Dwndwr - The Great Noise - Crasdant

Crasdant comprise four of Wales’ most outstanding musicians, all with highly credited individual careers, who came together six years ago to place Welsh music in its rightful illustrious place alongside its better known Celtic cousins. Crasdant bring to centre stage the indigenous Welsh harp, the triple harp, played by its leading exponent, Robin Huw Bowen, who is also a BAFTA award winning composer. The melodies are carried by the fiddle and flutes of Stephen Rees, and Andy McLauchlin, who combine on certain tunes, to play the pibgorn - an ancient Welsh reed instrument. Underpinning and interweaving with the harp is the deft guitar accompaniment of Huw Williams. On certain tunes the musical fireworks are added to by the brilliance of Huw Williams’s step-dancing in traditional Welsh clogs. Crasdant have already made many converts to their distinctive traditional sounds through their concert and festival appearances in North America and throughout the United Kingdom. Folk music traditions in Wales during the last three centuries were more often than not the target for the venom of the religious revivalists and reformers. They deemed dancing sinful, and all music profane, unless it was respectable and praised the Almighty.