Culture

A late night out (by my standards) to an extraordinary concert in town. I sneaked one picture but it conveys nothing of the atmosphere of the performance, so this one must serve as an oblique reference. This was a "Welsh afternoon tea" (that we ordered at 10am) in the clifftop hotel on the other side of the estuary - a place where the warm smiles and relaxed good humour (and sea view) transcend the 'international business venue' interior decor

Bara brith and Welsh cakes are firmly rooted in Welsh culture. Scones and clotted cream more tenuously so, but there is nothing wrong with a little multiculturalism. Here is the bridge to the concert: a trio called 'Kroke', which is Yiddish for for Kraków, graduates of its music academy who formed a band in 1992 and are still touring places like Cardigan, despite having worked and recorded with Peter Gabriel, Nigel Kennedy, Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch

Their work is rooted in east European Jewish folk music but has expanded way outside it to include influences of modern jazz, Mongolian singing, and the Sephardic Jewish music of north Africa (I read that the Catholic regime of Philip & Isabella expelled Jews and Muslims from Spain into North Africa at the same time. The Jewish community had previously thrived under Muslim rule). At times I heard English electric folk in their music (the theatre played Sandy Denny in the interval and she was not at all out of place), at one moment I was sure I was listening to the whistled, mountain languages of Greece and Turkey

The final result is an extraordinary soundscape that defies description or categorisation. A unique, personal blend of inventive rhythms, melodies, harmonies and barely musical sounds that are like nothing I have heard before, performed by people who are so at one with their instruments that every movement they make on stage is required by the music, devoid of any self-conscious 'performance' or showmanship

Things I have never seen before: a viola played not just with a bow or pizzicato, but held and played like a mandolin or banjo; viola, accordian and human voice all used as complex percussion instruments; an electric bass leading the melody of an entire piece; sound-loops constructed on stage as part of the piece, to create 'fourth instrument'; a wordless, falsetto human voice also forming an additional instrument 

Can you tell we were impressed? They are on a short tour, if there is any opportunity to see for yourself, I recommend taking it