Ballydehob marks 20 years of its celebrated jazz weekend with more than a passing nod to late founder John Fagan, writes Terri Leiber.

IT was at John Fagan’s 50th birthday party in 2005 at his home in Ballydehob, that the idea of starting a jazz festival first occurred to him.

John, a long-time super fan of all music, but jazz in particular, had invited a number of musician friends to his birthday celebrations including The Karl Heinz Nagel Trio from Germany.

It was a mellow afternoon with the wine flowing and the sunshine pouring into the conservatory, and everyone was loving the music.

John and his family had only been living in the village for three years but already he was involved in community projects and a keen participant in the local pub music scene.

The Cork City Jazz Festival was a great draw, but it was quite a trek for busy Ballydehobbers with jobs and family commitments. So why not, he thought, create our own festival right here at home?

John was born and raised in the Island Bridge area of Dublin.

He was one of ten children in a close, musical family. Four of his siblings were deaf, which may well have increased the importance of music in all their lives, as the rhythmic and emotional vibrations of music are a form of communication everyone can appreciate.

Sonja and John Fagan at the Green Awards in 2015 for his ‘Eir Eco Stove’ design.

One of John’s siblings recalls him finding a broken guitar when he was about 10 and his brother repairing it for him. He made him a ‘square guitar’, then fixed up a stage out the back for him to play on. Later, John purchased an orange, electric guitar and began playing the blues. His mother, a keen singer herself, was happy to allow her home to be filled with the music of her children and their friends. One of those friends was Phil Lynott, who later formed the legendary Thin Lizzy. Phil would call over for cups of tea and to borrow records, and played Thursday night sessions at the nearby Island Bridge Hall, where John and the elder siblings also played. The younger five would listen, enthralled from their bedroom window to the exciting sounds blasting out.

Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack.

After school, John left Ireland to travel, work and play music around Europe. In classic style, he ‘followed a girl’ to Germany but the romance didn’t work out. But Germany suited him and after finding work at a winery and then at an English school, learning to speak German as he went, he started to see new ways to bring music into his life.

In the early 1980s he opened a jazz club in Bad Kreuznach that he named ‘Take Five’, after the Dave Brubeck tune. That was also where he met his future wife Sonja Schauss, a local girl who shared his passion for music and whose calm nature complemented his bubbling enthusiasm. They married and had a son, but John began to feel the call of home again.

Neither John nor Sonja wished to raise their son in a city and so they found their way to Ballydehob, where the countryside, sense of community and thriving local music scene appealed to them both.

And so to the 50th birthday party where John decided to bring jazz to Ballydehob. It was not an art form that many West Cork people knew they were missing out on, but when John saw the reaction of his guests to Karl Heinz Nagel and Co he saw the future.

He inspired a number of local music lovers to come on board with him. People who knew the passion and drive of this man had no doubts he could pull off this ‘crazy dream’. Many put their money where their mouths were and invested. Vincent Coughlan and Greg Coughlan were just two of the local businesspeople who donated, as did local celebrity couple Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack.

Phil Lynott.

John also had the foresight to approach BT Ireland Broadband which had recently included film footage of Ballydehob in their advertising campaign, and they became the biggest sponsor of the nascent festival.

May Bank Holiday Weekend 2007, the first Ballydehob International Jazz Festival took place. The sun shone and the Karl Heinz Nagel Trio returned to perform. There was jazz on the streets, jazz in the bars, jazz in the park and jazz in the community hall.

There was a busking competition, market stalls and smiling faces wherever you looked.  It was as John had wanted it to be: a family-friendly event.

He ran the festival for four years before deciding to step away. Administration and management duties had begun to take the joy out of it for him. The community realised they did not want to give up on the cultural and financial benefits the festival brought each May and hastily convened a new committee to drive the project on.

The festival has gone from strength to strength and now finds itself in its 20th year.  Many local people have helped with the organising of the event and each new committee has honed its skills in fundraising, commissioning acts and running the whole operation.

Last year’s Jazz parade.

The festival took on its current style when Joe O’Leary and Caroline O’Donnell from Levis’ Corner Bar took the helm back in 2014. It may be a little less ‘pure’ jazz than John Fagan would have liked, but its popularity has grown with additions such as the New Orleans Jazz Funeral and dance workshops.

The next creative project for John was designing the ‘Eir Eco Stove’ which won numerous green technology awards. Sadly, before he could see the fruits of this project, he became seriously ill and passed away in 2017 leaving his wife Sonja, teenage son John-Lawrence, extended family and many friends heartbroken.

His legacy lives on in his son who shares his father’s love of jazz and is an accomplished drummer himself; and of course in the Ballydehob International Jazz Festival which runs this year from Thursday April 30th to Monday May 4th. An extraordinary festival created by an extraordinary man who fulfilled his goal of living life to the full.