If BTS can get stadiums full of British fans singing along in Korean, it shouldn’t seem so strange that Gwenno Saunders is releasing her second Cornish-language album. She is a Cardiff musician who grew up speaking Welsh with her translator mother and Cornish with her poet father, one of only a few hundred fluent speakers who have helped the tongue return from extinction.
Her debut album, Y Dydd Olaf, was in Welsh, and to confuse the cultures even further, she was also an Irish teenage dancer in the company of Michael Flatley, but with Cornish she really made a tangible impression. Her 2018 album Le Kov, meaning ‘the place of memory’, had general themes of Cornish culture and identity and was credited with a 15% increase in the number of people taking Cornish language exams. At this follow-up, with the bigger picture already established, she settles into more personal observations — from mother tongue to motherhood.
In January 2020 she spent a week in St Ives writing it, exploring what it would feel like to compose in Cornwall herself after creating Le Kov in Wales. The first track, An Stevel Nowydh, means “The New Room” and simply depicts the space where she worked. The latter, Porth Ia, is the name of the Cornish town, and again the feel is smaller, more homely. One line translates as, “Over breakfast, think about my happiness.”
Of course I wouldn’t know this unless she’d told me. She has posted translations below the YouTube videos for the songs released so far, and has included a lyrics sheet with the album. She doesn’t try to limit her audience by communicating in a secret code, but the experience of isolated listening does create an otherworldly, mysterious feeling. The smooth, soft language is complemented by flute, plucking strings and an otherworldly analog synth line on Kan Me. On the minimal, creepy Tonnow, she puts so much echo on her voice that it wouldn’t even be intelligible if it were in English.
She switches to Welsh for a lone track that’s a little more aggressive. With its tense bassline and scornful vocals, NYCAW’s full title translates as “Wales Isn’t For Sale”. The song criticizes her homeland’s branding as something to make money from.
Elsewhere, the music is as beautiful and strange as it is in the county. Suddenly an exam in Cornwall sounds like a fun idea.
(Heavenly)