At Dublin Unitarian Church, on St Stephen’s Green, the first three songs on a spellbinding Wednesday night were about shedding the winter in May, recovering an ancient folk story from a bookshop in an imaginary city, and a landscape artist who died in a glider accident in 1964.
At least those were the explanations offered by the musician on the piano stool. As for what each lyric was specifically saying, I’m a little hazy, because this was a gig by Gwenno, aka Gwenno Saunders, a trilingual musician from Cardiff, and these opening songs were in Cornish.
Beyond her entrancing performance, this has been a landmark week for songs sung in languages that most listeners will not understand without recourse to the internet.
Continue Reading on The Irish Times
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.