25 f WelshMountain Times
9Bach’s imminent second album, with singer Lisa Jên’s new-found songwriting voice to the fore, raises the bar even higher for Welsh-language music on the world stage. Sarah Coxson pulls up a chair at their kitchen table to explore their unconventional take on the Welsh folk tradition. Photos: Judith Burrows.
O
ver the last year, I have enjoyed many comfortable hours in the company of 9Bach’s Lisa Jên Brown and Martin Hoyland, sharing a
panad (cuppa) and meals and stories, as their young daughters make free with the glitter-glue on the table around us. Cym- raeg is the mamiath (mother tongue) of their home, more so in Bethesda than in most of Gwynedd, or the rest of Wales, despite the rising number of incomers in Lisa’s lifetime. Open-armed in their wel- come, time spent in their home has been such a lovely immersion in normal family life that I’ve often forgotten that I’m sup- posed to be interviewing them.
Home is inspiration for 9Bach. They
live in Lisa’s nain’s crog-loft cottage (9Bach being a play on the Welsh ‘nain bach’ meaning little grandmother) up in the hills and mists over Bethesda and the beautiful Ogwen Valley. Beyond their win- dow looms the imposing Penrhyn Quarry, at one time the largest slate quarry in the world and the site of the longest strike in British industrial history (1900 – 1903): a dispute which still resonates in Bethesda today with long-standing family feuds based on whether striker or bradwr (blackleg). It’s difficult to escape the histo- ry of the town, its main street lined with as many chapels as pubs and sandwiched between the mighty Glyderau and Carneddau mountain ranges.
The art lovers amongst you will know the lowering-skied paintings of Kyffin Williams that depict these Snowdonia landscapes. Renowned for their sombre beauty, their dark, slate-grey palette, the broad brushstrokes depicting rain-lashed mountains and enveloping clouds, some critics even go as far to say his pictures allow viewers to ‘visualise’ Welshness.
I’m keen to avoid any pitfalls of stereotypes around national identity but 9Bach, right… they evoke that same sense of place. Just as you can imagine the hot, harsh desert landscapes of the Sahara in the gritty blues of Tinariwen, or the windswept shorelines of the western isles in the soaring fiddle playing of Aidan O’Rourke, 9Bach convey something of the essence of North Wales.
In the plaintive purity of Lisa Jên’s voice; in the stripped-back arrangements and bare-boned melodic lines on harp, piano, harmonium and guitar; in the ethe- real three-part harmonies; in the dub groove, bass throb and languid rhythms and the tangible breathing space between, you can trace the songlines of Lisa’s home- town; the clanging industrial workings of the Penrhyn Quarry; the harshness and the humanity of its stories; the ancient, jagged mountain peaks and rowan tree-lined streams of Gwynedd. And that’s purely an emotive response without having a mean- ingful hold on the Welsh language… so there are much greater depths to delve.
Borne out of the marriage, both musi- cal and legally-binding, of Lisa and Mart, the idea for 9Bach was not conceived here, but in a Camden flat back in 2005. Indie rock guitarist Mart (a folk virgin recover- ing from “rock and roll burnout” after his former career in ‘90s band Pusherman) was inspired to pick up his acoustic guitar by Lisa’s emotive singing of a traditional Welsh song, as he washed the dishes after a boozy Sunday lunch.
An actor by trade, Lisa is also a long- time singing collaborator with fellow Bethesda native Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals), and has been singing Welsh tra- ditional songs since her teens – lured in by their bleak stories. Immersed in the bosom of her Welsh-speaking community, the spirit of the Sunday hymn singing at chapel, the teenage rites of passage at Eisteddfods, it was a drama teacher who turned her on to some of the dark-hearted ballads from the tradition.
“It was always the feel of the songs that attracted me… nothing ever forced. They came to me. My drama teacher was great. He was the beginning of bringing these songs alive for me. It was him who made me realise that these were gripping stories. Like, there’s this song about a woman, frantically washing her clothes in the river because she’s been having some rough and tumble, and not with her hus- band, and her mother-in-law sees her washing her clothes in the river… well, as a fifteen-year old girl I was hooked!”
“I remember singing some of those songs to my mates at the time, and they’d
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