At this time of greatest division and apparent emptiness, my hometown of Merthyr Tudful sees its most extraordinary cultural highpoint.
It’s almost as if….out of all this distress and depression many are insisting – ‘We can create. The yellow poppy will grow in the cracks of the most run-down street.’
Our proud history may have been buried in an Anglo-centric curriculum fashioned by a Labour/LibDem administration in Cardiff Bay, yet the Rising Festival has become the focus of the year and every few weeks there are music and poetry open mics along the High Street from top to bottom with no support from the Council.
Rock bands like the Moonbirds, Florence Black and Pretty Vicious spread their sounds wider, while singer-songwriters such as Bryony Sier and Jamie Bevan are modern troubadours in English and Welsh respectively.
The humour of Anthony Bunko’s plays and Gus Payne’s brilliant figurative oil paintings totally confound the hackneyed condemnations by sections of the media who depict the town as a wasteland.
Last year saw the release of a ground-breaking album by the Merthyr artist Kizzy Crawford ( of Aberfan), namely ‘Birdsong / Cân yr adar’.
I’ve followed her emergence with great interest and enjoyed her experimentation with loops and mellow jazz, but didn’t expect anything as ambitious.
It’s bold, bi-lingual and adventurous : at a time when so many artists depend on single songs to hook listeners, this is a concept album.
The theme is the Welsh rainforests of Carngafallt in Powys and it’s very much a collaboration between Kizzy, Bangor-born jazz pianist Gwilym Simcock and the excellent amateur orchestra Sinfonia Cymru.
Each song begins in English then seamlessly transforms into Welsh and if the lyrics are occasionally rather too sentimental, it is raised to levels of great emotional intensity by Kizzy’s flowing, feathered tones ( reminiscent of the superb Irish jazz-singer Christine Toibin), Simcock’s subtle phrasing and the ever-sensitive musicianship of the orchestra.
The album’s journey is a celebration of the rich, vibrant life of these forests, leading Kizzy back to Africa and to a meditation on the power of nature to join all together as one.
What I love about the album is – despite Kizzy’s obviously jazz-influenced vocals – the music defies genre : soul, classical, folk and jazz merge and emerge like birds appearing and disappearing among the trees…..even as their songs prevail.
This is not an elegy for a lost world, rather a eulogy for one which exists and should be praised and prized as invaluable.
Merthyr needs to laud past heroes like Gwyn Alf Williams, Glyn Jones and Leslie Norris, but also to fully acknowledge that our present contributions to Welsh culture are outstanding : uniquely innovative yet never pretentious.
Indeed, there are exciting talents rising, such as Kizzy’s sister Eadyth who is featured on Geraint Rhys’s powerful new single ‘Old Age Don’t Come Alone’ and young poet Morgan Owen, from Heolgerrig, who has been resident poet on Radio Cymru and was recently commended in the Terry Hetherington Award for Young Writers for poems in English.
Sooner or later the wider world will have to take notice of this sometimes connected, sometimes disparate ‘Merthyr movement’.
WHA WE GOH YER?
Wha we goh in Merthyr?
Yeah, there’s loadsa bands,
poets, painters, singer-songwriters,
playwrights an graffiti artists,
there’s open mics an choirs…..
But wha we really goh yer?
I mean, mines an ironworks,
factrees an shops an clubs
ave all closed down ,
so wha’s-a bloody point
o songs an verse, ilarious drama?
Wha we goh in Merthyr?
Piss-artist , stroppy rebels
goh no respect f nothin,
too much bloody swearin
an stickin two fingers up
t evr’ryone in authoritee….
an tha’s jest-a poets an singers!
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