Cerys Hafana

Musical Road to Womex 2024 – Cerys Hafana “Rhythm Passport”

by
Cerys Hafana
Photo by Heledd Wyn

If a country is nicknamed the ‘Land of Song,’ you can be sure that the quality of its folk repertoire and the talent of local songwriters are hard to match. Thus, standing out in the Welsh songwriting scene is no easy feat. However, since 2022, when we had the revelation of listening to Edyf, her second full-length release, we would have very few doubts if someone asked us to suggest an up-and-coming Welsh artist…

Cerys Hafana‘s sound is deeply rooted in the Welsh tradition, despite her being born in Manchester—yes, the very place where Womex will take place this October! At the same time, her music is challenging and goes far beyond traditional boundaries. Cerys’ approach to music is both imaginative and iconoclastic, rethinking the triple harp—her chosen instrument of disruption since she was eight—to uncover its raw, emotive power. This has placed her at the forefront of a movement that both preserves and shakes up Welsh musical heritage, suggesting new possibilities for the role of traditional instruments in contemporary music.

We reached out to her to dedicate a Musical Road to Womex episode featuring a Q&A and a playlist handpicked by Cerys herself.Could you briefly introduce your music to someone new at Womex and share the key influences and origins of your unique sound?As I child I studied classical piano and traditional Welsh harp music. I then decided that I liked alternative pop music and electronic music in my teens, and then briefly joined a 6-keyboard ensemble who played minimalist and post-minimalist music. Though I mostly perform on the Welsh triple harp these days, I like to think that all of these influences are part of my ‘sound’ and compositional process.

Could you share a personal anecdote or experience that impacted your musical journey and the evolution of your sound?

I think one of the most influential events of my musical journey has been the Festival Interceltique de Lorient. I’ve been almost every year since 2018 and each year have a memorable or strange experience. The first time I went, I performed with an ensemble of traditional Welsh triple harpists in a disused underground reservoir. Another year I had the chance to perform in the city’s football stadium for 8 nights in a row. Last year I got to hear one of my own compositions being performed by a bagad (sort of like a 60-piece Breton bagpipe orchestra) in the festival’s prestigious bagad championship, which was probably a career (and life) highlight.

In a world full of diverse musical genres, styles, and traditions, how do you believe your music stands out and brings something fresh and exciting to the audience’s ears?

I think that the harp has a lot of stereotypes attached to it. People see a harp and immediately start thinking of angels and Celtic goddesses. I don’t really identify with any of that, and often have people tell me at the end of gigs that they don’t usually like harp music but liked my harp music. I try to approach the instrument in a much more rhythmic way than people expect from a harp, and also think my particular harp has a much more ‘raw’, imperfect sound (combined with my imperfect playing technique!), which I try to embrace.

As Womex is not only the Worldwide Music Expo but also a lively global music funfair, are there any showcases you’re looking forward to attending and enjoying or artists participating that you would like to meet during those five days?

Apart from the other two Welsh artists who are performing at WOMEX this year, Gwenifer Raymond and N’famady Kouyate, I’m not very familiar with any of the other acts playing there, which is exciting! Usually the gigs I enjoy most at festivals are the ones where I had no expectations, and just found myself there by accident.

This edition of Womex will take place in Manchester, a city with a vibrant cultural scene and rich music history. Are you particularly passionate about any act coming from the city and how has the city’s musical heritage influenced your work, if at all?

I was actually born in Manchester, and lived there until I was five. My parents met in a band run by Manchester-based performance artist Edward Barton. It was called Pudding and I think the peak of their career was having their Christmas song included on the Observer’s list of the top 10 alternative Christmas songs (the song was called “Little Christmas Eve Thieving” and I think it’s up on Youtube). As it’s the reason my parents met each other, I guess it has to be the Manchester band that’s had the biggest impact on my life!

Womex is a unique opportunity to share and showcase your music with new people and inform them about your upcoming projects. Could you reveal some of your plans for the future?

I recorded a lot of solo piano compositions at the beginning of the year, and will be releasing the first batch of those in September to coincide with the two-year anniversary of my last album, Edyf. Otherwise, I’m hoping to get more time in the autumn to work on new harp material. I’m going to be touring again in early 2025, both in the UK and in mainland Europe, so I want to have some new things to play then!

Aside from that I’m also very keen to play a pipe organ, if someone would like to let me into their church.

If you had to draft an invitation card for our readers to join you at Womex and enjoy your showcase, what would you write in it?

Come and listen to some sad Welsh harp pop. Hopefully it will make you cry.



Source: Musical Road to Womex 2024 – Cerys Hafana – Rhythm Passport

			


					
			






	

					

				
Cerys Hafana’s beautiful “gibberish” for the triple harp
		

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By Imke Staats


It is actually quite telling that she came across her performance as a surprise during a pop festival. Cerys Hafana is from Wales and is a young person with short bleached hair who sometimes wears thick boots with long dresses. And who occasionally swaps her instrument, the Welsh triple harp, for a piano or electric guitar. In any case, she does not fit the stereotype of a classical harpist. And even though she deals with Welsh folk music, she does not necessarily preserve its tradition – something that some people accuse her of.




It was in September 2023 when the 20-year-old put her harp on the stage of the Resonzraum in Hamburg’s Feldstrassenbunker. This room is the home of the Ensemble Resonanz, a Hamburg string orchestra with a penchant for the avant-garde. Those who come here usually hear classical and new music; surprises are part of the concept. Since the concert was organized as part of the predominantly rock-pop Reeperbahn Festival, curiosity was all the greater. And she was rewarded with an almost magical atmosphere of warm, overlapping sounds and stories. Those that were plucked purely instrumentally from the three strings, and those that were sung in a foreign language. A red electric guitar was also used. The whole thing had an old-fashioned and artistically free, contemporary feel at the same time.


Cerys Hafana’s music is full of energy, her own enthusiasm is clearly palpable. The language with rolled Rs and throaty Ch sounds is Welsh, spoken by around 20 percent of people in Wales. Since hardly anyone in the audience understood her, the musician explained some of the lyrics in English, which revealed strange, funny, but also dark aspects. [ . . . ]


Continue at Folker.World: Cerys Hafana | folker.world

			


					
			





	

					

				
Four rising Welsh music acts to set your playlist ablaze
		

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Wales has a rich musical heritage, and the next generation is ready to take centre stage.


By Vivian Lam


Wales has always had more than its fair share of great musicians. From Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey in the 1960s, to Budgie and Badfinger in the 1970s, The Alarm in the 1980s and Super Furry Animals, Catatonia and Manic Street Preachers during 1990s Britpop.


Since then, Marina, Funeral For a Friend and Bullet For My Valentine have been among the more popular recent music acts to emerge from Wales. And today’s Welsh music scene continues to feature a huge variety of artists who create a plethora of styles.


Here are four rising acts who continue the tradition set by their predecessors.


1. Cerys Hafana


Since the release of her first album Cwmwl in 2020, harpist and multi-instrumentalist Cerys Hafana has emerged as one of the most original voices in contemporary Welsh folk music. Mixing folk with more modern styles, Hafana plays the harp, Wales’ national instrument.


By subverting traditional Welsh folk songs and composing her own, sometimes minimalistic influenced music, Hafana simultaneously continues and breaks with tradition.








On her second album Edyf (2022), Havana used the National Library of Wales archive to resurrect old folk manuscripts. Recordings such as Cilgerran and Comed 1858 display a mystical emotion which somehow combines old melodies with more contemporary arrangements.


2. Minas


Fans of James Minas, or just Minas, call him a hip-hop artist. But the Cardiff-based producer and bandleader sees his work as part of a post-punk lineage that celebrates DIY creative independence and diversity. He’s happy with any number of genre labels, as long as they are meant kindly.


Minas’ music certainly uses a punk energy as a way of relating to and understanding the way the world works. For example, the song All My Love Has Failed Me is a prolonged surge of angry adrenaline, layering monotone rhythms that build into short looped riffs. It takes two minutes to change chord, but the music is constantly building and evolving up to that point.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbwXKm5wsfs




Minas’ parents were punks so he heard this kind of music as a child. But as is clear on songs like Payday, he is also influenced by grime, and that helped him hone his production skills before taking his band and music to the stage.


Proud of his Welsh-Greek identity and having grown up around the different accents of the capital city and valleys, Minas never thinks about how to speak or sing when performing. In his discernible Cardiff accent, he won’t do more than three takes of a track when recording. He aims for the opposite of “manufactured” by keeping the live feel, even in the studio.


3. VRï


The trio VRï started in Cardiff when classical music students, Jordan Price Williams and Patrick Rimes, discovered a shared interest in their native Welsh folk music, language and traditions. Together with Aneurin Jones, they fuse the classical music approach and instrumentation of two violins and cello with Welsh folk music and energy. All three sing on tracks too.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft0MNreiJ_w


Live, the band helps its fans feel a sense of ownership over the music. They’ve released two albums to date, Tŷ Ein Tadau in 2019 and 2022’s Islais A Genir. The song Cainc Sain Tathan is typical of their style, with its clever arrangements and blend of voices and instruments, song and extemporisation.


The music they play has been through the hands of Welsh people for hundreds of years and is the product of those who have cared for, curated and celebrated it for centuries. The energy and precision of their arrangements and performances put it in safe hands and carry it forward for the next generation.


4. Nogood Boyo


The track One Day says a lot about the band Nogood Boyo, named after a character in Dylan Thomas’ play Under Milk Wood. It’s bilingual with alternating lines in Welsh and English, but the lines are not straight translations and bilingual listeners will experience something different from it. The track fuses electronic dance and rock music with folk-style fiddle and accordion playing. It’s also in an oddly lilting 6/4 beat that catches out the incautious or inebriated dancer.


The video tips a Welsh hat to folk-horror and the supposedly strange stuff that rural people get up to – such as speaking a language that has survived almost 750 years of oppression, reputedly by only being spoken when an English person enters the room.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQDMroqAC_U


Live, the band fizzes with energy and galvanises a loyal audience into an energetic dancing mass who hang on, and sing along to, every word of each song. Nogood Boyo has coined itself the label “trash-trad” but this disguises the subtlety of the material. And the band’s commitment to fusing traditional music with contemporary forms neatly sums up the more rap influenced songs such as Not My King. Let’s just say Nogood Boyo is not looking to be on any forthcoming honours lists.


Source: Four rising Welsh music acts to set your playlist ablaze