Well-known Shannon singer-songwriter Blaise Phelan is hoping to win a Munster Battle of the Ballads competition with a song he wrote and performed himself. He will compete with five other ballads, one from each Munster county.
His song “In the H-Blocks” emerged from a personal experience of Blaise’s, “in 1978 I was on a visit to see a political prisoner in the H-Blocks. Whilst in the waiting room I was struck by the fact many of the children were siblings of the prisoners and young women in their late 30’s were mothers of the prisoners. It reminded me that many men on the Blanket during the Dirty Protest and later during the Hunger Strikes, were only in their late teens or early twenties.”
“Sometime later I wrote “In The H- Blocks”, to reflect a day in a young prisoner’s life” he recalls.
The Battle of the Ballads is an initiative to raise funds for the annual National Hunger Strike commemoration which takes place in Munster this year. The ceremony in Cork City on August 27th, will pay tribute to all those who died on hunger strike throughout the last century, from Thomas Ashe who died in 1917 to the 1981 strikers.
All the songs, with their videos, are available on the Battle of the Ballads 2023 Facebook page and anyone can vote by clicking the GoFundMe link for their chosen act. Each euro raised by each act counts as one vote and the winning act will be the one with the most votes. People can vote for as many acts as they wish, as often as they like. There will also be regular updates on the progress of voting on the page, so people can keep track of how their favourite song is doing. Voting will be open until 9pm on Sunday 25th June.