Sywel Nyw & Endaf Emlyn – “Traeth y Bore” (Morning Beach).

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Last month I shared with y’all a song by Yr Eira, a Welsh indie rock band fronted by Lewys Wyn, who is the younger brother of Griff Lynch (my new faza peep). Sywel Nyw is Lewys’s another project. As part of which, in 2021 he released one single a month, in collaboration with various fellow Welsh musicians. Traeth y Bore is the ninth of those singles, written together with Endaf Emlyn, who is a very important figure on the Welsh-language music scene. He was one of the pioneers of Welsh-language psychedelic music (psychedelic-sounding stuff is something that a LOT of Welsh bands do nowadays, by the way), and released the first Welsh-language concept album (Salem). 

 

The lyrics of this song were written by Griff Lynch, and allude clearly and deliberately to Endaf Emlyn’s debut album, 1973’s Hiraeth. I happen to have a bit of a sentiment to this album. I found out about it thanks to Plu (the alt-folk trio of siblings Elan, Marged and Gwilym Rhys, a lot of whose music has been featured on here), as they did a cover version of Dwynwen which is originally an Endaf Emlyn song from the Hiraeth album. Also the time when I first discovered and listened to Hiraeth was just a really cool time in my life so I simply associate it with that too. And, while I’m not that well-versed in all the lyrics nor do I understand all of them, I Donn’t know every single word here either, I can definitely see the connection specifically to Dwynwen. Musically this song was also meant to have a similar feel to Endaf’s music and imo it absolutely does. I like this warm and kind of serenely uplifting quality it has, and as you may know by now, I always like me a good song that’s related to the sea in some way.