MY LIFE IN MUSIC
Gwenno
The trilingual folk-pop star on her musical utopias: “There’s a purity to what it expresses”
BRENDA WOOTTON AND RICHARD GENDALL
Children Singing SENTINEL, 1976
Brenda Wootton is a folk singer from Cornwall, but her voice didn’t really fit in with the folk scene in England at all. This album is a compilation of songs that Richard Gendall wrote in the Cornish language, about Cornwall, and they got these two schools in Penzance to sing them. I grew up in Cardiff and I spoke Cornish because my dad’s a Cornish poet. So I would listen to this record and think there were a lot of other children that spoke Cornish, which wasn’t the case at all! It’s a gorgeous record and there’s a purity to what it expresses, because it’s about folk in the community, rather than being a troubadour.
YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS
Colossal Youth ROUGH TRADE, 1980
This is my Cardiff album. I hear Sundays when there’s no shops open, I hear the rain, I see the slate tiles on the roofs, I see a post-industrial landscape with not a lot to do. It embodies a city that doesn’t exist any more, because Cardiff is quite a different place now. But it’s still as arresting as anything – even more so these days, because there’s a lot of distraction in music, sonically. There were a lot of punk bands around at the time and Young Marble Giants really stood out for the rejection of all of that. Alison Statton’s vocal delivery, the restraint, the confidence, the minimalism. It’s something I aspire to and haven’t reached, but I think it’s what music’s really about.