Duw A Wyr

Discovered a real Gem today. Duw A Wyr, "a radical and radiantly beautiful album from the 24-year-old Welsh singer Lleuwen Steffan, built around liturgical vocal music, with saxophone improvisations eliding(sic - gliding?) in and out of the voices.

Duw A Wyr is distinct from its predecessor in two crucial respects. It's warm music, which Steffan sings as though singing love songs, and it's music that was first sung by working people. Where Officium used canons and plainchants sung by the educated European elite in the fourteenth century and filtered them through a rarified Nordic mist, the source material for Duw A Wyr is richly melodic, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes in pain, sung into folk history by proto-socialist miners during the Welsh religious revival of 1904-05.

The miners had dirt under their fingernails, and their eyes fixed on a better world, and—even though you won't understand the actual words here unless you're a Welsh speaker—you can hear these things in the music. (The synergies with Congo Square are marked, but probably shouldn't be overstated. Bad though their lot was, the Welsh miners were infinitely more fortunate than the slaves of Louisiana.)

As a double bonus, Duw A Wyr has considerable in-the-tradition jazz content—a tradition that pianist Huw Warren (who also produces, wonderfully, with a masterful sense of space) and saxophonist Mark Lockheart have of course been adept in transforming since both played with Loose Tubes in the '80s.

They delight as accompanists, and also on two purely instrumental duets, the slow burn to passion of “Maracesh” and more meditative “God Only Knows.”

Steffan herself, blessed with a voice of archetypal Welsh beauty—simultaneously heavenly and earthy, a true soul whammy—is primarily a jazz singer, and she brings the slides, slurs and blue notes of her early formative influence Billie Holiday to the material, where they fit to perfection. Music born in the valleys, but bound for Zion."

My brother brought it in to work for me to listen to, as his mate, Chris Byatt, had been raving about it over Christmas. It's a truly haunting album, subtly different, and with a deep deep soul.

I was suprised to discover that the keyboard player was Huw Warren, my ex-wife's previous boyfriend, and a guy I have bumped into often in the course of my life. It's good to see that he has found his niche in life, doing something unconventional, and following a path he loves.

Just read another review, which compares Huw's playing to that of Kieth Jarret. N.B. NJB