Cynefin and Alaw – Fishguard Folk Festival
Cynefin (pronounced ‘kuh-neh-vin’) is the brainchild of Welsh folk singer, researcher and cultural historian Owen Shiers.
The project’s acclaimed debut album Dilyn Afon (2020), marked the culmination of three years’ research mapping long forgotten and neglected folk songs of his native Ceredigion. The Guardian hailed Shiers as ‘a stunning new talent’ and Songlines dubbed it “beguiling…a distinct debut”. Nominations for Welsh Language Album of the Year 2020 and three nominations in the 2023 Wales Folk Awards followed.
The second album Shimli (2025), is rooted firmly in the customs and cultural vernacular of the area.
Drawing inspiration from living oral history and folk song-poet tradition. Owen says it’s: “a personal dispatch from the struggle to preserve a language, culture and way of life,” adding, “the album is a musical petition – a stake in the ground for the diverse and the disappearing in our age of homogenisation and mass amnesia.”
Award-winning Celtic Welsh folk outfit Alaw has a reputation for bringing together a trio of top musical talents. This new and exciting incarnation of Alaw has founding member Dylan Fowler on guitar, singer Nia Lynn and fiddle player Patrick Rimes.
The band’s sound has evolved with new material alongside fresh takes on Alaw’s classic repertoire. Soloist, composer and arranger, Dylan Fowler has collaborated with musicians across the world during 30 years on the professional music scene and has released two solo CDs on the Acoustic Music Records label.
Nia Lynn (Yr Hwntas) is a singer, folk and jazz specialist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. And Patrick Rimes (Calan, VRï) one of the most familiar faces on the Welsh music scene. An accomplished composer, and arranger, he is a trained viola player and can regularly be found playing traditional fiddle and pipes in folk line-ups performing internationally.
