f30


been laid low. But then came rebirth of the Eisteddfod movement in the 19th Cen- tury, the beginnings of a revival of Welsh cultural pride and the popularity of musi- cians like John Thomas, ‘Chief of all the Welsh Bards’, who was harpist by appoint- ment to the court of Queen Victoria and an accomplished composer. Old Welsh harp music was deemed worthy of resusci- tation, even though, just like the Welsh language a century later, it had never real- ly entirely disappeared.


Democracy and the post-Enlighten- ment liberal mind destroyed that old need to praise famous men that had once driven the Welsh bard to peaks of poetic expres- sion. But that role has survived in West Africa. In fact, along with marriage guid- ance counselling and resolving family dis- putes, it’s the griot’s core duty. The nobler the subject the more the griot has to sing about. And there is no more blue-blooded name in Manding culture than Keita.


M


eanwhile, that distant cousin, the Welsh harp, was also born in a mist of uncer- tainty, a Celtic fog that cov- ered the British Isles after


the Romans departed and the Saxon invaders came from which historians and ethnomusicologist have trouble retrieving their hard facts. By the time the tenth century Welsh King Hywel Dda ‘The Good’ – codified the activity of the bards in his famous Laws, the harp that was depicted on ancient Pictish stones or carved into Breton rock had, along with the crwth, become the main tool of Welsh musicians and poets. King Hywel’s laws speak of the pencerdd or master craftsman, who, like the griot, had to be adept at a huge num- ber of varied musical and poetic skills, or the bardd teulu, the chieftain’s personal ‘court’ bard, who sang for their lordships and also accompanied the war ‘posse’ into battle. Out of these Laws grew the cerdd dant or ‘art of the string’ and the cerdd dafod or ‘art of the tongue’, in other words a lavish and strictly regulated sys- tem of highbrow culture involving harpists, poets and other musicians who entertained kings, dukes, chieftains, ladies, warriors and men of note right through the middle ages.


The ascent of a Welsh family, the


Tudors, to the throne of England in the late 15th Century ironically set the old Welsh bardic tradition on a slow and painful decline. The Welsh elites devel- oped a taste for English entertainment, even for melodies and fashions from Italy and other parts of Europe. The bardic arts retreated into folk culture, carried about the green realm by roving minstrels and gypsy harpists, whom the 18th Century Methodist bible-bashers and chapel-goers reviled for their loose morals and thirst for ale. The great essayist Thomas de Quincey may have noted, on his extended walks around Wales in the early 19th Century, that almost every inn possessed a harpist whose job was to entertain the guests, but in truth the old harp music, once an emblematic expression of Welsh culture at its most sophisticated and essential, had


Keitas are the descendants of the greatest ruler in Manding history, the founder of West Africa’s most powerful Empire, the warrior-king to beat them all, Sunjata himself. Such is the power of Seck- ou’s family name that when a Diabaté, like Toumani, or a Kouyaté, who were the tra- ditional griots of the Keita clan, meets a Keita, he will quite likely launch into a paean of some kind or another, and no doubt expect some reward – money, a beautiful robe or some other gift – in return. We have no name with equivalent power in British culture. Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, Hanover, Windsor, Beckham – none of them is likely to get humble musical folk bursting into song for a pound or two.


Catrin Finch was born into a more lev- elled and less deferential world than Seck- ou’s, barely two years after him. Even though her birthplace was Aberystwyth, she arrived in a decidedly non-Welsh household. Her father was a geographer and agricultural scientist from Yorkshire who had moved to west Wales for his work and her mother was German by birth. Attending a Welsh-speaking school in the seaside village of Llanon south of Aberystwyth however, she ended up speaking both fluent Welsh and RP English. She remembers, “The sea was a big part of lives.”


At the age of five, she was taken to the Lampeter Music Club to see a Spanish harpist by the name of Marisa Robles. It was a dazzling epiphany for the little girl. “I remember that event very clearly,” she says. “Her glamorous dress, the golden harp, everything about it. She was selling and signing cassettes at the end of the evening and I went up and said, ‘I’m going to be a harpist like you.’”


Things moved fast after that. By the age of nine, Catrin had already complet- ed all her grades and, thanks to the will- ing sacrifice of parents and teachers, she began to take lessons up in Caernarfon with one of Wales’ most famous harpists, Elinor Bennett. “Elinor was a big influ- ence in my life,” says Catrin. “A lively per- son, very strict but very kind.” The classi- cal rigour of the tuition, which involved a round trip of five hours every fortnight from her home in Llanon, was alleviated by Bennett’s passion for all forms of music, including old Welsh songs and airs, and her penchant for leaping up and dancing about the room when the spirits took hold her. Years later, Catrin married Elinor’s son Hywel.


B


ehind Catrin’s modest assertion that “I was already making a name for myself by my mid teens and winning competi- tions,” lies the fact that most people around her were convinced they had a child prodigy on their hands. Regu- lar appearances with the National Youth Orchestra, a cupboard full of trophies and even a few spots on Blue Peter only bol- stered that view.


After O-levels, Catrin was sent to study at the Purcell Music school in Hert- fordshire, a hard move for a 16-year-old from the far west whose family life had recently been shaken by the divorce of her parents. But she was going places. At 18 she went to the Royal College of Music and barely a year later, she received a call from Buckingham Palace to ask if she would accept the newly created post of official harpist to the Prince of Wales. By this mischievous twist of fate, she man- aged to live a modern version of that musical deference that defined the old bardic tradition.


“I did feel a bit trophy-ised,” she admits, “stuck in the corner of the Palace during some huge banquet with a few pretty plants arranged around me and my posh dress on. But there I was… the Royal Harpist! I used to find it quite funny. I mean, I was living in these messy student digs in Willesden Green and every now and then I’d put my dress on and toddle off to Buckingham Palace to be trans- formed into this glamorous figure. And then I’d come home to Willesden, hopeful- ly in time for the pub!”


The publicity value of the Royal appointment was immense however. Catrin became a star in the classical music world, fielding a frenetic schedule of per- formances all over the globe and record- ing offers from the likes of Sony. She was young, very beautiful and technically daz- zling, attributes that still shine today, although never by her own admission. Face to face, Catrin is friendly, affable and as glamorous in her dress as she is down to earth in her manners and opinions. She has something of the beatifically talented but thoroughly practical head-girl about her. But when she plays the harp, you get a glimpse of that molten poetic heart without which virtuosity is always just a paltry and mechanical thing.


The River Teifi is raging under the arches of Cardigan’s 17th Century bridge the day we arrive for the second part of the second chapter of the harp and kora story. Freak Easter winds lash the sodden slate roofs of the town. Fish and chip signs flap in the breeze. The Teifi Otter is clothed in a soaking red rugby strip of Wales. England 3 – Wales 30. Go Cymru! Shame about the weather.


Catrin is focused and obliging although clearly tense about tonight’s concert at the Theatr Mwldan, which is taking place almost exactly a year after her seat-of-the-pants debut there with Toumani Diabaté. Her trip to play in Dubai the following weekend is also under- standably preying on her mind. No rest for the über-talented. I ask Seckou what images come to him if he sits back and lis- tens to the harp. “Angels,” prompts Catrin, laughing. “Flowers,” says Seckou, before adding in a more serious tone, “it just delivers emotion for me, in all sorts of ways, happy or sad.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84