Cairde Banjo Beat: The Viral Irish Dancing Video (80 Million Views)

Cairde: quick facts

Who: an Irish dance group of young men from Clare, Galway and Cork. Cairde is the Irish for “friends”.
Started: they came together around the 2017 Fleadh Cheoil in Ennis, Co. Clare.
The viral video: “Banjo Beat”, posted on 28 August 2020, which went viral within a day and passed 80 million views and 13 million likes.
Since then: millions of followers, The Late Late Show, Good Morning America, and a performance for President Biden at the White House on St Patrick’s Day 2022.

In the summer of 2020, with the world stuck indoors, a group of young Irish dancers posted a short video to TikTok. They weren’t in costumes, there was no stage, and the music wasn’t a jig or a reel. It was a banjo track with a heavy beat, and the footwork was so tight and so fast that people watched it again and again and again.

Within a day it had exploded. It has now been watched more than 80 million times.

Who are Cairde?

Cairde (pronounced “KAR-jeh”) is the Irish word for friends, and that’s exactly what they are: a group of champion Irish dancers from counties Clare, Galway and Cork who grew up competing against and alongside each other. The group came together around the 2017 Fleadh Cheoil in Ennis, Co. Clare, the biggest festival of traditional Irish music and dance in the world.

They had all danced since childhood, and several had performed in professional shows. But it was during the pandemic, with live shows cancelled, that they started posting short dance videos online.

The Banjo Beat video

On 28 August 2020 they posted a routine to a track called “Banjo Beat”. It is classic hard-shoe Irish dancing, but with a modern twist: a driving beat, a casual setting, perfect timing and a bit of swagger. It went viral within a day, gained them around 200,000 followers overnight, and kept going until it passed 80 million views and 13 million likes.

What makes it so watchable is the contrast. The footwork is pure, traditional, championship-level Irish dancing, the kind that takes years to master. But the music, the clothes and the attitude are completely of the moment. It made Irish dancing look cool to millions of teenagers who had never been near a feis.

Why Cairde took off

They mixed styles. Cairde blend Irish dance with tap, jazz and hip hop, and dance to pop, country and electronic music as well as trad.
They made it fun. Their videos are short, playful and full of personality, a long way from the stiff image Irish dancing once had.
The timing was perfect. In lockdown, people were glued to their phones and desperate for something joyful.
The skill is real. However casual it looks, every step is precise. That’s what keeps people rewatching.

From TikTok to the White House

The videos opened doors fast. Cairde appeared on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show, ITV’s This Morning and ABC’s Good Morning America, and they now have millions of followers across social media, with big audiences in the US, the UK and far beyond.

On St Patrick’s Day 2022, they performed for US President Joe Biden at the White House, as part of the Washington celebrations. Not bad for a group of friends who started posting videos in lockdown.

The new wave of Irish dance

Cairde are part of a new generation, along with dancers like the Gardiner Brothers, who have taken Irish dancing from the competition hall to the phone screens of millions. It’s the biggest boost for Irish dance since Riverdance burst onto the stage in 1994, and it’s reaching a whole new audience.