The Welsh Folk Song Society was duly set up in 1906, and its tune-hunters set off on safari into the rural heartlands, collecting and notating songs, a job continued by the St Fagans National Museum of History during the 1960s and 70s. The medieval harpist Robert ap Huw (c1580-1665) had thoughtfully written down a manuscript of harp music, which preserved the bardic tradition from centuries before (the music has been painstakingly recreated by the duo Bragod, incidentally). Cerdd dant – the uniquely Welsh art of singing an improvised counter-melody over a harp tune – remained in rude health. Not everything was lost, though: there were still plenty of triple-harpists and clog dancers around to pass on their knowledge. So the music has been preserved in an earlier form.” When the Methodists moved into Wales in the 19th century, people stopped playing traditional music. "But in Wales the music is different, and I think it’s because in Scotland and Ireland they carried on playing their music across the 19th and 20th centuries, so it carried on being developed. “Everyone who plays traditional music within the British Isles likes to think of our individual traditions as being unique, and they’re really not. “The main thing that came out was finding common ground in our varying heritages,” he says. He studied classical double bass at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and is one of the best folk multi-instrumentalists of his generation. Jordan Price Williams was one of the Welsh contingent (and, presumably, one of the four-part harmonisers). “Is that a national thing? It was fascinating!” “At any given time, the Welsh people in the group would want to break out in four-part harmony,” says Lauren. “I’d never done a song-writing residency before, and culturally I didn’t know anything about Wales,” she says. It was a completely new cultural experience for Irish singer-songwriter Lauren Ní Chasaide. The project wanted to explore issues around indigenous language, culture and identity, looking at how music carries language while also transcending language across the globe.
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