Opening the Music City Irish Fest next weekend, Mayor Barry will be joined by the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Northern Ireland (which is in the UK, not Ireland). The festival is sponsored in part by the Irish government, though.
The opening ceremony will get going at 11 AM on March 12 on Demonbreun Street near Music Circle. All the entertainment will follow, continuing until 11 at night.
Belfast has been a sister city of Nashville since 1995, which has produced a culturally fruitful relationship, according to the press release:
A highlight of this Sister Cities relationship is the thriving and star-studded Belfast-Nashville Songwriters Festival, an extremely successful gathering and exchange of our respective communities’ deep love for music and song now in its 12th year. Each year many established artists, up-and-coming writers, and political figures travel from Nashville to Belfast to grow a unique friendship forged through the making of music. For the last several years, Music City Roots has broadcast live from the festival…
The first MCIF featured multiple winning singer-songwriters from the Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival on its main stage. This year the two festivals are excited to be exchanging artists. Jessica and Jeremiah Willis, singer-songwriters from Nashville-based The Willis Clan, performed March 2nd in Belfast. Only days later, six Irish artists from the Belfast festival are set to perform on the MCIF 2016 main stage.