Cynefin (Wales)
- Mar 1
- 1 min read
Cynefin (pronounced kuh-neh-vin) is the creative project of Owen Shiers, a singer-songwriter from West Wales. Drawing on folk song, the Welsh beirdd gwlad (folk poet) tradition, and living oral history, Cynefin explores the intersection of music, poetry, agriculture, and the natural world. The project is, in Shiers’s own words, “a stake in the ground for the diverse and the disappearing in our age of homogenisation and mass amnesia,” a personal reflection on the struggle to maintain a language, culture, and way of life.
Featured Song:
“Pryd Y Potsiwr” (The Poacher’s Meal) was inspired by Shiers’s conversations with Caradog Jones, who spent over 40 years as bailiff of the River Teifi in West Wales, one of Britain’s finest salmon rivers. The song looks back at a time when poaching was a matter of survival for rural communities, and forward with alarm at the river’s declining salmon population: “Life was hard and money was tight / And the occasional salmon was a rare treat / Standing in a court was not a subject of shame / For catching a fish by the water’s edge / Trouble is at hand while we pol-lute our land / Will the fright be enough to save the poacher’s meal?”
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