By Gareth Cornfield
The Halfpenny Folk Club had its celebration dinner this Sunday for the successful Gower Folk Festival held last month.
This is a thank you to the volunteers, without whom an event such as this could not happen, and a chance to get feedback on how to improve the festival for the future.
The club was then host to a visit from a group of musicians and dancers from Karelia. This is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Finland, Russia, and Sweden.
It is currently divided between the Russian Republic of Karelia, the Russian Leningrad Oblast, and Finland (the regions of South Karelia and North Karelia).
The musicians are calledâSkylarkâ, they play a mix of traditional & modern instruments: Button accordion, Double Bass, Flute, whistle, doodlesac and a variety of Kanteles.
A doodlesac is a simple, folk bagpipe, varieties of which pop up over the entire world. A Kantele is a string instrument, from Scandinavia.
The first ones were made from the jawbone of a fish, with five strings, tuned to a pentatonic scale. This developed into a wooden version, still with five strings but in a variety of tunings to suit the situation where it was used.
This refers to the horsehair bow, and also to the early strings which were twisted horsehair.
They were employed as a backing for the telling of stories and for shamanic rituals. There are now ten-, fifteen- string and concert variations, the concert having thirty nine strings or more!
The Kantele player also utilised an interesting, bowed variation, the name of which translates as, âKantele with horsehairâ.
They played a wide range of music: waltzes, schottische, folk and song, with dancers displaying the traditional dances of Karelia.
The audience clapped along and were wowed by the skill of these performers singing along to the choruses, even though the words were unfamiliar.
Skylark & dancers were at the Botanical Gardens in Llanarthne on Saturday, for the Festival of dance. They will, hopefully be there again on Wednesday morning for another display.
They will also be at the White Hart in Llangadog on Thursday evening, where they will be joined by The Men of Sweynâs Ey Morris dancing side.
All in all, a great night of entertainment, a feast for the eyes and ears. A testament to the Halfpenny folk club for hosting this wonderful group. A question I was asked was why a group of this quality was not at Llanglollen I have no answer for this as they are patently of the highest quality.
I am just grateful that they are here and that we can go see them!
Having purchased two of their albums, I will be playing a selection on my radio show, FRWT Salad, on Radio Tircoed, 106.5 fm,www.radiotircoed.com. Listen in & come to see them on Wednesday or Thursday.
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