#cymreig

Dod nôl am wythnos newydd! Shwmae folks, glad you've been liking the Welsh music Wednesday recommendations so far, I've got one of Wales and especially Welsh language music's brightest stars as a spotlit artist for today!

Adwaith are an indie rock trio from Caermarthen in South Wales, made of three school friends Gwenllian Anthony, Hollie Singer (who is, aptly, one of the two singers in the band) and Heledd Owen.

They started out as more of a punk band, writing songs with a feminist punk rock angle, talking about their lives as girls in town (Lipstick Coch is a great song to check out from the time). They wrote as they spoke, a deliberate choice to be more conversational and not feel afraid to make mistakes in their Welsh, as language learners and feel more confident. And Adwaith have every reason to be confident: they are one of the most exciting bands to come out of Wales, and lately they have only been going from strength to strength.

Winning the Welsh Music Prize for their debut album, 2018's Melyn, Adwaith began expanding their sound into more indie and post punk on their second album Bato Mato, inspired by a trip taken by the band to get to a show, on the Trans Siberian Express train. They won the Welsh Music Prize again for that album, and to date that makes them the only artist ever to have won the prize twice!

It also took them beyond the usual boundaries of minority language music: Adwaith played the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury, and were even picked up for a session by the iconic radio station KEXP when they were at the ESNS showcase festival in the Netherlands in 2022.

They've released their third album this February called Solas, and once again Adwaith have taken a bold step. Solas is an all-Welsh language double album, and the band continues to grow sonically: they lean into darker synths, write about life and the world around them, find pockets of joy in the darkness, and just generally have written an album that should be lauded.

Anyway, Adwaith are extremely cool. Here's Solas on Bandcamp, if you like them, go buy their album and support them independently if you can. (Alternately if you're just in the area, they are on Libertino Records.)

I've linked the first song ‘Planed’ (‘Planet’), because it's quite Depeche Mode to my ears.

This is a new series of videos by Dr Gwilym Morus-Baird, covering Gwyn ap Nudd and his associations with Annwn and the Tylwyth Teg.

For those unfamiliar, Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird is a scholar and teacher of Welsh and Irish folklore & mythology sources. He’s from Wrecsam in North Wales, currently living in Gwynedd, and is a native Welsh speaker.

If you’re wanting to learn or discuss more about Gwyn ap Nudd (or pronounce his name), I highly recommend it. Dr. Morus-Baird is well-read and generally reliable, certainly facillitating good discussions on Celtic Sources.

Please do note he gives his own interpretations and hypothesis alongside the texts, so you should be aware of when he is discussing the known information in the source itself vs. when he’s expounding upon it in interpretation.

https://youtu.be/rwVBqI8VuFA

https://youtu.be/67N2XD8_uKU

The below video is not stated to necessarily be in the series, but it’s the next video and also discusses Gwyn ap Nudd in relation to Tylwyth Teg: