Gwenno
Hebden Bridge Trades Membership
sixteenth September 2022
Gwenno Saunders is devoted to conserving the Cornish language alive, enjoying tracks from her Mercury Prize-nominated new report Tresor, sung virtually solely in that historical language.
There are only some hundred individuals who nonetheless converse Kernewek, or Cornish and, fortunately for these devoted to conserving that historical language alive, one in every of them is Gwenno Saunders.
Gwenno’s final two albums have been primarily sung within the Cornish she learnt from her father, who was a local of the realm, and her newest, Tresor, has rightly been nominated for the Mercury Prize. Make no mistake, it’s not a token nomination as Gwenno harnesses the phrases to her pure voice and a few very sensible electronica in the way in which Jane Weaver and Beth Orton achieve this properly.
On this tour Gwenno had a dwell band, together with her husband and shut collaborator Rhys Edwards on guitar, which added some further layers to her swirling synths and crystal-clear vocals. All this got here collectively in an atmospheric Tir Ha Mor, from her second album Le Kov, which made you are feeling such as you have been standing on an empty seashore in Cornwall with the wind blowing by way of your hair.
Earlier within the day the brand new King had visited Wales so Gwenno, who was born there, requested if there have been ‘any Welsh folks in?’, noting it’d been fairly some day for them. Gwenno joked that she’d been watching Michael Sheen movies all day, earlier than altering the temper with a glacial Hello a Skuellyas Liv a Dhagow – or She Sheds a Flood Of Tears – as she laughed that the title seemed like a ’70s people tune.
The centrepiece of a robust set was an epic seven and a half minutes Tonnow, which Gwenno described as ‘the spirit of the ocean, seducing everybody all the way down to the very backside’. Edwards took a bow to his guitar over refined drumming as Gwenno’s expressive vocals weaved by way of the music to create a maelstrom of noise and emotion that was deeply shifting.
There was a stunning second when, introducing the uptempo Eur Keus (Is There Cheese?), Gwenno requested the gang to hitch in on the refrain ‘mars eus keus, dro kaus’, which interprets as ‘if there’s cheese, convey cheese.’ This was the primary time this membership who’ve booked many nice acts may have hosted a singalong in Cornish.
Gwenno can be a Welsh-speaker and supporter of independence for her birthplace, so she switched languages to launch into the punchy and defiant single N.Y.C.A.W (Nid yw Cymry ar Wetrh – or Wales is Not For Sale  – including that idyllic Hebden Bridge, with its plethora of air B and Bs, can be not on the market.
The band departed leaving Gwenno and her keyboard for a heartfelt model of Clech – or Bells – which was initially recorded by legendary Cornish folks singer Brenda Wootton.
Gwenno was inducted as a Bard of The Cornish Gorsedh for providers to the language, which is a hard-earned honour for an artist who’s preventing to maintain this timeless approach of talking alive, and she or he’s doing so with nice tunes that present precisely why she’s on the Mercury shortlist.
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Phrases by Paul Clarke, you possibly can see his writer profile right here
