In conversation with Cynefin

I was born in Cardiff, and we moved out to West Wales when I was seven years old to a little village called Capel Dewi, which is in the Cletwr Valley, in southern Ceredigion. The West Coast of Wales - a very quiet, very remote, little village, and so I had a kind of idyllic upbringing in the village. My father's a harp maker, and so there was Welsh music, continuously drifting from the workshop, which was an old woollen mill next to the mill house where we lived.

I grew up immersed in that music. We're also a very musical family, both my parents sing and play, and it's just part of the family. I was very fortunate to just walk up the road to go to school, and the village shop and the village hall, and I'd spent my childhood out playing on farms and having a great time. 

When I left to go to university, I went to Bath to do music, and ended up working after I graduated. I was doing sound stuff, production and playing in various bands. I ended up working at Real World Studios for a bit for Peter Gabriel, and going on tour as well as working for another label, which took me all over the world and gave me a real diverse range of experiences. Especially being exposed to indigenous music and folk music from other countries, which gave me a very different perspective on my own roots or my own upbringing. That definitely shifted something for me in terms of giving me a greater appreciation for my own culture and my own tradition. So having lived in England for a while, I came back to Wales with that newfound appreciation, and that newfound drive to try and maintain and innovate and do something with that tradition, which is kind of where I'm at today.

Well, there's a geographical connection because I've been here for the last 30 odd years. It's an area I know very well, I know the people. I know the way of life, the culture, the language, the dialect. And the landscape is very dear to me as well.  It's something which I’m fortunate enough that when I move through the landscape, the place is full of stories. So that would be my connection. It's a lived relationship, you could say.

In terms of the music I play - folk music - the world over is about storytelling, lyrically speaking. It's not quite as narcissistic as pop music. So story is central to the whole plot. In Wales in particular we have a very strong literary and Bardic tradition. So traditional music in Wales really stems from that. And in many ways, I think this is what sets it apart perhaps from the other Celtic nations is that the music is a vehicle for Bardic prowess, or Bardic communication. In some ways, the music is a bit simpler, but the word is very central to the whole thing.

In terms of stories, you're looking at all the usual stuff you get in in folk music: love marriage, death, deceit. But you also get a reverie of nature going back all the way to medieval bards, and an insight into a way of life, which has kind of disappeared. So, in terms of story, I think that's an important one for me, looking at the past and getting an insight into how people lived and what was on their minds, as well.

It's unique way of expression. A language is a lens to view the world from, so having a language, one of the oldest languages in Europe, which is different to our Anglo-centric culture to perceive the world through is a gift. It gives you a different perspective on life, and on how we relate, as well as it being a more relational language, perhaps, than English. There's also dialectical aspects - we sometimes have a hard time understanding that people from north Wales and vice versa, so there's local dialects and local linguistics at play here, which have their own sense of place and their own quirks and their own nuances as well. So it's important that Wales has huge diversity within it as well.

I think what's changed maybe in the last 20-30 years is that we were coming out of a period at the end of the 20th century where the language was just in freefall. And I didn't think we really had much pride as a nation. It sounds silly, but I think my parents' generation belonged to a generation where Welsh was seen as backwards, and English was the way forward and it seen as this sort of irrelevant thing - as irrelevant to the modern world. And that's changed, thankfully. That narrative has definitely shifted, and that's no longer an attitude in Wales that I see at all anymore. We have a new generation of people who take pride in their heritage and their culture, and feel passionately about maintaining that. All I can do is really tend to that fire. In doing so, maybe produce something new, but also just give it a voice. Because especially going back to this thing of originality, I feel like that's important. There's always a danger in this, that things get homogenized. That happens in folk music as well. We all will end up playing the same version of tunes because things don't get passed on orally. In doing something regional and local to me, I hope that it maybe produces something which is a bit more distinct. I think it's about definitely celebrating Welsh culture, but also celebrating local culture, and hopefully, future generations will take pride in that as well.

I guess it's that there is this kind of brotherhood that exists between the Celtic nations, as mostly oppressed nations and peoples. There is that solidarity which exists and the recognition that the continuation or the maintenance of culture is something which requires constant work. It's not something that just happens by sitting still. I think it's something that you have to keep tending to, because if you don't, then it will just wither. So maybe that's my sense of Celtic-ness.

I've not spent a lot of time in Scotland, or Ireland yet, as a performer. I'm just looking forward to taking the music to new audiences and meeting other musicians from the Celtic nations and seeing what we have in common. And maybe some collaborations would be nice. But I think it's just that thing of taking my culture out of my own two square miles and helping me reflect back on my own culture through other people's eyes somehow. I think that's what I'm looking forward to.