| Ireland Tour 2011 | ||||
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The Blue Mosquitoes plans a 'Coming Home' tour Ireland in 2011 and needs your help! We need help to secure gigs and festivals when we tour Ireland in June/July 2011. You may have friends in the Irish folk scene that can help promote the tour or know someone who owns a pub that we can play at. Pre-secured gigs and Irish-side support will increase greatly the chances of a successful federal grant application needed to make the tour possible. You can also support our plans to tour by buying one our CD’s or booking us for a gig. We plan to save most of the money we earn from CD sales and gigs to help fund the ‘Coming Home’ tour. Your support is greatly appreciated! Background to the Tour In honouring their own Irish roots and the close historical and cultural ties between Tasmania and Ireland, Daideo and the Blue Mosquitos intend touring Ireland in 2011 for the 'Coming Home' tour. The tour will be honouring the memories of those convict women who travelled on board the Mary Anne III, as the first boatload of women to be transported directly from Ireland to Van Diemen's Land, arriving in Hobart in 1841. As well as marking the 170th anniversary of this event the tour will include a range of songs dedicated to other important events in the shared history of Ireland and Tasmania, including the arrival of the 'Bridal Ship' in 1814. (This shipload of Irish female convicts was sent via England and Sydney to Hobart purely to provide women of a marriageable age to the male dominated colony. 2011 will also mark the 200th anniversary of the trials of a number of women who arrived on this ship.) The band has strong links with Ireland and its music maintained through many generations. Band members Moira and Chris have early links with Ireland with Chris’s Irish ancestors arriving as convicts in the 1850’s and Moire’s Irish ancestors arriving as free settlers around the same time. The stories of these ancestors will also be told through song on the tour. Modern day Van Diemen’s Land stories such has the bands tribute song to the infamous 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race where many sailors lost their lives will also be shared with an Irish Audience. Hannah, Stuart and Chris also share a common Irish lineage through the Foley family which is thought to have left Ireland for England around 1800 before finally migrating to Tasmania in the 1970’s. The 'Coming Home' tour represents the taking home through song of the spirit of the Irish women transported from Ireland to Tasmania in the 19th Century. The folklore of those times is part of the shared cultural identity of both lands and the tour aims to share the Tasmanian experiences of these women with those in their homeland. In particular the tour will visit the home villages, towns and cities of those on the Mary Anne III. The tour is also a coming home for the band members as they explore the land that has inspired their ancestors and continues to inspire their music. |
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