Thirty years ago, The Beat Initiative (as we were then known) produced the Cultures and Connections Drumming Festival in May/ June1995. The festival followed from Beat’s first, big, artistic innovation programme of the same name. In 1994, Beat’s Cultures and Connections programme ran training workshops and developmental collaborations with Irish musicians and samba specialists and learners. In 1995 a series of open workshops led up to the ground-breaking Belfast parade and events on 24th June.
The festival featured 17 free workshops with over 600 participants led by tutors from Glasgow, Manchester, Canada, Japan, India and Salvador de Bahia (Brazil). Participants learned drumming traditions from around the world, and collaboration incorporated traditional instruments—uilleann pipes, Highland bagpipes, accordion, bodhrán, and Brazilian percussion—into a specially composed cross-cultural piece.
Headline performances and trainers included Inner Sense (Manchester), Macumba (Glasgow) Japanese Taiko, a virtuoso Indian hand-drummer, and Brazilian afro-bloc troupe Olodum. Olodum was the world’s most famous ’samba reggae’ carnival band as featured in Paul Simon’s acclaimed Rhythm of the Saints album (1990) and high-profile concerts.
The grand finale, the 100 Drummers Parade, took place 30 years ago today. The event was something never before seen in Belfast. Led by Olodum, it brought together drummers from Belfast, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Brazil for a unique street celebration in NI’s drum-parades season. It was a groundbreaking moment in public creativity and community identity.
With 8 performances drawing 5,500 attendees, this festival laid the groundwork for Beat’s carnival future. That summer, Beat contributed to the Macnas Summer Parade (Galway Arts Festival), toured to Wexford, and launched the first-ever Belfast Carnival Parade.
In 1995, Beat’s exploration of carnival arts included development of samba drumming skills as core to the idea of new parading in Belfast. In the period of ceasefire statements, pre-Good Friday Agreement, the city centre was regarded by many as a closed, unsafe area. The first Belfast Carnival Parade—a new form of welcoming, inclusive, celebratory cultural expression initiated in June’s drum parade—burst onto the city centre streets in September 1995 with full-colour, carnival arts, spectacle performance. In 1996 Beat significantly developed its carnival artform and the Belfast Carnival Parade event. Weekly samba drumming training was central to the plan—and thirty years later it is still a unique strength of Beat Carnival in Belfast and Northern Ireland. The successful work enabled the creation of the BeatnDrum Samba band, rooted in the Afro-Brazilian rhythms introduced during the festival.
