Gwenan Gibbard – “Trafaeliais y Byd” (I Travelled the World).

   Hey people! 🙂 

   Today I’d like to share with you a traditional Welsh song performed by Welsh harpist and singer Gwenan Gibbard. It comes from her album Sidan Glas (Blue Silk). I don’t understand the entire lyrics, but from what I do gather it is about someone who was travelling (sailing, I’m pretty sure) through the world and had to say goodbye to his native country – Wales – and a lot of places in North Wales are mentioned by name that have been dear to the lyrical subject as well as things he enjoyed doing there. 

Question of the day.

What is one thing you’d completely rid the world of?

My answer:

There are tons of yucky things in the world, like I’ve no idea why does stuff like vomit or vomiting have to be a thing, or neurodegenerative diseases, or some absolutely freaky sounds, or small talk, or any other stuff that I find more or less scary or overwhelming. But as I thought of this question, I thought that, actually, the best thing, in my opinion, to rid the world of, would be the primary sin. As I guess that would get rid of a whole lot of other yucky stuff. And I’d be really curious what would the world and our existence and everything really look like and function more long-term. That would be quite fascinating.

What is such a thing for you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What small change could the world make to become a better place tomorrow?

My answer:

People could make sure to get some proper, good quality, long sleep tonight. A lot of people don’t get much sleep around the start of the new year, so if they finally did catch up on their lost sleep tonight, tomorrow we’d have less car accidents, and many other types of accidents, more happier people, smarter people, and people’s immune system would work better.

Your turn. 🙂

Question of the day (4th December).

Would you rather like to see how Earth was created or how Earth ends? Why?

My answer:

I have no huge interest in geology, but seeing how Earth was created could be interesting – to be able to witness the whole process, how God was thinking when creating it and why things are the way they are, what it all looked like at the beginning. – I believe that as for the end, we’ll all be able to see it in some way or another, wherever we’ll be at that point. Plus, if you know how something was created, I suppose it’s easier to figure out how it may end.

How about you? 🙂

Song of the day (25th January) – Monica Törnell – “Faster Fantasis Visa” (Aunt Fantasy’s Song”.

Hey guys! 🙂

I’d like to introduce you to a singer that I know quite well pretty much since I’ve become familiar with Cornelis Vreeswijk. Some of her music I like, some not so much, but for sure, her career and Cornelis’ were closely related, because Cornelis Vreeswijk was the one who discovered her in the 1970’s.

Monica Törnell is from Hälsingland, and enjoyed singing since an early age. As a young girl, she was singing at the opening of a restaurant of her father, and Cornelis was passing by and heard her. He liked her voice and somehow from there it has started, he helped Monica to develop her career and she also toured with him for a bit and featured on one of his albums. She was very popular in Sweden in the following years, until at some point, about 20 years after the beginning of her singing career, she started having serious health issues like myasthenia gravis so had to step away from singing. However she did release her newest album some… 2 years ago, I believe. Her voice is very characteristic, right now as she is older she doesn’t sound as good in my opinion, but there are people who like her nowadays voice even more. When she was younger, she had really wide vocal range, and her vocal abilities as well as the sound of her voice and also her style a little bit, remind me very strongly of Janis Joplin, though maybe it’s just me. Her music is a sort of blending of folk, pop and rock and sounds quite characteristically of 70’s-80’s. Monica has also been very good at drawing and painting since childhood, and she does paint still.

I was wondering for a long time which song of her I wanted to share with you because I have quite a few favourites, but I didn’t want the language to be too big a bareer – as most of her songs are in Swedish. – The one I chose finally is also in Swedish, but I think it shouldn’t be difficult for me to describe to you what it is about so you can have a clear idea.

The song is called “Faster Fantasis Visa” and I’ve always thought that it sounds like from some sort of an old children’s programme, and it seems like I had a surprisingly good hunch because, well, yes, it is! I couldn’t find much info on it other than the programme was one of the first children’s programmes in the Swedish television and started out in the 50’s, and was called “Humle och Dumle”, and I believe Faster Fantasi (Aunt Fantasy) must just be one of the characters, but, apart from what’s in the song, I didn’t find any info about her.

I like her because she’s kinda like me. 😀 From the song we know that her full name is Eva Britta Karin Katarina. She sounds like an extremely refined and experienced person. She’s been to India, China, Sahara, Italy (twice actually), London, Vienna, Argentina, Yugoslavia, England, Netherlands, Pakistan, New Zealand, Göteborg, Moscow, Copenhagen, Berlin… all around the world virtually as you can see… but – she adds – “I’ve never been outside my door, because I travel in fantasy”. Ain’t that so very cool?! 🙂

Song of the day (4th January) – Jon Henrik Fjällgren ft. Aninia – “En Värld Full av Strider”/”Eatneme gusnie jeenh dåaroeh” (A World Full Of Battles).

So here’s Jon Henrik Fjällgren’s and Aninia’s song from Melodifestivalen. 🙂 Honestly I think “The Reindeer Herder’s Joik” is much better, and this one seems like made much more for mainstream, which it surely is, but I still like it and it’s cool. While Sami language is on my list of languages to learn and I love it dearly, I have no idea whether indeed “Eatneme gusnie jeenh dåaroeh” means the same as Swedish “En Värld Full Av Strider”, as I can only utter a few words in Sami, but at least I know for sure that “En Värld Full Av Strider” means a world full of battles. So here it is.

Greta Isaac – “Troi Fy Myd I Ben I Lawr” (Turn my world upside down).

Hi! 🙂

Another Welsh song today. Greta Isaac sings mainly in English, but occasionally in Welsh too, and recently she became a bit more widely known after featuring the well-known Welsh language band called Swnami. I really like this song.

Because it’s not available neither on Youtube, nor Spotify nor SoundCloud, I’ll share it on Dropbox and it will expire after a month since publishing this post.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0u0yqrw82ij06h5/Greta%20Isaac%20-%20Troi%20Fy%20Myd%20i%20Ben%20i%20Lawr.mp3?dl=0