Peter Donnelly

It might be said that Bogota, Bologna and Belfast sit in somewhat bizarre company with one another. Not so anymore, however, as Belfast, like Bogota and Bologna before it, has recently been awarded with the accolade of being the newest UK Unesco Creative City of Music – and is the only such city on the island of Ireland.

This confirmation follows a successful application by Belfast City Council, commencing in 2019, which engaged with a cross-section of movers and shakers in the city’s music fraternity to construct Belfast’s compelling case.

Unesco announced in November that Belfast would become the 47th city in the world to have received Unesco’s badge of global recognition for its “outstanding contribution to music”. The Unesco Creative Cities Network, established in 2004, is founded on seven creative themes ranging from literature, crafts and folk art, cinema and music.

With its abundance of musical sons and daughters there was no question over Belfast City’s vast and rich musical heritage. Belfast has played host to a plethora of music scenes and movements, including the punk scene which, although having its origins in the underground clubs of England, found firm and favourable expression in Belfast in the late 1970s, brashness embodied in outfits such as Stiff Little Fingers and The Defects.

Occupying the more mellow and refined space on the spectrum is Belfast’s classical music talent and forever standing testament to that is its resident ensemble, the Ulster Orchestra. Add to the list those more rock and indie inclined such as Andy Cairns of Therapy?; award-winning electronic producer and score composer, David Holmes; and the oft-neglected folk man behind “The Days of Pearly Spencer,” the late David McWilliams to name but an eclectic few.

Van Morrison and Gary Lightbody are just a few Northern Ireland music legends

Musical justice could not be truly done to Belfast without including one of its own globally acclaimed giants and purveyors of R&B and jazz – Sir Van Morrison. For his remarkable award-winning musical ingenuity this man, hailing from a suburban patch of east Belfast, must surely rank supreme in Belfast’s creative pantheon. From his beginnings as a frontman vocalist for the blues-rock band Them to his releasing of over thirty studio albums, Morrison’s prolific brand is synonymous with Belfast.

The city is unique in many ways, following a prolonged, 30-year-long period of intense political conflict. To emerge from that unfortunate legacy, albeit initially wearily, confident and ready for the challenges that it has faced demonstrates its people’s dogged do or die determination. Unesco’s acknowledgement of the tireless efforts of those on the ground who have consistently made such honours possible has been a long time in the making.

Although the news has been favourably received across Northern Ireland’s creative community, there has been a distinctly cautious note sounded by more experienced heads who are anxious to avoid the City of Music status becoming an achievement and development in name alone.

One of those wise heads is Stuart Bailie. Bailie, veteran music journalist, broadcaster, co-founder of the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast and editor of Northern Ireland music publication Dig With It, wrote that “the music of Belfast is about friction and tradition and change. It’s about fierce blues and banging dance music and voices with an emotional pitch that reflects our twisted story”. That is why he is anxious that these accolades become more than a “tourist product” or vanity project that fails to be meaningfully translated to the musicians and fans on the ground and in the venues.

Other commenters have expressed similar sentiments that the Unesco status is a remarkable achievement for a small city to achieve but recognition is where it starts and stops.

Glasgow was listed by Unesco as a City of Music in 2008. But, speaking to William Crawley on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme, Scottish music writer and BBC Radio Scotland presenter Billy Sloan recalled that the immediate practical impact of the award on Glasgow’s music scene was “minimal or non-existent”.

It will be down to public officials and influential figures within the industry to sustain Belfast’s indomitable musical spirit and to avail of Unesco’s objective that the City of Music status should help cities “promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development” in such a way as to help local musicians. Fundamental to this will be Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody, who has been appointed Belfast Music Patron alongside electronic experimentalist guru and broadcaster, Hannah Peel, for whom Belfast is an adopted city.

For a real impact it would be significant to see emerging movements within the City’s music community, such as the burgeoning electronic and dance music scene, to forge links with similar minds in other global cities. This would prove to be an important trial for the meaning of City of Music status and demonstrate, if successful, that no matter where, it is possible for scenes to grow organically without the traditional gravitational pull to established cultural epicentres such as London, Berlin or New York.

And initiatives such as the talent-spotting Sound of Belfast and Northern Ireland Music Prize Awards have witnessed Belfast develop its own platforms to harness the wider region’s talent. Whatever benefits the Unesco status brings, it is hoped that it should further assist these grassroots endeavours.

It should go without saying: the music, and the music of Belfast alone, should now take centre stage.

Peter Donnelly is studying a Masters in Law

Belfast gets Unesco City of Music status – but some experts are sounding the horn