Welsh Music prize won by female post-punk trio Adwaith
Welsh-language female post-punk trio Adwaith have won the 2019 Welsh Music prize for their album Melyn.
Announcing their win, BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens said the album was “a very exciting and deserved winner from an exceptional shortlist. Adwaith have made a real impact with their personal, beautiful music that captures what it’s like to be young, female, frustrated and bewildered at the world we live in.”
The band, made up of Hollie Singer, Gwenllian Anthony and Heledd Owen, and whose name translates as Reaction, formed in 2015 in Carmarthen. They beat more established artists such as Cate Le Bon, whose album Reward was also nominated for the Mercury music prize.
The Welsh Music prize, founded in 2011 and voted for by music industry figures, “celebrates the finest music made in Wales or by Welsh people around the world”. Previous winners are Boy Azooga (2018), the Gentle Good (2017), Meilyr Jones (2016), Gwenno (2015), Joanna Gruesome (2014), Georgia
Ruth (2013), Future of the Left (2012) and Gruff Rhys (2011).
Receiving the Welsh Music Inspiration award were Phyllis Kinney and the late Meredydd Evans, who together charted the history of Welsh folk music and were Welsh language activists.
Adwaith released two new songs this month, including a relatively rare foray into English called Orange Sofa.
Welsh Music prize nominees 2019
Accü – Echo The Red audiobooks – Now! (in a minute) Carwyn Ellis – Joia!
Cate Le Bon – Reward
Deyah – Lover Loner
Estrons – You Say I’m Too Much I Say You’re Not Enough
HMS Morris – Inspirational Talks, Lleuwen – Gwn Flan Beibl
Lucas J Rowe – Touchy Love
Mr – Oesoedd
Adwaith – Melyn
VRï – Tŷ ein Tadau
music and I’m flattered”) but with orchestral arrangements nodding to his Arab lineage.
Striking and brooding at over 6ft, today Tamino is draped in a navy military-parka; the word “Anglais” stencilled on his shoes in white calligraphy. He’s achingly “fashion” and dressed monochromatically by one of Antwerp’s biggest fashion exports Ann Demeulemeester of the Antwerp Six. The Flemish brand provides him with clothes every season; he’s also fronted a campaign for Missoni.
His two first names Tamino-Amir honour both sides of his heritage: Tamino (inspired by the character of
Prince Tamino from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute) and Amir (which means prince in Arabic). Music runs in the family: Tamino is the grandson of one of the biggest stars of Egypt’s golden age of musical cinema in the 1960s, Muharram Fouad. When he was 14 years old, he discovered his grandfather’s antique resonator guitar in the attic of his family’s old home in Cairo. Fouad died when Tamino was a child, so it’s an important keepsake.
“I took it home and got it fixed. Now it’s a very inspirational instrument.” Tamino even toured with it for a while but now finds it too delicate to travel with.
Much has been made of Tamino’s background; he is of Belgian-EgyptianLebanese
stock. Cross-cultural pollination is unmistakable on his debut album, Amir, that includes a collaboration with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood (Indigo Night) and classical Arabic flourishes from the Nagham Zikrayat Orchestra, which is made up of musicians from the Middle East, many of whom are refugees from Iraq and Syria. His singing tempers detached, melancholic indie virtuosity with a hat tip to Middle-Eastern inspired melisma (Each Time). It’s easy to listen to but difficult to dissect. Where does the Arab orchestral begin and the western shoegazing end?
For the fledgling musician, it’s not so premeditated: “If I start writing and the only thing that comes out of me are country songs where you don’t hear any Arabic influence, so be it, I will not force anything,” he says.
Having staged a small tour around the Middle East, and opened for Lana Del Rey, he is growing a steady fanbase (and over 100,000 followers on Instagram). Could it be that he is also breaking stereotypes of Middle Eastern men? He tells a story about touring in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey: “At these concerts, there were always people coming up to me afterwards saying ‘that is important’. They say it because it’s a representation of worlds coming together and they find that important because they don’t see it much.”
He ruminates momentarily about why Middle Eastern audiences might be drawn to him. “They see a guy expressing himself just the way he is. Maybe it’s because I have my roots there. It’s easier for them to connect to that,” he says. Whatever the reason, he’s happy that his concerts provide a safe space for different kinds of people. “At my concert you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want to be and that’s the beautiful thing about art. It brings people together.”
•Tamino will kick off the UK leg of his tour on 3 December in Manchester. His debut album, Amir, is out now.