Belfast Music app: a city’s musical journey
Peter Cheney explores the Belfast Music tour.
A walk around Belfast city centre with an iPhone can tell you a lot more about its sights and sounds than meets the eye. The music tour is one of the free Belfast Music app’s main features, alongside gig listings, a selection of videos and a 10-strong hall of fame.
Overlaid on Google Maps, the route officially starts at Belfast City Hall and has 21 stops, narrated by broadcaster Stuart Bailie. The general direction is down Great Victoria Street to Queen’s, then back up Botanic Avenue and the Dublin Road, over to the Waterfront and through the Cathedral Quarter, ending at Oh Yeah.
The app’s strong point is the way it tells the history of past gigs and their places. Highlights include the Beatles playing the old Ritz Cinema, now Jury’s Hotel, in 1963 or Jimi Hendrix celebrating his 25th birthday with two gigs at the Belfast Festival (27 November 1967). A “modest home crowd” heard an early version of Snow Patrol in the Duke of York. Elsewhere, the Ulster Hall’s 1977 mini-riot is retold.
Older genres aren’t neglected – with mentions of the Proms in the Park and Ruby Murray – but the app has a distinctly rock and punk feel.
A leisurely pace is best. Two hours leaves plenty of time to take it all in and find out more about the city along the way. Beyond the main streets, a maze of alleyways leads to some of the more intimate venues. If you have an eye for architecture or start to read the stones of the Writers’ Square, you’ll hang around a bit longer.
It’s good for tourists and locals alike to hear the warmer, creative side of a city which often has a hard and cold reputation.
Music helps to tell Belfast’s own journey from the days of the bomb and bullet to these more peaceful, though not always prosperous, times; the number of empty shops and offices along the route is striking. New lyrics will write its future and, in time, become part of a rich sound story.
Non-iPhone users don’t have to miss out.
A bus tour can be booked at www.belfastmusic.org
