Tagged: folktraditional
AmeriCymru spoke to Welsh singer-songwriter Meinir Gwilym about her music, future plans and her upcoming appearance in L.A. on St David's Day.
Meinir Gwilym
AmeriCymru: Hi Meinir and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. You were born and raised in Ynys Mon, Can you describe the island a little for our American readers. Did you come from a musical family?
Meinir: Ynys Mon is an island off the coast of North Wales. It has two bridges linking it to the mainland. I grew up in a village called Llangristiolus, which is in the parish of 'Paradwys'. It's quite a rural area, and I've always loved the outdoors. My roots are pretty deep there, my brothers and I are the 8th Generation to live in our family home. The house was originally a 'Ty Unnos' (One Night House) which is an old Welsh tradition - built in one night on a patch land, and if there was a fire in the hearth by the following morning, the builder then owned the house!
As a family, we've always sung really - at parties, at gatherings, at family meals - any occasion, in our house we're round the piano or guitar singing! It's just a natural thing in our family, and I think that's why music is my way of expressing myself. Both my grandfathers were musical in different ways - one was an exceptional pianist and the other a singer and lyricist, in their spare time of course. My aunt Cathrin, my mother's sister, has the best ear for music - she and I have spent hours sitting around the piano, her playing and me giving orders!
I learned to play the guitar at around 14, when I realised the piano was immovable...I was wanting to write songs, and that process has always been a pretty private one for me. My mother taught me to play on an old Spanish guitar, and I never looked back.
AmeriCymru: Your first recording Smcs, Coffi a Fodca Rhad (Cigarrettes, Coffee and Cheap Vodka) released in 2002 was a huge success.How would you describe the album?
Meinir: I was 19 when the CD was released. It was pretty different to other Welsh music that was around at the time, which is probably why it felt so fresh. Musically it's a mix, from thoughtful and quiet to loud and crazy! But it's a taster in a way - of the hundred or so songs I'd written in my teenage years.
I hadn't really thought about what I'd do with all my songs, but was writing a lot, though I didn't perform any publicly until I got to University in Cardiff. There was a songwriter's competition, and my friends persuaded me to enter. I did in the end, and when I won after performing my own songs for the first time, I realised it was the only possible thing to do. I recorded a demo tape and sent it to a community-based not-for-profit record label called Gwynfryn Cymunedol. They liked it, and from then on I was gigging like crazy, finding my feet, learning how to win the most difficult of audiences, and loving it. Smocs, Coffi was then released. I can't believe it's almost 12 years ago to be honest!
AmeriCymru: You have described your third album Sgandal Fain (skinny rumour) as an album of two halves the major and the minor. What did you mean by that?
Meinir: It's a literal description - the first 6 or 7 songs are pretty upbeat, and the second half is quieter, more thoughful. Because I don't write in a certain genre - I just let the songs do what they want - there's always a wide range of tempos and styles on my albums. On Sgandal, it felt right to split them in half.
AmeriCymru: Bryn Terfel appears on two tracks on your 2008 album 'Tombola'. Care to describe the experience of working with Bryn?
Meinir: Well, what can one say?! He's got the greatest voice, and is an absolute pro, working with him was a wonderful experience. To have his voice on Mam a'i Baban, a traditional song, was beautiful, but it was he who thought it might be nice if I wrote a song for both of us too. I wrote Mellt, and I think it works well.
He lives just a few miles down the road from me, and is a really down to earth person. He sells out Sydney Opera House, is probably the best Bass Baritone in the world, and yet he keeps his feet firmly on the ground. It was an absolute pleasure to work with him.
AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about your upcoming appearance in L.A. ?
Meinir: It's going to be at a great venue the Cinefamily Silent Movie Theater in Hollywood, and is obviously the best occasion - Dt.David's Day!
I'll be singing solo, just me and the guitar, so it's going to be quite intimate. I'll be singing some of my favourite caneuon gwerin (folk songs), my own songs, and a few covers too - and I hope to get the audience humming along by the end!
AmeriCymru: You have a CD titled 'Celt' being released to coincide with your headline performance at the St David's Day concert. . When will this be available and where can it be purchased online?
Meinir: It's an 18 track album, released only in North America. There are my own songs on it of course, quite a few traditional tunes, and 2 English lanuguage tracks.
It's available from March 1st through - http://celtic-family-shoppe.myshopify.com/products/celt-by-meinir-gwilym
AmeriCymru: What's next for Meinir Gwilym? What are your plans for the coming year? Any new recordings in the pipeline?
Meinir: Well, I plan to release an album in Wales pretty soon, when the time is right. But next, I have a trip to Croatia planned, a tour in Galicia, Spain, and depending on how the CD goes down in the US and Canada - maybe a North American tour. I'm not really a planning kind of person, I write and sing, and leave the arranging to my manager!
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
Meinir: Ooooh, to me 'message' is asking for something deep... I'll keep away from political...so I'm gonna quote my favourite bardd (poet), T.H Parry Williams -
"...am nad ydyw'n byw ar hyd y daith,
O gri ein geni hyd ein holaf gwyn,
Yn ddim ond crych dros dro neu gysgod craith
Ar lyfnder esmwyth y mudandod mwyn,
Ni wnawn, wrth ffoi am byth o'n ffwdan ffl,
Ond llithro i'r llonyddwch mawr yn l."
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9. Were you able to find compositions or music for this instrument? What kind of music was used for?
"The crwth was a folk instrument, and as such was not supported by a written musical tradition. Both the method of playing it and the music for it were traditionally passed down from father to son, and I gather that there was more than a modicum of guarded secrecy. Sorry, ladies, but the traditional belief was that it was such bad luck for a girl or woman to play the crwth that her so doing would literally wake the dead and send bodies from the churchyard wandering around the town. Morris relates an account of that view in his monograph. I personally do not share that view, by the way!
10. You've composed music for the crwth - is there a particular type or style of composition you think it best suited to?
"I prefer either re-created or adapted to composed in most cases. Everything at this site, for example, is music that was initially fashioned by some talented but anonymous folk artist who probably did not read or write a note of music. There is musicality in each of us, just as surely as there is a penchant for verbalizing. As far as actual composition is concerned, I’ve had in my head for years – decades, in fact - a multi-movement piece called “Twmpath Dawns” (“Dance on the Village Green”) for crwth and orchestra, but I’ve only committed a tiny portion of it to writing. That’s one of so many things on my to-do list for post-retirement. Its style is not at all original, but rather based on that of the dance and ballad tunes that I located in my research, although I’ve not actually copied any of the melodies."
11. How important is the crwth in the Celtic musical tradition?
"I would regard the crwth as very important, although I have come to consider the oral-aural tradition supporting both the playing of it and the music for it, along with music for other folk instruments and vocal music, as even more important, not only because oral-aural tradition is the foundation on which so much else in folk culture is built, but also because what exists only in memories is so volatile and easily lost. Instruments are concrete phenomena and hence more durable entities. That is part of why my doctoral dissertation was on the oral-aural processes in melodic transmission, preservation, and change rather than on an instrument."
12. Do you believe that the crwth can make a comeback? Does it have a place in the mainstream musical tradition?
"I think it already has made a comeback as part of the larger emergence of both popular interest and scholarly inquiry in Celtic music. As to whether or not it will attract a huge following, I suspect not. We must remember that, of all the music education programs in our schools, strings in general tend to be the smallest group in terms of participants. For example, in American public schools, band members outnumber orchestra members ten-to-one, although, interestingly, studies have shown that string players are more likely than wind or percussion players to keep playing their instruments after finishing their formal educations. In my son’s high school, there were four huge bands and one orchestra of modest size. Given the limited number, although usually the deep dedication, of string players, I suspect that the crwth attracts and will continue to attract a relatively small but intensely devoted group of adherents.
Technically the crwth is in general far less facile then modern orchestral string instruments, and it’s not supported by either the huge written musical tradition or anything even remotely approaching the instructional regimen that exists for them. It is best suited to the music for which it was created, which is but one enjoyable but narrowly circumscribed segment of the entire Western instrumental music repertory. Hence I suspect that, while someday the crwth may enjoy an even greater status than it now occupies as an historical instrument useful in, for example, certain movie soundtracks or period and/or regional compositions, it will never stand as an equal partner with the violin. This is certainly not to speak disparagingly of the crwth in any way. After all, within the continuum of its particular repertory it can provide its own accompaniment and in so doing perform a feat at which the violin is far more limited except in the hands of a few of the greatest virtuosi.
There always is the possibility, of course, that a composer will come along who specializes in writing for instruments outside the usual academic milieu. There, in fact, was such a composer in the last century. His name was Harry Partch. He even invented some special instruments, in some cases by adapting earlier designs, and I seem to recall that he wrote for some antique instruments such as the panpipes. To the best of my knowledge, he wrote nothing for the crwth."
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13. Other than on this site where can people obtain samples of your work?
"There is my personal website, which includes the main crwth page that’s linked on my Americymru page. For direct access to my online bibliography of publications and presentations, go to http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/pubpr.html.htm It includes listings for my studies in other areas as well as those on the crwth.
My other “crwth pages” are as follows:
http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/cth02.html (performance advertisement)
http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/cth04.html (thesis bibliography with additional references)
A copy of my thesis is available via university interlibrary loan from the Music Library of the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, 76203. Also, as I’ve previously stated, I make and mail copies for the cost of production and mailing. I plan to put the whole thing, with revisions reflecting what appeared in my running supplement of addenda, online eventually."
14. Do you give live performances or demonstrations with the instrument?
"Yes, I do, although not all that often. I’ve performed with a harpist at the Mucky Duck Pub in Houston, a location where entertainment often includes live Celtic music, and I’ve performed at wedding receptions and various fundraisers for the arts in the Houston area since the late 1970s. At one point I was with Young Audiences of Houston. Also, I was once on “Inside Area-5,” a feature news program in the Dallas area, not too long after completing my thesis. For more detail, see my performance advertisement listed above."
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3. Can you tell us a little about the history of the instrument?
We should remember, first of all, that crwth, which literally means protuberance or a swelling out , and probably refers to the rather hunch-backed appearance of both the most recent instrument and most of its forebears, denoted several different small, hand-held lyres that were used in western Britain at least as far back as the early eleventh century. The modern crwth, meaning the most recent instrument so designated, was one of the last of the bowed yoke lyres. That large and diverse species seems to have emerged around A.D. 900, when the bow crossed over both the Bosporus and the Straits of Gibraltar, entered Europe in a sort of pincers movement, and was applied to pre-existing European lyres that previously were plucked. It’s important to keep in mind that bowed instruments did not emerge along a single line, and that, in particular, the viol and violin did NOT emerge from the crwth and similar lyres when the yoke of the lyre was removed and the sides were incurved to facilitate bowing. Independent fingerboard lyres (that is, those with fingerboards but no yokes), including those with sides incurved for acoustic reasons, were developed as plucked instruments in the Middle East, perhaps as far back as around 3000 BC. One school of thought treats them as an entirely separate family from the lyres, calling them collectively the lute family. They, too, crossed over into Europe during the first millennium of the Common Era and later had the bow applied to them. It is from those that the viol and violin emerged. Unlike the viol and violin and their larger relatives such as the viol da gamba, violoncello, lyra da braccio, and double-bass viol, whose designs became standardized, the bowed lyres existed in many different forms in various regions of Europe and were used as instruments of the minstrels until the end of minstrelsy shortly after the close of the Middle Ages. After that, they were absorbed into the various local folk cultures, where a few of them survived in practice until fairly recent times. The Scandinavian talharpa , for example, could still be found in use as late as the early twentieth century, although it appears to have emerged prior to the advent of the modern crwth.
The modern crwth seems to have sprung from at least one and perhaps multiple closely related immediate prototypes within the Welsh folk culture, probably around 1500. It thrived there as a fiddle used at country dances and in some cases by ballad singers (the “newspapers” of the time and place) until around 1730. It seems to have been played most often as a solo instrument but on occasion in ensemble with the harp ( telyn ) and hornpipe ( pibgorn ). The crwth and pibgorn, along with dancing, were victims of the rise of the evangelical Protestantism, specifically Calvinistic Methodism, that swept Wales, much like the Great Awakening in America, in the 1730s and ‘40s. Large numbers of those instruments, along with decks of playing cards and other so-called implements of the Devil, were destroyed in what can be described most accurately as a mad orgy of religious fervor. The harp, due to its academic associations, suffered much less. The crwth and pibgorn survived, albeit in much smaller and diminishing numbers, in some remote locations for about a century beyond that time. According to oral tradition, the last of the old crythorion , one James Green of Bron y Garth, died in 1855.
With the establishment of musicology as a recognized discipline, initially under the leadership of German scholars, in the early twentieth century, came an interest beyond the dilettante level in old music and old instruments, including the crwth. Unfortunately, many of the early investigators were less than careful in their treatment of instruments outside the academic mainstream, and it was at that time that many erroneous notions regarding the crwth arose, including the view, representing misapplication of Darwinian biological theory, that the violin emerged when the yoke arms were removed from the crwth and the sides were incurved. Also prominent were romanticized, utterly unsupportable notions such as that of the crwth’s having been played at Stonehenge and elsewhere by the Druids. Still another error was that of superimposing academic performance technique, primarily that of the viol, onto the playing of the crwth. Much of the research since then, including mine, has been devoted to debunking earlier views and approaching the crwth and other folk music phenomena from within the native cultures as much as possible, not from some far-removed point in the academic mainstream.
4. How would you describe its sound?
"In brief, the sound is something of a cross between a fiddle and a bagpipe, especially when the tuning in paired fifths is employed. A tuning in paired seconds is still mistakenly regarded as standard. Initially it was reported by only one writer, Edward Jones, in his Musical and Poetical Relicks [sic] of the Welsh Bards , and then subsequent writers picked up on that and passed it along unquestioningly. The tuning in paired seconds is practical for playing chords, but very impractical for the playing of melodies. The tuning in fifths, with a dominant between the two roots or keynotes, has numerous precedents and parallels in the history of European string instruments, and turns the crwth from a dull, droning instrument into a reasonably nimble melodic executant with the ability to support its own melodies harmonically – in essence, a self-contained string ensemble. The tuning that I use is based on William Bingley’s report in A Tour Round North Wales . While Bingley almost certainly was in error in reporting the height to which the highest string was tuned, I suspect that he was more generally correct in reporting a tuning in paired fifths (for example G-g-D-d for the strings over the fingerboard). That is very similar to George Emerson’s report of the Scottish fiddle tuning G-D-g-d ( Rantin’ Pipe and Tremblin’ String ), a tuning that also used to be common among the old-time fiddlers here in America, especially in Appalachia, where chordal playing made possible by nearly flat bridges was once very common. Tuning in paired fifths, incidentally, differs from standard violin tuning in that the latter is in consecutive fifths (G-D-a-e) to facilitate mainly melodic playing.
5. Were you a violin or other stringed instrument player prior to discovering the crwth?
"Yes, I was a violinist. I still am, and one of my favorite activities is directing a group of youngsters in a string orchestra program. I’ve played my crwth with their chamber ensemble, or top group, on occasion, using my arrangements of traditional dance tunes, and we’ve all had a great time with that."
6. Was it difficult to move from the violin to the crwth? How different is playing the crwth, and how is it different?
"Yes and no, with regard to difficulty. At the time I was reconstructing crwth performance methodology, I had been away from the violin for over a year, so the shock was minimal. The biggest adjustment was learning to apply a lot more pressure to the crwth bow. A bow drawn across the strings at an oblique angle, rather than at a right angle as on the violin, will “ice skate” out of control, and also produce a thin sound, if it’s not pressed firmly. Pressing it firmly, of course, produces a tone that’s totally taboo on the violin – namely, a lot of upper partials and plain, old squeaks. That sound, however, was prized among crythorion . There’s an old Welsh adage that states in translation, “Let him who plays his crwth sweetly be hanged!” I have found going from crwth back to violin more of a challenge than going from violin to crwth. It’s easier to go after an instrument somewhat aggressively, as one must do with the crwth, than to approach it with the care, restraint, and meticulous finesse that one must use in playing the violin. I suspect the adjustment would be not quite so marked, at least in terms of right-hand technique, if I were a double-bass player."
7. How widespread is the crwth today? Are you aware of other crwth players, groups or crwth makers?
"I would say that it is more widespread now than it was when I began my research. More importantly, it is now more often viewed and played as the non-academic, folk instrument than it was, as opposed to the prevailing pre-1970s methods that were based on academic technique. Certainly the crwth, along with the bagpipe, penny whistle, and other traditional Celtic instruments, has benefitted from the enormous, almost exponential, explosion of serious, disciplined scholarly interest in, as well as the increased general popularity of, traditional Celtic music over the last thirty years or so. I have seen crwths advertised in a number of catalogs, including that of Lark in the Morning. I know that there are a number of makers both in the U.S. and the U.K. Anyone interested in obtaining one should have no trouble locating a maker on the Internet. Since I have my own, I have made no inquiries myself. Anybody interested in making an historically correct crwth of his or her own might find handy the appendix of my thesis, which includes detailed descriptions and diagrams of known originals and copies."
"That question makes me think that I need to write a tutorial on the subject. At the risk of sounding dreadfully conceited, which I’m really not, I’d suggest my thesis. I can provide copies, at production and mailing cost, to those who are interested. It does not include a tutorial on playing the crwth, but it goes into more detail than any earlier document that I know of in describing what appears to have been playing methodology. A summary of that can be found in my online abstract of “Some Observations Regarding Crwth Performance,” the URL of which is:-
http://home.earthlink.net/~llywarch/cth03.html
I also would be happy to answer questions in e-mail, as in fact I’ve done on occasion over the years ( llywarch@earthlink.net saves the trouble of writing via Americymru). If there appears to be enough interest, I can eventually post some information online, but of course that cannot be done overnight. Having said all that, I should stress that the crwth has not been the focus of my musicological activity for over twenty years. During that time there may have been written one or more tutorials that are based on reliable investigations and that avoid advocating academic technique such as one would use with the viol or violin.As far as previous knowledge and skills are concerned, a background in playing strings is helpful, especially an understanding of how whole steps involve spaces between the fingers while half-steps do not, if one is a violinist or violist. If one is using the diagonal cross-torso hold that I prefer (holding it up like a violin makes working the drones very difficult), a background as a cellist could be useful, except that the distances between the points of contact on the strings are smaller. Probably the biggest problem regarding left-hand technique is that of extending the thumb sideways and plucking the drones. That gives the entire hand sort of a claw-like character that is totally alien to orchestral string playing. The thumb rests against the side of the instrument’s neck on the violin and viola, and it rests on the back of the neck of the cello or double-bass.Anyone seeking tutelage from any crwth player needs to find someone who is knowledgeable of the crwth’s history in performance, and particularly someone who does not treat it like an academic instrument. In other words, run for your life from anyone who teaches the crwth as merely the less agile cousin of the violin or viol!"
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1.What prompted you to make the decision to study Celtic music, and why did you specialize in the Crwth?
"I have been aware of my predominately Celtic roots almost ever since I can remember. As a small child, I used to listen to my great-aunt, who was born in 1871, sing some of the old ballads. She and my maternal grandparents, with whom I spent many idyllic childhood summer days, had a lot of the old-country expressions in their speech, even though they were born and raised in the American Midwest. My grandfather Marshall, while not a practicing musician himself, was a lover of fiddle music and owned several shellac-disc recordings of the Irish fiddler Patrick Gaffney in performance. I still remember playing “Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!” over and over, on my grandparents' “wind-up” 1915 Victrola that I now own along with the collection of records, most of which have survived several moves.
My investigation of the crwth started in 1965-1966, during my senior year in high school (S.P. Waltrip, Houston), when my studies in English focused on British literature. I volunteered to find out what Dylan Thomas was speaking of in “Under Milk Wood” with his reference to the crwth and also to parchs (ministers). Already being a violinist, I was fascinated with what I learned about the crwth, gathered more than enough information to mightily tax the patience of the classmates to whom I subsequently discoursed, but personally was left with far more questions than answers. Even from that quick, cursory investigation, I became aware of the many conflicting views about the crwth’s origin, its development, its function, and its place within the large and diverse chordophone, or string, family. Demands of college kept all the questions largely on the back burner for the next four years, except in the case of a research project that I did in my senior year, in connection with which the crwth came up again as a tangential issue. Unable to get it out of my mind and, frankly, being more than a little irritated over being unable to answer a lot of nagging questions to my own satisfaction, I took up the matter in earnest the following year in graduate school at the University of North Texas (1970-’71), as a semester project in my first musicological research seminar. The result was what even then I felt to be a less than satisfactory, seventy-page study that presented the often diametrically opposed views of earlier investigators such as John Hawkins, Anthony Baines, Kathleen Schlesinger, Hortense Panum, Karl Geiringer, Arnold Dolmetsch, and others. While my professor commended me heartily, I was still far from satisfied, so I deliberately spent an extra year and summer on my master’s degree in order to bring closure to something that had been bedeviling me for years. My research took me far beyond the University of North Texas Music Library and other American repositories to the British Museum, the National Library of Wales, Durham Cathedral Library, the library of Trinity College in Dublin, the Welsh Folk Museum in Sain Ffagan, numerous sites where important icons exist such as Worcester Cathedral and St. Mary’s Church in Shrewsbury, and the homes of a number of live informants across the water. The final product was a thesis that, even with substantial cuts, reached dissertation proportions before wrap-up and nearly drove me mad but, at the same time, was a pleasure to prepare. For a number of years after its presentation in 1973, I maintained a running, annually updated volume of addenda that took into account studies that came out after the completion of my thesis, until doctoral study and both teaching and research fellowships forced me, after more than a decade, to lay the matter aside. I still perform from time to time on the crwth, and I still occasionally run across something new in the way of valuable information, such as iconographic evidence. I have no illusions (or delusions) of having answered all questions once and for all, so it’s something to which I plan to return after retirement from teaching, probably sometime within the next couple of years."
2. How widespread was knowledge of the crwth when you began your studies? How difficult was it to obtain information/source materials?
"There was a fairly large amount of superficial knowledge, along with a huge volume of often contradictory theory about both the crwth’s origin and its place in the string family, particularly with regard to its relationship to the violin and its kin. Source materials were rather plentiful, but many of them were both brief and dated, even in 1966. Further, most of them treated the crwth as a side issue, relegating it to the category of curious anachronisms among string instruments. It wasn’t until I located the Meredydd Morris monograph, in the Welsh Folk Museum, that I found a whole book-length document on the subject; and even it, while of enormous value in terms of the place of the crwth in Welsh folk culture, was of limited usefulness in terms of technical matters. My reconstructions of both the genealogy of the crwth and the playing techniques were dependent on an understanding of the entire string family in general and fiddles and fiddling in particular.
As one who was still something of a novice investigator, I had to learn quickly how to pull the necessary strings to obtain access to materials that were in closed-stack holdings, which most of the British repositories were. Fortunately, my major professor had anticipated that and prepared for me a letter of introduction that helped greatly everywhere except the British Museum, where one stickler of a bureaucrat informed me that they did not accept recommendations from American professors, and that I needed to get a recommendation from, perhaps, Thurston Dart at King’s College, London. When I told him that such was quite impossible in light of Professor Dart’s rather recent demise (eliciting a giggle from a pretty girl behind the desk who did not care for the bureaucrat and later told me that she was so glad that he’d been caught in an error), I was told to go to the American Embassy. I later learned that such shenanigans were not official museum policy, but merely reflective of one small individual’s prejudice. At any rate, armed with my letter from the American Embassy, I ultimately gained entrance to not only the reading room but also the special manuscripts room of the British Museum, where ink pens are verboten and even turning a page with a pencil in one’s hand is a cardinal sin.
The Welsh Folk Museum was wonderfully accommodating, not only furnishing sources that I requested but also assigning two staff members to assist me during the several days that I was working there. Assistance with translating the archaic colloquial Welsh in a number of documents was of enormous help, and my assistants even tracked down some material that I had previously known nothing about, including the Morris monograph. In addition, I was allowed to examine, photograph, and measure each of the original instruments and reproductions in the museum’s holdings.
I would have hit an unyielding, insurmountable wall at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth had it not been for the assistance of a librarian who aided me with documents written not only in the characteristic backhand script of the fifteenth century but also in late medieval Welsh."
AmeriCymru: Hi Chris and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. You are appearing at the forthcoming 27th International Annual Folk Alliance Conference in Kansas City. Care to share the details?
Chris: Hi Ceri,croeso mawr, my pleasure, and thank you for the invitation. Sure, I will be an invited guest and Showcase artist at the FAI this year singing some Welsh folk songs and songs from the other Celtic nations. I have several performances but the main one will be at 9:30 on the showcase stage on sat the 21st Feb. The invitation came from TRAC (Traditional Music Wales), with help from the Arts Council of Wales. I will be there from the 18th (late on) until the night of the 21st and looking forward immensly to the opportunity of performing in America for the first time!
AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in traditional Welsh folk music?
Chris: Well I guess it was when I was a teenager, about 16 or so. I was never an Eisteddfodwr and for Folk music I think that was a good move as Traditional Folk is a different tradition to the Eisteddfod. But my interest grew steadily to invol ve performing trad songs unaccompanied (at that time), and blossomed when I was a student in England, especially after being involved in Irish sessions around Bristol and the West country of England which is very rich in English trad singing too. So many an invite from Irish friends who were always keen to hear the Welsh language tradition as perhaps they were unfamiliar with the repertoire of Welsh music drew me into folk performance and an appreciation of other traditions which I thnk has been a boon. The interest went both ways and I was introduced to some great Irish and Scottish songs that I added to my own body of sources and influences. Song collecting is really a great part of folk music and sessions (yes in pubs until the early hours) are one of the best and most enjoyable context to expand your personal repertoire.
AmeriCymru: What instruments do you play?
Chris: I play guitar, for the guitarists out there I have a Taylor 214 currently needing some work, and a Faith FKV Naked Venus Electro. Both have excellent character whilst being vastly different in sound and timbre. I learnt on a Spanish but moved to a steel string Takemine EN40 which although a great amplified stage performance instrument lacks the finger-picking fluency and subtlety of the other two.
I now have added the bouzouki as an instrument also and can be heard on the album too. Originally from Greece it has been modified in shape and retuned to suit Celtic music as a rhythm instrument mainly since the 60's.
AmeriCymru: Care to introduce your first album Dacw'r Tannau for our readers?
Chris: Dacw'r Tannau translates as “there are..” or “behold the strings” and is part of a line from the song Dacw 'Nhariad “Behold my love”. I recorded it at SAIN studios in Llandwrog near Caernarfon last March/April with John Lawrence of Gorki's Zykotic Mynci fame, on Gwymon Label.
There are 9 songs five in Welsh and four in English. I've known these songs for years but the bouzouki numbers and “Fair Flower of Northumberland (a Scottish border ballad) were arranged specifically for the album. The album has been received quite well critically and I hope to record another soon.
AmeriCymru: You have been compared to Meic Stevens and it has also been said that your song writing and guitar playing are reminiscent of Bert Jansch or John Renbourn. Who would you say are your major influences?Chris: Well first, its a privilege to be associated with Meic in any context and he certainly is a huge influence on me ever since I as a teenager although I do traditional folk (at least on this album) and he's more singer-songwriter, bluesy as well as folk sensibility. It's the quality of his songs that are breathtaking to me as much as his guitar style which is fluid and articulate but economical. A real legend. He represent the finest expression of contemporary Welsh musical artistry-he really does, and I had the pleasure of supporting him this time last year back in Wales in one of the best performances I've seen him do.
Maredydd Evans is a seminal figure in Welsh folk revival and his trad style is mesmerising. The late Nansi Richards and Llio Rhydderch are exceptional triple harpists, there is a concrete Welsh musical sensibility here in their playing which I find a source of great resourcefulness and is genuinely ancient and unique to the Welsh triple harp. Another triple harpist is Robin Huw Bowen who tours ceaselesly it seems and has recorded many excellent albums. I must draw attention to the singing of Plethyn who's unnacompanied harmonies are based on traditional Plygain singing and are beautiful.
I've always admired the playing of Janch and Renbourn. I've never consciously seen them as direct influences on my style though but more than one reviewer has pointed this out so perhaps the influence is audible-as it were- to listeners more discerning than myself!! Unconscious osmosis? Nevertheless it's a privilege to be compared to both.
I think it's important to seek influences from as wide a range of sources as possible even from other traditions providing you can integrate what you take into your own tradition, and many folk musicians have and do so. Although from a distinctly different tradition Dick Gaughan from Scotland is the traditional musician/guitarist and folk song arranger that I feel has had most influence on me. And I could listen to him all day. But I've listened to a lot of Nick Jones and Martin Carthy from England as well. And although I wouldn't list him as a stylistic influence I do admire what I've heard of the playing of Martin Simpson.
From Ireland Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny especially in their Planxty days have been a source of enormous pleasure as has been the singing of Christy Moore.
Another Irishman of note would be Luke Kelly of the Dubliners who chooses and interprets songs so beautifully and was around at the very beginning of the Irish folk revival.
Woody Guthrie has been an important influence thematically and as an admirer of American folk styles he was a great introduction. As a guitarist I can't help mention the wonderful American Bluesmen and am a great admirer of many artists from that tradition. Robert Johnson, Skip James and particularly J B Lenoir. I kind of see early Blues as a form of Folk music. But Artists like the wonderful BB King are perhaps an influence on my musical sensibility rather than a direct influence on guitar style. If so then it's all good!
AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to hear and purchase your music?
Chris: You can listen to and view photos and vids of my music on my EPK (electronic press kit) at:
http://www.sonicbids.com/band/robchrisjones/feed/
You can purchase my album on SAIN's website at:
http://www.sainwales.com/store/sain/gwymon-cd20
AmeriCymru: What's next for Chris Jones?
Chris: Well, I have an ambition to work in America and to travel as much as I can playing music. Also to record more albums now that I have one under my belt and having enjoyed the process for the first time.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Chris: First I’d like to emphasise how important I feel a forum like AmeriCymru is for promoting Welsh identity, music, business and contacts internationally and also it's crucial that we identify ourselves as ethnically Celtic like the Irish and Scots do so successfully as we are sometimes overlooked as people don't know. “Is Welsh Celtic?” A question I've often heard. Self-promotion is necessary as a musician to get noticed and is necessary for Welsh people to promote our national identity too as we have a great deal to offer as a people, especially now that further political devolution is on the cards in the UK.
But when I use the term ethnic I mean a cultural, historical and civic national identity not a vulgar genetic definition. A definition that includes everyone who identifies themselves as Welsh.
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John: We're basically a family and friends band - I've been doing stuff with my daughters, Micky and Danny ever since they were quite small but in 2012 we started playing with Holly Robinson, a really talented and well known fiddler here in Pembrokeshire, and coined the name Estron for the band. Jess Ward joined us with her harp two years later. I suppose the band really got going after Micky and Danny moved on from the instruments they'd learned at school to things they wanted to play for themselves. Micky learned clarinet to begin with but took up the ukulele and now she plays both with Estron, while Danny abandoned the trombone for the Welsh pipes - she borrowed a spare set I had and taught herself how to play surprisingly quickly. I suppose it helped that she'd been exposed to my own playing her whole life!
AmeriCymru: What can you tell us about your most recent album 'Gwawr'?
John: We recorded Gwawr in May 2015. We wanted to capture the music we had been playing since we started and before we moved on to new material. I've been playing this music for a long time now and I guess the reason we're playing this stuff is mostly that the girls have been exposed to it all their lives so that to them this is what they associate with Welsh pipes, whereas for Holly and Jess it was all new and exciting. To Micky and Danny this music is just `normal' everyday stuff. I suppose that's what makes it `folk' music.
AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in the Welsh pipes?
John: I started playing bagpipes in about 1990. The first set I had was a set of smallpipes from the Early Music Shop which I made from a kit. After putting it together I realised that I could make these things so I then went on to make a set of, I suppose you could describe them as `Border pipes' in G which I mostly played for the Morris team I was a member of. Then in '97 or '98 I met Ceri Rhys Matthews and became a member of Pibau Pencader, a Welsh piping club he'd started. There was something like ten people in it, a mixture of raw beginners and experienced pipers. There was a need for instruments and myself and John Glenydd started making pipes for the other members, and later to sell to other people as well. We were making all kinds of things from simple diatonic clarinets to bombardes and pibgorns, and bagpipes based either on the Breton veuze or ones which used a pibgorn as the chanter. Meanwhile Ceri was teaching us all his Welsh pipe music which by the nature of the instruments is quite a lot different from much other Welsh folk music. It was a great time and later I also played with Ceri in a pipes and drum band called Pibe Bach, playing both here in Wales and further afield. We even got touring work with the British Council in places like Oman, Palestine and Libya.
AmeriCymru: If someone wished to master the instrument, where would they go to acquire a set of Welsh pipes? How hard is it to learn to play the pipes?
John: Acquiring a set of Welsh pipes is not so easy at the moment. I don't know whether John Glenydd in Llanfihangel ar Arth in Carmarthenshire is still making pipes - I don't have his contact details but you could probably find out by contacting Ceri Matthews. I was making pipes myself until a few years ago but I went down with asthma which is very sensitive to wood dust so I've had to keep out of the workshop. Having said that, recently I've been teaching Danny how to make pipes and she's managed to acquire very good woodturning skills so we'll have to see how this develops. There are other people making pibgorns - Gavin Morgan in Merthyr Tydfil springs to mind. A lot of pipers here also play the Spanish Gaita which is pretty good for playing Welsh music on.
The pipes aren't particularly hard to play - they have open fingering much like a tin whistle which beginners find much easier than that of other pipes, such as Scottish ones. The hardest part is disassociating the blowing from playing the tune - with a bagpipe you play the instrument with a constant pressure on the bag with your arm and you only blow into the instrument when you need to keep it topped up with air.
AmeriCymru: Where can readers go online to buy or listen to your music?
John: Gwawr is available as a download (or as a CD) from Bandcamp. There's a link to it from our website ( www.estronband.blogspot.co.uk ). You can also find a solo album I made a few years ago, `Cerrig Dymuniad' on there as well as Jess's first solo harp album `The Mermaid's Lament'.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?
John: It's important that we keep this music going in this age of globalisation - otherwise we're going to lose it. Welsh culture has always been under a lot of pressure from across the border in England and it's important that we keep our cultural differences. We all need our roots, our differences.
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AmeriCymru interviewed Nial and Cass about the album and their past and future musical projects. Please read on below.
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Americymru: Hi Nial and Cass and many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by AmeriCymru. Please tell us more about your new album 'Oes i Oes'?
Nial – Thanks for asking us! Oes i Oes was originally going to be an album with a children’s focus – we were both inspired by the David Grisman and Jerry Garcia album “Not just for Kids” (I’m sure some readers will be familiar with this recording, and if not, I unreservedly recommend it!) This was the idea of a grown up album using material that was originally children’s. And that still might appeal to kids. So some of the songs are children’s songs or hwiangerddi – lullabies, nursery rhymes, and some other lyrics are semi nonsense and are from penillion, which is a traditional body of verses sung either to any tune that would fit, or used for Cerdd Dant. Some I remember singing at school. And though at pains to retain the traditional feel, we’ve sometimes been quite cavalier in our treatment, putting lyrics to different melodies and vice versa and even writing new music or lyrics if we thought it would be successful. It progressed from the original concept to some extent, but hopefully still retains a sense of the childlike.
Americymru: Care to tell us something about your musical backgrounds? What bands have you played in in the past?
Cass - I grew up in a family where singing and playing together was normal and learned tunes by ear as well as having classical violin, viola and piano lessons. Viola was my main instrument until I got a repetitive strain injury from playing it! Then I got interested in folk music at university and picked up the folk idiom on fiddle. I ended up researching Welsh folk music for a PhD and learned to play the crwth while I was at it, which is a medieval Welsh bowed instrument. First band I was in was a ceilidh band, then I joined Pigyn Clust in 1998 and Fernhill from 2000 to 2004. I released a solo album of crwth music (called 'Crwth') in 2004 and since then have mainly been playing with Nial.
Nial – Not many bands you’ll have heard of! Since the seventies I’ve played dance music – Ceilidh music and in pub sessions predominantly. Though I played in a punk band in art school I’d say I come more from the tradition than Cass does – I was taught fiddle by a traditional fiddler on Tyneside, dear J Forster Charlton, a real old boy from before the folk revival, and I played for years in his band, The Borderers. Musically I’ve always been interested in arranging, so I’ve usually had a hand in that aspect in the collaborations I’ve played in. Having played fiddle, mandolin, bass and guitar in various bands, I like to think I have an insider’s awareness of the possibilities.
Americymru: Is this your first musical collaboration? How did you come to be working together?
Nial – We’ve been playing together over a decade, and this is our second CD. Cass and I both moved into the area at around the same time. I was moving from Tyneside back to where I was brought up, and my parents lived locally. A friend of my mother’s told me about this girl who had moved in next door who played a strange instrument – crwth - in her garden. Then the girl turned up at my workshop with a problem with her fiddle and I realised who she was. I first started playing with Cass as a gun-for-hire accompanist, fairly infrequently because she was playing with Fernhill and Pigyn Clust at that time. But as we played more often, and as the material became more arranged, less extempore, we started to gig as a duo. At that time it was all instrumental, songs and singing came later.
Cass - Yes, singing is a bit more of a recent thing for me - other than in the bath, that is... I took a bit of persuading. Our duo was very convenient when I lived down the road and had very small children. I'd ring Nial to tell him the kids were down for a nap and he'd pop down for a couple of hours to practice. We had a lot of time to develop intricate arrangements, argue about chord progressions, rearrange the whole lot... that was the fun of it really. The records and gigs had to be done to justify the amount of time spent!
Americymru: Can you tell us more about the range of traditional instruments used on the album?
Nial – Well, strangely, the viola is only infrequently met in traditional music. When Cass first suggested it I needed no convincing as it’s used so effectively on one of my favourite albums of the eighties, “The Lasses Fashion” by the Scottish band Jocks Tamson’s Bairns. We used it very sparingly on “Deuawd”, our first album, too.
My guitar is steel strung, by the noted British luthier, Stefan Sobel, and is quite different in concept, constructionally and sonically from the Gibson and Martin models most luthiers follow. I notice his guitars turning up in the hands of top American players more and more frequently, most recently Darrell Scott. Where appropriate I try and play it with a hint of the harp in sound and lines.
Fiddle is THE most universal folk instrument, surely? Although the Welsh fiddle style is a broken tradition, it is thought that it was played in a lyrical and singing manner, with less decoration than, say, Irish fiddle playing. Cass often uses it as a second voice, and can sing while playing a different line. I’d need two heads to do that.
And finally, crwth is the instrument Cass is best known for. It’s a sound from another time, isn’t it? The medieval soundscape with drones and buzzes, not the clarity we seem to seek in instruments now. I think of its contribution as slabs of sound emerging with each bowstroke, the nearest any acoustic instrument comes to heavy metal guitar! But beautiful all the time in the way heavy guitar only rarely manages to be. Cass’s is a copy of a late 17 th C early 18 th C crwth in the National Library in Aberystwyth. It’s one of only a handful of surviving instruments.
Americymru: Cass...you recently edited an anthology of eighteenth century Welsh fiddle tunes, some of which appear on the album. Where can we find this book online and which tunes appeared?
Cass - Not that recently. 10 years ago now. It's called 'Alawon John Thomas' and is available from the National Library of Wales. www.llgc.org.uk and is an edition of a manuscript of tunes collected by a working fiddler called John Thomas in the mid-eighteenth century. There are over 500 tunes in the book which vary from dance tunes to song tunes to snatches of tunes by Handel - by no means all Welsh tunes. We used three tunes from the collection, 'Excuse Me', 'The Drummer' and 'The Key of the Cellar'.
Americymru: Nial....we learn from your website that you specialise in the making of 'Fine Crwths of single piece construction'. How long does it take you to make a crwth. How much could a first time buyer expect to pay for one of these superb instruments?
Nial - I trained as violinmaker back in the eighties, a proper apprenticeship, very rigorous. I became interested in crwths through contact with Cass – how could I not – and the violin background gave me the craft skills to be able to make, and make something which – hopefully - stands comparison with the highly developed violin aesthetic. They are made to sound as well as look good, though, of course. They’re a little quicker than violins - a few months - but the one piece construction (apart from the table), carved from one solid piece - does mean that as work progresses, there is all the time the worrying possibility that a slip could take out months of work! Price wise, I have to charge about two thirds of what a violin would cost, so starting at £4,000.00, $6140.00 with access to beautiful de luxe old wood extra on top of that.
Cass - Nial's crwths are the best of any I've ever seen, in look, sound and feel. Really beautiful.
Americymru: Why do you think that, historically, Welsh traditional music has been overshadowed in terms of its popularity by its Irish and Scottish counterparts?
Nial - That’s a really interesting question. I’m sure that Cass will have views on this. But…Certainly the late 18 th / early 19th century enthusiasm for Scottish country dance music and traditional melodies amongst the gentry was paralleled by Welsh music being played in the most fashionable circles in London, and enjoying the greatest praise for the beautiful quality of its melodies. But later in the 19 th century much damage was done to the tradition and a great deal was lost – when I say a great deal, I mean both music and the respect for traditional music. There were various factors at work here, but mention must be made of the enthusiastic takeup of Wesleyanism, and the doctrine that only hymns and religious music had legitimacy….bonfires of fiddles, the devils instrument, and hymns sung around the house instead of folk songs. By the time the eisteddfodau got going, much of the folk music of Wales was being forced into respectability and clinging to legitimacy only as a competitive art-music. And to a large extent that is the profile it has enjoyed on the world stage ever since. In comparison with, say, Irish traditional music, you have to remember that postwar, until the folk revival, playing Irish traditional music on a fiddle or whistle was deeply unfashionable, something sad old men did in a corner in a pub while youngsters shook their heads despairingly – but Irish music in the end prevailed, so, optimistically, maybe the Welsh revival is still to come. Certainly the media, broadcasting and the like do few favours for Welsh traditional music, and compare very unfavourably with what my VHF tuner receives over the water from Ireland ….both Radio na Gaeltacht and Clare FM play predominantly Irish traditional music for much of their output. Despite being a music station, Radio Cymru has only one program per week playing Welsh acoustic music, but only some of which is traditional, Radio Wales has the folk programme Celtic Heartbeat which, as the title suggests, does not play exclusively Welsh folk music. And it isn't even on the radar for television.
You then have a catch 22 situation whereby because there is no platform for Welsh traditional music, there is no exposure to it and the general populace are unaware of it, they do not demand it, and crucially, provide no market for it.
A broken circle.
So musicians in Wales either play what puts bread on the table – Radio Cymru’s rock output, much of which is unoriginal and derivative, but pays, or a select few play Welsh folk music for their own amusement in the corner of pubs. And good for them. Fewer still forge some sort of career out of it.
Outside Wales, folk enthusiasts are largely unaware of Welsh songs and tunes, and if pressed, might typify what they thought of as Welsh folk music as being “The Ash Grove” sung by a classically trained voice to sophisticated but unsympathetic harp accompaniment, a la the Eisteddfod. No matter how skilfully done, this sort of thing is not going to convert the unconverted…I’m not anti Eisteddfodau, by the way – I’ve attended and enjoyed many, from my kids school ones to the National Eisteddfod. They have great atmosphere and spectacle (especially the school one 
). Just that I think in the long term their contribution to the tradition and traditional music has not been a positive one.
Before closing though, I WILL emphasise the positive; exploring this overlooked area, overlooked for whatever reasons, means discovering neglected gems… and a heads up and respect for CLERA, the Society for the Traditional Instruments of Wales, who are doing as much as they can, with support for music and workshops. And as Cass says, let us not forget the progress of the last couple of decades.
Cass - I think Welsh music is definitely on the up at the moment in terms of public profile, thanks to CLERA, trac and a whole lot of bands that have been playing away largely unnnoticed for the last 40 years! I would say though, that the true measure of the health of a tradition is not how many bands and CDs are out there and how many people are aware of them. The true measure is how many people are actually playing and singing Welsh folk music for pleasure and passing them on to other people. That's the important thing and the child learning a song at school is as much a part of the tradition as the pub session or the band on stage. In fact, more so. There are certainly a lot more people playing Welsh music now than when I first got interested, nearly 20 years ago. It's always been an underground thing and I should think it always will be. I'm more concerned that it's passed on as community music within Wales than that people outside Wales know about it or that bands make a living.
Americymru: Any plans for live appearances?
Nial – Sadly no. This CD is sort of our swan-song, and it’s unlikely that we’ll be gigging it, or making another. Not from a Pink Floyd style acrimonious split – good e-copy though that would be! – but because Cass has some very good reasons, which I’m sure she’ll tell you about, and because for myself, I think that we’ve taken our collaboration as far as it’s going to progress. There’s also a distance problem now with rehearsal – we used to live only a couple of miles apart, now it would be a long car journey. And also, I kind of like the thought of going out on a high too. Think television comedy shows….by the time they’re on their eighth series, they are SO safe, formulaic, predictable…then you watch the rerun of the first series and realise how inspired and risky it was…once. Cease after the second series…it should be the law!
Cass - I''m taking a break from performing for the foreseeable future. I'm heading more in a spiritual than musical direction at the moment and putting my energies into church life. The reason I moved was that I felt called to the area we now live in, to support Christian youthwork and children's work. I'm in the process of working out where that call is going to lead me in the longer term! I think we've both moved on really.
Americymru: Where can people go to buy Oes i Oes online?
Nial – It’s a self produced and financed release, selling through Bandcamp, here Oes i Oes
Americymru: What's next for Cass Meurig and Nial Cain?
Nial - I’ll be playing fiddle for twmpaths ( Welsh ceilidh dances) with my band Aderyn Prin. I do so really enjoy playing for dancing. And the band’s pretty busy, which is good. Also I’ve been doing some gigs with my 15 year old son, Danny. He’s a great fiddle player. We’re “The Artists Formerly Known as Danny and His Dad”.
Cass - Musically, I'm writing hymns at the moment, metrical settings of Scripture to folk tunes. I'm also interested in storytelling, particularly Bible storytelling for children - I've trained in the Godly Play method which I like a lot. That takes up a fair bit of my time. I'm also appearing as a guest musician playing crwth and fiddle with Cerys Matthews in the opening night of WOMEX in Cardiff in October - but that's a way off! Not planning to do any other gigs at the moment.
Americymru: Any final message for our readers?
Nial – How about some musical recommendations? I don’t think Google and Amazon have Welsh folk music predictive advertising nailed as yet. So, here goes….People who liked Oes i Oes might also like Perllan , or anything else by the band Pigyn Clust, might like Cerdd Cegin’s recent release Medlar Pear , might like Dore by Bob Delyn, might like Fernhill’s Canu Rhydd , other Fernhill releases or anything else Ceri Rhys Mathews, Julie Murphy or the other Ferhill members are involved in. For a player wanting to learn some traditional Welsh music, Y Glerorfa’s Yn Fyw live recording is a great listen and has many excellent Welsh tunes, appealingly arranged and played. Readers might like our first album too – Deuawd .
Cass - And my solo album Crwth . Assuming your readers are listeners of taste and discernment? That's all. Enjoy!
Nial – Hwyl!
Searching for Songs
Hi my name is Chris Jones, I'm a traditional folk singer and musician from Wales. A member here on Americymru who is interested in the Welsh musical history and heritage of America. I suppose I'm doing the opposite to Welsh Americans who investigate their Welsh ancestry. My project is the reverse as I'm particularly interested in investigating Welsh folk music that would have been taken to America by the ancestors of today's Welsh Americans and rediscovering (hopefully) sources that still exist-particularly those that remain undiscovered, uncatalogued and unpublished.
Perhaps there are collections that exist which Americymru members may be aware of, catalogued or yet to be catalogued in community or city museums? Perhaps you know of collections bequeathed to Universities or colleges and may be unresearched? Perhaps some members here know of unpublished PHD theses that studied Welsh history particularly our folk music, song and lore.
In addition I'm looking for archived collections, as I'm also very interested in family, community and personal accounts and stories remembered till this day. Family heirlooms such as books or documents and collections which may contain or reference song lyrics or tunes from Wales. And, of course families memories, written accounts of the Welsh immigrant experience in America: memoirs, biographical or autobiographical that members here might want to share. Are there Welsh folk songs waiting to be rediscovered?
My project is primarily looking for Welsh folk songs that might have made it across the Atlantic and sung in Welsh communities in America, but have been "lost". And my long term plan is to collect enough rediscovered songs to reintroduce them into the Welsh repertoire and record them onto an album. But please do respond with any information regarding the Welsh American immigrant experience in either Welsh or English, as who knows what gems may be found?
If you are curious about my music and want to hear what I do then please click this link to my new website on:
http://chrisgwerin.cymru
Yn Ddiffuant (sincerely)
Chris Jones
AmeriCymru: Hi Gafin and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. When did you first become interested in Welsh traditional music and in particular, the pibgorn? Gafin: I consider myself brought up on a mix of jazz and folk. My father was a great fan of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and I can still hear those solos in my head. There was something of a Welsh folk revival going on where I lived when I was a child with lots of Twmpath dawn, Ar Log and Plethyn concerts. I think this was the establishment of my roots. From age five I learned the piano and I also learned sax and clarinet. My parents wanted me to study music but I chose healthcare. It wasn't until I was at University that I started playing folk music and I bought my first set of bagpipes from Jonathan Shoreland. He made pibgyrn but when I saw the instrument which looked crude and simple to my eyes, I thought I would just make one myself. Which took me on a journey for some ten to fifteen years trying to work it out and making them in my attic at home and then a small workshop in the cellar! So having made pibgyrn from wood ( Patrick Rymes a great talented young musician from the band Calan plays one of my D chanters) I thought the pibgorn would be a great instrument to get people interested in Welsh folk or for sessions, so the obvious thing was to get it made in a way that I could easily distribute as my time was limited.
AmeriCymru: Can you describe the instrument for us?
Gafin: The pibgorn is a simple chanter with a cylindrical bore with a horn each end, one to blow into and one as an amplifier. It has a single beating reed i.e. one tongue rather than two as in a bagpipe. It can be blown with or without circular breath. Its a fun instrument and great for building up woodwind skills. It always turns a head wherever you go!
AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little about the history of the instrument?
Gafin: It was first mentioned in Wales in the laws of Hywel Dda as one of the instruments played at the Royal Courts. This dates back to around 900 AD. The instrument is generally thought to have been played by shepherds and there are local accounts in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales of one being played by a shepherd in the last century. There were large pibgorn gatherings on Ynys Mon but I cant imagine they played in unison in those times!
AmeriCymru: How easy/difficult/impossible is it to learn to play the pibgorn?
Gafin: Like any instrument it takes time and patience to learn. Many are deceived by its simplicity but it is a woodwind and you need to blow into it correctly. I have heard some people speak of a woodwind embouchure starting with your diaphragm and ending at the lips. There are a lot of factors between these points before considering the reed.
The pibgorn plays open fingering lime a whistle, you can cover half notes or cross finger some.
AmeriCymru: Are there any online learning resources or demonstration videos that you would recommend?
Gafin: There is a growing youtube collection of pibgorn videos available. Its nice to see the fingering styles and sound of the instrument. There is a definite need for a good 'how to' manual. All my pibgyrn come with a brief 'how to' guide and there is a fingering chart available on my website.
AmeriCymru: Your pibgyrn are made of plastic. Care to tell us a little about the design and manufacturing process?
Gafin: The design process was very complicated and really makes you appreciate how every little plastic gadget or part takes a huge amount of human effort to produce.
I converted working wood pibgorn dimensions into 3D CAD drawings and after various prototypes went for injection moulding. I still hand assemble and tune every reed. The reed body is printed in 3D. I am also able to 3D print bespoke horn colours. So you can have a brown chanter with green horns for example. I have made a pibgorn in the colours of the Welsh flag. I would like to auction this for funds for the Welsh youth movement the Urdd.
AmeriCymru: Where can readers go online to purchase one of your pibgyrn?
Gafin: My website www.pibgorn.co.uk has an online shop.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Gafin: I am really happy that there has been a great interest in this instrument in the US. I hope people start posting youtube videos of themselves playing it and also in writing new tunes. It would be great for pibgorn players in the US to write new music for the instrument.
AmeriCymru spoke to Welsh musician and Taran founder Gerard KilBride about the recent S4C series 'Ffwrnes Gerdd' .
"The programme, an original idea by Gerard KilBride and produced by ffilmiau’r ffwrnes, continues the tunechain series and features a wide variety of styles and performances by different performers in the beguiling atmosphere of the Ffwrn café and restaurant at Fishguard, Pembrokeshire."
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AmeriCymru: Hi Gerard and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. What is Ffwrnes Gerdd and what was your involvement with it?
Gerard: I am the ideas originator, Producer, Musical director, tea boy and general dogs body.
Ffwrnes Gerdd is the first ever co-production between Arts Council Wales and S4C, and continues a series of short films I made in 2012 with Rhodri Smith, supported by trac called Tunechain/ Clustfeiniau.
These short films start with Robert Evans who discusses how he became involved in Welsh folk music and then he plays a tune he learnt from me. It then continues to follow the chain from musician to musician, a journey around Wales, discovering the aural tradition. They are absolutely beautiful but very low budget filmed and recorded on iphones.
- 01 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Robert Evans
- 02 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Gerard Kilbride
- 03 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Gafin Morgan
- 04 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Beth Williams Jones
- 05 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Stephen Rees
- 06 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Robin Huw Bowen
- 07 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Gwenan Gibbard
- 08 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Ceri Rhys Matthews
- 09 Tunechain: Clustfieniau - Elsa Davies
They were a great success, but limited by their low technology approach, so I approached ACW to make another set of films, using Welsh fiddlers, playing Welsh music on Welsh made violins. We also had help from Gethin Scourfield, another fiddler from the 80's band Penderyn and a legend in Welsh TV, producer of Welsh language hit Hinterland. He is working on the next series as I write this. So we approached S4C with the same idea but with Welsh singers. When S4C and ACW heard that we were working on two different projects they asked if they could co-produce and share some of the content? At the same time Theatr Mwldan, Aberteifi, and I had been planning to tour the Songchain/Cylchcanu idea using 10 artists from the films, touring Welsh arts centres and theatres.
This has just finished and was a great success - a game changer for Welsh music in Welsh theatres. We intend to tour again next year, with big plans for a collaborative project in Patagonia next year.
AmeriCymru: How many other Welsh musicians were involved with the project?
Gerard: In total 33 Welsh musicians, all masters of their crafts and touring.
AmeriCymru: Where can readers go online to view the programs or excerpts from them?
Gerard: We did a re-edit of all the tunechain clips for Lorient Interceltic 2013 and they are here in one programme :
Ffwrnes Gerdd, the two main programmes are on s4c's clic channel:
and
A ll links will always be at www.pibgyrn.com and http://www.trac-cymru.org/
AmeriCymru: When did you first become interested in Welsh traditional music? What are your musical influences?
Gerard: Both my parents played music and were instrumental in the Welsh music revival back in the 60-70s here in south Wales, so they were my first influences. They ran a dance band called Juice of Barley for thirty years so we all grew up with music all around us, my brothers and I learnt via osmosis.
Bernard is one of the fiddlers included in the films, a great fiddler and Dan who also played a big part in Taran, is currently the director of trac, Wales' Folk Development organisation.
My dad was a Ship's Captain who used to bring back tunes and whiskey from all over the world, we laugh thinking that a fiddle playing ship's Captain brings new meaning to the Mari Celeste.
My early Welsh influences were bands like Yr Hwntws who I was very proud to play the fiddle with, Pedwar yn y bar and Plethyn . Bob Evans who starts the tunechain and was also on the songchain tour, was a huge influence on my fiddle playing, he taught me there was "no such thing as a bad tune." But many great musicians passed through our doors all leaving a tune or two behind, it wasn't all plain sailing as we all rebelled and formed a punk rock band, but gradually our parents won us back with the offer of steady paid work in their dance band.
I learnt the fiddle when I was about 18 and after trying to make one, being a carpenter and joiner, decided I would learn to repair and make them. So I went to Newark School of Violin Making where I met the amazing Shetland fiddle player Ewan Thompson, who to this day is my biggest musical influence. He is a living legend, and a thoroughly lovely bloke.
AmeriCymru: Would you agree that Welsh folk and traditional music suffers by comparison with Scottish and Irish music in terms of international exposure? If so what do you think are the reasons for that?
Gerard: Not really, it is nowhere near as popular, which isn't a bad thing, but I think it's one of Wales's best kept secrets. If it was hugely popular it wouldn't be as special. History played a huge part. Ireland and Scotland almost lost their language but kept their music, in Wales it was the opposite. Wales as a nation has not promoted or supported its traditional music, comparing Welsh music to Irish and Scottish is also I feel, like comparing different fruits, an orange will never be an apple, sorry if that's obscure?
AmeriCymru: Is Welsh traditional music currently undergoing a renaissance?
Gerard: There are lots of young talented people, taking up instruments and putting the spirit into it and a lot of classical musicians joining in, which I have some mixed feelings about. I don't feel written music is the way to learn traditional music, but I could go on about that for hours. L et's not make it too popular 
Welsh Pibgyrn By Coppop (Own work) [ CC-BY-SA-3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
AmeriCymru: Your site, www.pibgyrn.com contains a wealth of information about the oldest of Welsh instruments, the pibgyrn. What advice would you give people who are seeking to become acquainted with it? Where would you acquire a pibgyrn?
Gerard: Many people think the pibgorn is a simple instrument, and feel that if they play the recorder or whistle then this instrument will be an easy transition.....not many who come from this route persist.
At first it is the most frustrating instrument to learn and to keep in playing condition. Moisture/ spit and condensation are the enemies and new players rarely understand how to manage this moisture.
It was for this reason that I made www.pibgyrn.com. As a professional instrument maker in Wales I found there was a huge myth and lack of decent information on the pibgorn. Those who knew how to play it were not keen to pass it on. This has changed now and the site is set up to dispel many of those myths.
Most of the players worldwide input into the facebook group here with lots of good advice,
https://www.facebook.com/groups/162020927154723/
The best advice I have heard so far is, until you understand fully how to adjust a pibgorn reed "do not touch or alter that reed!". Also moisture is your enemy. Learn to circular breath, and cross finger to save air, as they do with the Basque alboka.
The finest maker of Pibgyrn is Jonathan Shorland, his horn carving is second to none and like a fine porcelain, they are generally louder than most other makers instruments. He can be tracked down on the internet, he doesn't advertise, look for the band Celtech.
Gafin Morgan also a member of the band Taran, has made a pre cast plastic Pibgorn which works. It is available here www.pibgorn.co.uk . He again is a lovely man who has spent years trying to promote the instrument and through his efforts will continue to improve the manufacturing techniques.
AmeriCymru: You are the leading light and founding member of Welsh Celtic band Taran. For the benefit of any of our readers who are not familiar with it can you tell us a little about the 'Hotel Rex' album released in 2011?
Gerard: Hotel Rex, was a huge undertaking, with 26 performers from 3 different countries, and took just over two years to make. I am very proud of the outcome although it was not to the general publics taste. It is still Available on itunes and CD baby.
It starts with a sample of Jimmy Hendrix and ends with Dylan Thomas reading " and death shall have no dominion". It was the second CD for the band Taran, who mixed samples of ancient poetry, bagpipes and beats to Welsh traditional music.
AmeriCymru: What's next for Gerard Kilbride and Taran? Any new recordings or tours in the pipeline?
Gerard: We will be touring the Songchain/Cylchcanu project again next year, and I would like to continue to make short films about music. I have big ideas to include more English speaking Welsh artists and do some more collaborative work. Patagonia for the Mimosa's 150th landing celebration would be exciting. Members of Taran continue to work together in different outfits and if a project came up that interests us we would be back together in a shot. I am busy making and restoring fiddles and run several web e-commerce solutions for high end violin dealers. I am also trying my best to bring up a young family.
I would love to do more recording and playing, but no longer have the time to commit to something as large and all consuming as Taran.
Also I have another long term research project on violin bridges www.violinbridges.co.uk
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Gerard: Thanks for your interest and I hope you enjoy some of these projects. I would love to come back to the States sometime as I was blown away by the sheer scale and beauty of the place.
