Songs from the Tin Tabernacle: A Roots Romance

Songs from the Tin Tabernacle

18th June | 19:30 | Adelphi Room (Crucible Theatre)

A first public sharing as a work-in-progress performance, music-video screening & Q&A. Songs from the Tin Tabernacle: A Roots Romance showcases the first songs of a new suite of future-folk music inspired by a powerful 19th century Welsh family musical bloodline that flows from the ruins of Careg Iago on the stony farmlands of Ynys Môn, to the Welsh Salem Chapel of the unique community of migrant Welsh miners of Wharncliffe Woodside colliery near Barnsley.

Featuring musicians-songwriters Cerys Hafana (harp/vocals), Bryony Griffith (fiddle/vocals), Cath Carr (steelpans), Kadialy Kouyate (kora) & Tony Francis Bowring (bass), with filmmaker Joao Paulo Simoes (video).

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About Songs from the Tin Tabernacle

With R&D support from Arts Council England, and aiming to present a significant new contribution to contemporary British folk music, ‘Songs from the Tin Tabernacle: A Roots Romance’ explores Sheffield-based world music bassist & producer (Batanai Marimba, Rafiki Jazz, Konimusic) Tony Francis Bowring's own inherited musical roots, Welsh mother-tongue & diverse DNA. From his deep immersion in historical public records, archived documents & the contents of a C19th family ‘hope chest’ we hear biography romance & anecdote emerge from the legacy of his musical Welsh forebears, re-imagined as new song narrative and embedded in a suite of vibrant future-folk music.

'Songs from the Tin Tabernacle' journeys through some of the places, people & events from the cultural, religious & landscape history of the times. It unearths compelling tales from a great-grandfather’s C19th family, and his migration from a rural Ynys Môn (Anglesey) tenement farm to become the founding Non-Conformist pastor of our project’s emblematic Tin Tabernacle, aka the corrugated iron Welsh Chapel of Carlton village’s Wharncliffe Woodside colliery near Barnsley. Right in the heart of South Yorkshire’s coalfields, fabricated in Sheffield, and built for a unique community of migrant Welsh coalminers & their families, we slip through the door of the now long-demolished Carlton Salem Chapel, maybe take a seat, and perhaps still catch faint sounds of the Bards boldly rekindled in new storytelling & song.

Musicians are Welsh triple-harpist & singer-songwriter Cerys Hafana, Yorkshire singer-songwriter & English fiddle player Bryony Griffith, West African kora-player Kadialy Kouyate & Sheffield steelpan-player Cath Carr, with Tony Francis Bowring on bass. Expect a work-in-progress performance premiering a small selection of new Welsh & Yorkshire dialect songs written by Cerys & Bryony and arranged by the group, followed by a screening of a short video-doc from filmmaker Joao Paulo Simoes, plus a chance to reflect, discuss and offer feedback during a short Q&A session afterwards.

• Tickets

  £7/5/2

• Event Times

  Doors open - 19:00

  Running time - 19:30 - 20:45

  Please note this is subject to change

• Venue

  Adelphi Room
  Crucible Theatre
  Sheffield S1 1DA
  United Kingdom

• Age Guidance/Content Warnings

  All Ages

• Accessibility

  The Adelphi Room at Crucible Theatre is wheelchair accessible.

  The building has an accessible toilet and lift access.

• Web/Social Media Links

  Website: https://tintabernaclesongs.substack.com/about

Tuesday 18th June, 2024 19:30 - 20:45

Tickets £7/5/2