A youthful Bono visits Tommy Makem's Irish Pavilion in New York in the mid-1980s. Picture courtesy of the Makem family

TEN years after his death, Tommy Makem's enduring musical legacy is being celebrated with a special concert at a festival of song in his Co Armagh home town.

A songwriter, balladeer and folk singer with the Clancy Brothers and as a soloist, the 'godfather of Irish music' was mourned across the world when he died in August 2007 aged 74.

Bono is among the international music artists who have acknowledged his debt to Makem, with U2 launching their first US tour at his New York pub.

Pete Seeger was also so impressed by the song tradition of Co Armagh through contacts with Tommy that he paid a special visit to Keady in the early 1960s, meeting singers and collectors such as Mary Toner, Ann Jane Kelly and Sarah Makem and also the McPeake family in Belfast.

Makem's lasting influence on the Irish and world-wide song tradition will now be marked in a special tenth anniversary concert on Thursday held in a new centre in Keady dedicated in his honour.

Celebrated folk singers Colum Sands and Tom Sweeney will open the annual Tommy Makem Festival of Song, supported by the Community Relations Council, Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council and the Arts Council.

During the three-day festival, people who knew Tommy before he emigrated from Keady will also recall old times around the town with him.

His cousin Tom Hardiman, who welcomed him to Dover, New Hampshire as a youth in December 1955, will describe Makem's early years en route to international fame with the Clancy Brothers and how he arrived in America "with little more than a set of bagpipes and his book of songs".

A festival spokesman added: "Central to the preserving of his memory is the `Keepers of the Tradition' event when selected singers, song collectors and songwriters from all traditions here and abroad are presented with the Tommy Makem Scroll of Honour for their outstanding contribution to the culture of their district and country."

Anne and Richard Wanczyk from Poland and now living in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, will be presented with the award for their contribution to Polish traditional song and music.

Relatives of James Samuel Stephenson (1871-1955) from Tullyvallen, Co Armagh will accept a scroll acknowledging his poetry.

The festival also recognises the "commitment and creativity" of Armagh story teller Frances Quinn and the contribution of Newry's Paddy Rafferty (1922-1995) to Irish music, dance and song.

Alongside the Clancys, Makem simultaneously took folk back to its roots by introducing a more natural way of singing and revolutionalised it with an injection of energy that saw the group's popularity rival `pop' artists during the 1960s.

Courageous and outward-looking, the decision of Makem and Liam Clancy, from Co Tipperary, to cross the Atlantic in 1955 saw them come to define their genre.

By 1961, the group were being hailed alongside folk heroine Joan Baez at Newport Folk Festival and went on that year to reach a national audience in the US with a television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Before long they had secured a contract with Columbia Records and were appearing in concert at Carnegie Hall and singing at the White House for President John F Kennedy.

Success back home came later, when an Irish radio announcer visiting the US returned with some of their albums and played them on his show. By 1964, a third of the albums sold in Ireland were by the band.

The festival said Makem's legacy remains immense.

"The early sixties saw a narrowing of the Atlantic with the arrival of the jet age, and this changed the mindset of Irish America from the old nostalgia-driven attitudes to a more assertive, self confident people.

"Tommy and the Clancys, with their own natural self confidence and total belief in their song tradition, embodied this new spirit with their fresh approach to the Irish song tradition and this filtered back to Ireland.

"Their main repertoire were the songs they brought from Keady and Tipperary, and these formed part of the world-wide folk revival of the sixties. They were the first, the leaders of this new age, they set the tone, and all after them acknowledged this.

"Tommy used to tell how the young Bono kept asking him about how he wrote his many songs and how he was impressed with his and Liam Clancy's performing skills.

"Performers such as Christy Moore, The Dubliners, Sinead O'Connor, The Pogues and many others were all influenced by him, and this influence was as strong in America including Bob Dylan and the entire folk scene in the English-speaking world."

The concert is on Thursday August 3 at 8pm. Tickets are priced £15 (028 37521810 or pay at door)