The town of Dingle in County Kerry is a photogenic little place. From nearby you can see the Blasket Islands, like inkblots splashed in the Atlantic by a careless cartographer. You wouldn't think the town likely to be the home of a music festival that has quietly established itself over the 10 years of its existence as one of the most fascinating in Europe. Yet Other Voices, an annual get-together of world-class musicians, has earned its growing reputation for excellence.

The festival takes place over three or four days in December and is filmed for later broadcast. The roll call of performers has been impressive and eclectic. From Rufus Wainwright, the National, Imelda May, and Amy Winehouse to newer acts such as the brilliant Ciara Sidine, recent years at Other Voices have seen categories melded, remade or blissfully ignored. Appearance fees are low. While the Kerry hospitality is famously warm, accommodation is modest. Gigs take place in the local church or in pubs and village shops. The feeling is of a late-night Irish session, but the outlook embraces the international.

The driving force behind the festival is Cork-born Philip King, an award-winning film-maker, broadcaster, and lead singer with the Irish band Scullion. A witty man of encyclopedic musical knowledge and volcanic energy, he is admired by Irish musicians and artists. His Sunday night radio programme South Wind Blows (on RTÉ Radio One) is essential for anyone who loves no-nonsense music. On a recent show he played a rare recording of Van Morrisson reading Jack Kerouac alongside tracks by John Lee Hooker, Dick Gaughan, Irma Thomas and Broken Social Scene. His habit of reading out song lyrics, interlacing them with poetry, has garnered the occasional letter of complaint from his small army of devoted listeners, but in the era of the creeping playlist and the mediocrity of consensus, his show's unique blend of non-preachy tastefulness and rootsy authenticity has made it unmissable listening.

King is passionate about the arts and deeply in touch with contemporary developments, while retaining a teenager's affection for rock'n'roll's possibilities. Twenty years ago, he and his wife, Nuala O'Connor, made the Emmy-award BBC series Bringing It All Back Home, the most extraordinary collection of films ever put together about Irish traditional music, its sources, influences and perspectives. Their thesis – that Irish and Scottish music was reinvented in America, where it encountered recording technology before being transmitted back across the Atlantic – radically remade understandings of how cultural interchange works. King's view is that Irish music "left an indelible thumbprint" on American song, and vice versa.

By way of example, he speaks with touching affection about discovering the Delta blues as a kid through the work of the brilliant Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher, who played sessions with Muddy Waters as well as the Dubliners. King has recorded the Everley Brothers singing a murder ballad with Yeatsian origins, Emmylou Harris doing lovelorn Irish laments, Richard Thompson performing a song called From Galway to Graceland and Adam Clayton of U2 jamming with trad musicians in Donegal. The same inclusivity and openness is at the heart of Other Voices, perhaps the only music festival in the world where the audience get to mix with the performers. The streets and pubs of Dingle are the only backstage area. Starry behaviour is rare.

Fresh from a recent Other Voices mini-visit to New York, an extraordinary series of gigs that had critics enraptured, this year's main festival is about to take place in Dingle. Last year's gathering took place during snowstorms that almost closed Ireland down for a fortnight, but it didn't stop Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley turning up to play. It's a gathering that inspires amazing loyalty from performer and audience alike. No one can put into words why. That's its glory.

Full coverage of this year's Other Voices festival will be on theguardian.com/music all this weekend, with reviews and interviews with St Vincent, Edwyn Collins and Lisa Hannigan. Plus on 4 December, in association with Tourism Ireland, we will be live streaming the final gig, featuring exclusive performances from Wild Beasts and Spiritualized.