovely to meet up with the other bands. We liked that we were there as part of a competition but there was no emphasis on that. All the bands were treated the exact same and the atmosphere was really positive. 

The performance itself was a surreal experience. We were on at 12:30 at night and played for approximately 20,000 people that night and our music was received very well. This was by far our biggest crowd to date. We felt so proud to be playing our music that we wrote. We then went along to support the other bands in the competition, Alana and Picarós both from Spain. They also put on a spectacular show and were lovely people. 

We returned to Ireland the next day as we all had other work commitments. We were tired, elated, deeply privileged and honoured to be part of the festival. Fast forward to the following week. We had a band rehearsal on Tuesday for our slot ot Forest Fest Emo on the Friday night. Again, Ruaidhrí’s phone rang, a Spanish number. It was the press office in Ortigueira. “We are delighted to inform you that you have won the competition jointly with Alana our co-finalists. We all screamed with joy, we could not believe what we had achieved. The prize for winning the competition is that we get to return to play at next years festival and win a prize of 3,000 euros for the band. 

We would like to thank everyone who voted for us and wished us well on our journey to play in Ortigueira. We could not have done it without your incredible support.