The Shifting Sands of Cymru

The Shifting Sands of Cymru is a suite of works based on sound recordings made around the Welsh coastline. Themes of life and loss transpire both through myth and through stories of the harsh realities of life as lived by coastal Welsh communities. The title alludes to the sands of time shifting as the coastline shifts and erodes with the seas claiming land, lives and sacred structures and burying them away under the sea. With time, ways of life and language are also eroded. The Shifting Sands of Cymru, by sound artists Colin Black and Yanna Black, is made up of four movements: 1. The Long Departed speaks to the loss of life at sea in the shipping and fishing industries along the Welsh coastline. This is also a coastline that constantly erodes and changes, evidenced by a four thousand year old forest that is exposed at low tide. This movement also contains the poem 'Bedd fy Mam' (Mother's Grave) by Capt. David Williams as read by and courtesy of Mair Humphreys (Ceredigion Archives). 2. Shipwrecked is tales of life at sea, shipwrecks, land pirates and washed up cargo are accompanied by Welsh sea shanties. We go onboard a ship being steered in to port and hear the cannon fire. We get a sense for the desperation and hard times as even though life at sea was very tough, it was a welcomed escape from the dread of working in the coal mines of Wales. 3. One Saturday in a small Welsh Village listens in to intimacies of one Saturday morning. From the groaning of life at the beginning of the day through to the busy sounds of the industrial professions, the animals and children in the fields, the lively markets where daily trading takes place and on through to days end when men gather in the pubs before stumbling home to bed we hear the sounds of life in a small Welsh village. 4. Seven Bells allows us to peer into the past through the myths of the land . The myth reimagines a drowned city, lost to the waves. The archival Welsh recording tells of lost healing techniques involving the use of Adderstones to restore site. In this work, the archival recording is also literally fading away like the sound of the underwater bells of the lost kingdom and the bells of seven churches that have been lost under the sea.