A Night of Music, Songs and Words with Tommy Sands and Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

We are delighted to welcome Tommy Sands to The ICC for an evening of music, song and discussion with his friend and fellow peace campaigner Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. Tommy Sands is a master songwriter and renowned peace and social activist from Northern Ireland. Reared in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains, he grew up immersed in folk music, his family kitchen was a place where Protestant and Catholic farmers alike would gather to sing at the end of a day’s harvesting. The prime songwriter for the infamous Sands Family, one of Ireland’s most influential folk groups of the 1960s and 1970s, Tommy’s songs have been recorded by musical artists from all over the globe. Regarded as “The Bard Of Peace”, his song ‘There Were Roses’ has been described as “certainly one of the best songs ever written about the Northern Irish Troubles” and has been recorded by Joan Baez, Kathy Mattea, Dolores Keane, Sean Keane, Dick Gaughan, The Dubliners, Cara Dillon and many others. Quietly soft spoken with a wistful stage manner, Tommy delivers songs of injustice and humanity with well targeted humour and unerring aim, in an understated manner. In May 2002 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Nevada, Reno, for his outstanding work as musician and ambassador for world peace and understanding. In February 2024 in response to the violence occurring in Gaza, Sands wrote a plaintive ballad titled “Anyone else up there” accompanied by a video about the plight of children in war