At the end of this summer, four members of the Irish dance group Cairde made a video to the viral TikTok sound ‘The Banjo Beat’. Ronan O’Connell, 18, Frances Fallon, 20, Stephen McGuinness, 20, and Brian Culligan, 19, took the track and choreographed a routine with hard shoe rhythm against the banjo tune. Little did they know when they collected their takeaway on the way home that it would lead to one million followers.
But it wasn’t long before they realised that it was a hit. “We all had the phones and we all just kept refreshing,” Stephen says. “But then we were like ‘right, we’ll put down the phone. We won’t look at it’. We couldn’t resist more than five minutes!” By the next morning it was at 12 million views, and they would hit one million followers just two weeks later. The video currently sits at an unbelievable 80 million views.
The group of seven dancers from the west of Ireland, also made up of Dara Kelly, 19, Ethan Quinton, 20, and Seamus Morrison, 20, officially formed Cairde, which is Irish for ‘friend’, remotely during lockdown. However the idea first came about at the Fleadh Cheoil, an Irish music festival, in 2017. After busking together on the street, they decided the grouping was something they could make official. “We thought, ‘hey, this has been a lot of fun and good craic’. Let’s make something out of this. And Cairde was born,” Ronan explains. Staying mostly as a group chat for the first two and a half years, it wasn’t until lockdown that they really had the time to start creating together.
“We had to do a few Zoom calls at the beginning, kind of just discussing where we want to go with Cairde, and a couple of Cairde quizzes,” Brian laughs. Then in May, Frances started a fundraiser by dancing a step every day for the Irish Cancer Society, which got everyone involved. From then they produced remote collaborations until restrictions eased, and they made their first TikTok on July 1st.
After getting a steady 5000 views per video for the first month, Frances, Ronan and Dara, all from the Hession School in Galway, decided to put an Irish spin on one of TikTok’s most popular trends at the time. The three dancers took the Taylor Swift ‘Love Story’ Discolines remix trend and put an Irish twist on it. Dara was playing PlayStation with Ronan when they realised just how much the video had taken off. “I was like, ‘I’ll just check the views’. And it was at about 15,000 views. So I had another game of FIFA and then I went back and checked the video. And it was 55,000…And then the next morning when we all got up and it was at 1.3 million views.” “We all thought we were famous!” Seamus laughs.
Exactly one month from their first ever TikTok they had their first viral hit which now sits at 5.2 million views. “That’s what kind of set us on the track of putting an Irish dancing spin on the trends that are already popular on TikTok,” Brian explains.
Despite the incredible success of the group in such a short space of time, they aren’t so confident about their TikTok skills as they are with the dancing. “We’ve got 1.5 million followers, but we’re not really the best at actually using TikTok,” Francis admits. The actual recording process of something so technical doesn’t always go to plan either. When they were filming the “Banjo Beats” video, the behind-the-scenes wasn’t quite as slick as the final video makes it appear.
“Even taking the video took like half an hour just because we couldn’t jump from one board to another,” Ronan says. “We kept falling and missing the board.” “We were on a slope as well so every time we tried to dance we like, slid down a hill,” Brian quips. They laugh about the “contagious” effect of one person’s mistakes on the rest of them, as Francis remembers one day when he and Stephen were nicely asked to practise for five minutes after going wrong repeatedly. But the incredible technical abilities of the dancers shines through, and the group have collaboratively choreographed a number in the space of five minutes before and got it down in one take.
Being Irish dancers, it’s not easy to let some of the imperfections go that come with bending the rules for once. Ethan says: “If I don’t kick up at the back I’ll be like ‘oh my God we have to do it again. That’s not good enough’.” Brian remembers one occasion when he told the group his feet were too straight in a video after a long day of recording, to which he was met with “six death stares”. “It’s pressure we put on ourselves,” Ronan says. But the audience that finds them on TikTok aren’t concerned with “straight feet” or “bent knees”, but rather their lightning fast footwork which blows the minds of people in the comments.
Despite all of the success in what has quickly turned into a professional endeavour for the group, the genuine friendship shared by all seven members of Cairde is palpable. Even the mention of afterparties at competitions has them all coyly laughing at their collective memories together. “We just have so much craic at competitions,” Francis says.
Stephen adds: “Especially our age group, we all know each other and we’re all close enough that in the bar afterwards we’d all be sitting together…you don’t even have to talk about dancing.” “We’re all like the best of friends,” Seamus adds. Despite the disappointment at the cancellations of the World Championships this year, which all seven dancers were due to compete at (though not all in one age group), Cairde’s success has definitely been the silver lining.
The hard work has truly paid off and the group are even being recognised when they’re out together, including one occasion when a police officer in an unmarked car approached them for a photo. Every Irish dancer watching the rise of Irish dancing on TikTok probably feels like it’s about time that the world caught on to just how modern and stylish Irish dancing can be. “If you don’t know what it is, seeing it for the first time is a bit like ‘wow, what is this?’ It’s not tap dancing, but it’s not, you know, hip-hop, it’s something in the middle,” Stephen explains.
The group are tight-lipped about what opportunities lay ahead for Cairde but no doubt exciting things are coming their way. Having already performed on the Late Late Show, something they joked meant they had “made it” in Irish standards of fame, other projects in the pipeline range from virtual Christmas parties and St Patrick’s Day performances to international television opportunities.
What shines through more than any of the views and viral videos is a genuine passion for Irish dance and a solid friendship shared by all seven members of Cairde. “We just know each other inside out,” Francis says. Years of friendship and even being competitors has created a bond so strong that only Irish dancing could form, one that lasts long after the dancing shoes come off.
Follow Cairde on TikTok and Instagram.
