A buzzy new venue is spearheading a south-western musical renaissance, with a whole bunch of individuals dancing within the streets after a booming membership evening. Our author hits the ground for the Cornish conga
January could be a bleak time of 12 months right here – chilly, gray and drenched by the dreaded Cornish mizzle. However within the harbour city of Falmouth, a moist Sunday evening in midwinter isn't any excuse to not social gathering.
On the Cornish Financial institution, the city’s buzzy new music venue, the month-to-month Klub Nos Lowen is in full swing and the place is packed to capability. Inside, it’s a sonic swirl of pipes, fiddle, clarinet, bouzouki and trombone. Cornish band Skillywidden are holding court docket on stage, whereas on the dancefloor individuals hyperlink fingers and twirl across the room in a snaking, conga-like reel generally known as a serpent dance. Some are clearly previous execs; others are evidently novices, tripping over their ft as they battle to comply with the steps. Not that it issues: everybody’s clearly having a blast.
Nos Lowen means “joyful evening” in Cornish. Although rooted in Cornish people dance, it’s a surprisingly latest invention: the brainchild of musicians Neil Davey and Hilary Coleman, veterans of native bands Sowena, Dalla and now Skillywidden. The thought, Coleman explains, was impressed by Breton Fest Noz (pageant nights), which they got here throughout whereas touring within the early 2000s. Their model is a sort of madcap Cornish ceilidh, combining previous types just like the circle, couple, processional and serpent dance with strikingly fashionable takes on conventional tunes.
“Our raison d’etre has all the time been to lift consciousness of Cornish music,” she says. “Most individuals assume it’s simply the Helston Furry, or Padstow Could Day, or – heaven forbid – sea shanties. However there’s this wealthy, numerous physique of Cornish songs on the market that individuals don’t realise exist. We needed to alter that.”
After periodic one-offs in pubs and village halls, Klub Nos Lowen is now a month-to-month fixture on the Cornish Financial institution. “It’s considered one of our hottest nights by far,” says venue founder Rufus Maurice. “The perfect factor is that it doesn’t really feel like a bunch of individuals pretending to do some conventional factor. It’s such a stunning, heat neighborhood occasion, and attracts completely different ages, genders and backgrounds. On the first one we did, 350 individuals turned up and everybody ended up dancing down the road. That’s once I knew we had been on to one thing.”
Nos Lowen’s reputation is a part of a rising resurgence of Cornish tradition, from the revival of Kernewek, Cornwall’s native language, to the movies of Bafta-winning Cornish director Mark Jenkin, the neighborhood artwork initiatives of Golden Tree or the crossover success of Cornish-speaking Welsh producer Gwenno. Tellingly, within the 2021 census, 99,754 individuals gave their nationality as Cornish, or Cornish and British – a 52% rise since 2011.
Amongst these is Chris Trevena, a soft-spoken Cornishman in his late 20s, who started collating his personal on-line archive of Cornish music, Sounds Like Cornwall, in 2020, trying to find forgotten recordings in charity outlets and secondhand document bins. He’s amassed a formidable assortment of greater than 600 bodily information, and is passionate concerning the relevance the music nonetheless has for modern listeners.
“Music was – is – such an necessary a part of Cornwall’s identification,” he says. “Folks sang these songs at work, at dwelling, within the church, down the pub. It’s about preserving these artefacts for the long run. I’m haunted by how a lot has been misplaced to landfill as a result of somebody didn’t know the worth of it.”
Trevena’s venture builds on the Cornish Nationwide Music Archive, a repository of folks tunes, hymns, miners’ songs, shanties, brass bands and electronica co-curated by Exeter College’s Institute of Cornish Research and the music pageant Lowender Peran. However the place the CNMA is an instructional venture, Trevena’s archive is an off-the-cuff celebration of Cornish music, previous and current; alongside his historic finds, he's step by step constructing a library of contemporary Cornish music which he hopes will discover a international listenership.
“When you ask 10 individuals what Cornish music is, you’ll get 10 solutions,” Trevena says. “The choirs, city bands and people tunes are the inspiration, however after that, for my part, something goes. Aphex Twin, Gwenno, Mark Jenkin’s soundtracks: to me, they’re all a part of Cornwall’s musical tapestry.” And Cornwall’s musical historical past is extra different than some traditionalists let on: from Penzance’s little-known 70s punk scene (documented in Simon Parker’s new e-book PZ77) to the sphere and quarry raves of the 90s the place Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert lower their enamel, there’s all the time been extra to Cornish music than Trelawny and Camborne Hill.
For performers similar to Coleman and Skillywidden, a very powerful factor is for the music to maintain evolving. “Music is a part of who we're so I perceive individuals really feel treasured about it,” she says. “However it’s a dwelling, dynamic factor. We are able to’t simply play the identical previous tunes from 100 years in the past, the identical previous approach. That’s historic reenactment. Who says Cornish music can’t have drum’n’bass, or African drums, or didgeridoos? All we needed was an incredible, joyful evening to rejoice Cornish music. And I stand there on stage and go, ‘Bloody hell! Have a look at this! The place will it take us subsequent?’”
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