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Brown Euraidd

'Golden Brown' - a tribute to Welsh singer Kizzy Crawford

By Rosina WritesPublished 3 years ago 11 min read
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Kizzy Crawford, Welsh-Bajan singer-songwriter

‘Significant’.

When thinking of the most significant Black women in music, many names come to mind - but probably not ‘Kizzy Crawford’.

I wouldn’t be surprise if it doesn’t. I once didn’t know her name either, and only came across her through my learning of Welsh as a second language.

By no means, at least in terms of commercial significance and success, has Welsh-Bajan-English singer-songwriter Kizzy Crawford made her mark in comparison to the world-renowned names of Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Whitney Houston, and more such great Black female musicians who have given so much to our musical world.

But is commercial significance the only kind of significance?

Absolutely not. And here I argue the case that, despite few people outside of Wales, or even outside the Welsh-speaking community, knowing her name, Kizzy Crawford’s mark is significant for reasons stronger than fame or fortune.

Crawford is first significant in her ethnicity, upbringing and language alone. She is bilingual in Welsh and English and has an extremely diverse heritage of which she is very proud. She learned Welsh growing up through Welsh-medium education in West Wales and Merthyr Tydfil in the Welsh Valleys.

I certainly do feel that I am Welsh, and creatively I compose lyrics in Welsh more easily than English, which I guess is pretty unusual - unique maybe, for a mixed heritage girl with Bajan/English roots!

Though, being in small, white-majority Welsh communities, Crawford’s family was often the only one of colour, and she remembers feeling like an outsider on many occasions through racial discrimination. These experiences would go on to inspire her music.

Being a Welsh musician in itself is significant. It means showing a love of music strong enough to devote endless amounts of time with nothing in return. With Welsh being spoken only in Wales, Patagonia and other small communities around the world, Welsh artists have a small audience, and so many have a part-time or full-time job despite being famed on the Welsh musical scene. But Crawford has managed to make a living regardless.

Crawford is also significant, of course, for her musical talent and work in the traditional sense.

Every song has more to it than just one set of lyrics - Crawford always writes each song in both Welsh and English, which I marvel at as a lover of foreign language learning and lyric writing.

And it’s not hard to hear the beauty of Kizzy’s music. Her vocal runs are elegant and rich, her melodies complex and addictive, and all sorts of genres are intertwined from the fragile folk beauty of ‘Y Ddrudwy’ (The Starling) to the jazzy blues of ‘The Way I Dream’.

At the age of just sixteen, she won the Arts Connect Original Singer/Songwriter 2012 (as seen in the archived link above), a competition focused on talented young singer/songwriters aged 14 – 25 from various Welsh counties where opportunities in the music industry were sparse. From the outset, she was said to be ‘set for stardom’ and revolutionising Welsh is clearly important to her.

I want my music to speak to people and to touch them, and by writing in English and Welsh I am telling the world that our ancient language can be heard in mainstream media as young, edgy, current and beautiful.

I always viewed Welsh as being the language of the history, myths and legends that excited me, such as Owain Glyndwr, Blodeuwedd in the Mabinogion and Prince Llewelyn, so Crawford has certainly used Welsh in an exciting, modern way for me.

Her performances are awe-inspiring. Here is an incredibly complex performance of her song ‘Caer of Feddyliau’ (‘Fortress of Thoughts’) in 2013 where she effortlessly uses a loop pedal, aged 17.

Since then, Crawford has performed at festivals across Wales and the UK, such as Green Man, Swn, FOCUS Wales and the Cambridge Folk Festival. She performed on Glastonbury’s BBC Introducing stage which is a massive achievement for a Welsh-language artist due to their usually small-scale coverage, not to mention significant for Black female musicians.

She has performed at the Hay Festival and in the National Eisteddfod of Wales, an ancient Welsh festival/competition in which musicians, poets, playwrights and performers compete for prestigious awards in their craft. I doubt many singers can say they have performed in a castle, but Crawford has, performing 'Y Ddrudwy' ('The Starling') in Caerphilly Castle! (Skip to 0:28 for the start of the song.)

For the Welsh-speaking community’s one channel, Sianel 4 Cymru (S4C) in particular, she has had multiple appearances in Noson Lawen, the famed Welsh-language music showcase on Christmas Eve every year where the best Welsh musical acts perform. Within this showcase, she has performed her song ‘Adelwyrchu Arnaf I’ (‘Reflecting On Myself’) and ‘Dianc o’r Diafol’ (‘Deal with the Devil’) with fellow Welsh-language singer-songwriter Al Lewis. She has even branched out into acting, playing the role of in S4C’s ‘Un Bore Mercher’ drama, later re-performed in English as the hugely successful ‘Keeping Faith’ series for the BBC.

These achievements are significant to me being a part of the Welsh community, but may resonate little with you, even if you live next door in England.

No, Kizzy Crawford does not have a Grammy, or a number-one UK hit, or even Wales-wide recognition, let alone worldwide. She has only 1,370 subscribers on YouTube, there are no awards or landmarks in her name, and her most popular song on Spotify has had roughly 41,600 streams (‘Where We Came From’, below).

But I’m sure you’d agree that an artist’s impact goes far beyond the statistics and awards they can list. So I won’t linger too long on her achievements, because they don’t speak loudly enough of her true uniqueness as a Black woman in music.

In the most important way, she has shaped the Welsh musical world as a Black woman.

So here we come to the most significant part of Crawford’s career. For me, it is her obvious attitude in both her music and personal life to stand up and do the right thing.

Crawford has consistently spoken out against racism throughout her musical career, even when she was just starting out. She played for anti-racism charity ‘Show Racism The Red Card’ in 2013 and talked in the article about school life for her being one of the only students of colour. She has frequently referenced this experience in later years, saying how she’d be called a ‘foreigner’ and more racist terms as people would not expect her to be Welsh-speaking, simply because she wasn’t white.

The funny thing is, the teachers would really not know how to deal with racism - they actually said in my school "Oh, we don't have racism in this school".

From 'Q&A With Kizzy Crawford' in a 2013 interview with Show Racism The Red Card

There was no racial inclusion policy in my school and when Mum challenged them about it, they said it was because they didn’t need one as there were hardly ever Black people in the area.

But through her music, she has found a more comfortable way for herself to speak up about racism. In her song ‘Golden Brown’, released in 2019, she sings about her pride in her identity as a woman of colour and says that she wants anyone listening to ‘always remember that you are beautiful on the inside and out’. The Welsh version, ‘Brown Euraidd’, reached the final of ‘Cân I Gymru’ (‘A Song To Wales’) competition in 2014 when she was just seventeen years old.

More recently outside of music, she wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper in December 2019 on the UK Census that collects general information on British citizens every ten years, with the next census taking place this year. She recalled her experiences with racism as a Welsh Black woman and questioned the lack of an option for ethnic-minority Welsh - in other words, why there is still an expectation that you have to be white to be Welsh and Welsh-speaking.

This feels to me like the [Office of National Statistics] are denying me my identity.

People of colour have been an important part of Wales’ history for centuries. Tiger Bay in Cardiff is home to one of the UK’s oldest black communities.

Sadly, Crawford has experienced racism when attending performances too, such as in Laugharne in 2014 where an elderly white man told Crawford’s white mother: ‘If you’ve anymore like her at home, don’t bring them down here, we don’t need it’.

Yet, every time, Crawford shows her immense strength in overcoming these situations through sharing her experiences. And despite all that she has faced, her love for Wales remains strong and in 2019, she said:

I am a Welsh woman. I am also mixed race… but Wales will always be my home, and the land, the people, the language and culture are what make me who I am.

And still, Crawford has not stopped there in her actions for positive social change. The topics of her songs vary from overcoming racism to climate change (‘Twenty Years’) to hope (‘Enfys Yn Y Glaw’ or ‘Rainbow In The Rain’, a personal favourite of mine - scroll down to listen!) and more. I adore her lyrics, as an amateur creative writer and lyricist myself, for the way that she rarely sings about romantic love like most artists tend to do, and either gives a message to think about beyond the song or immerses you within a story. Her creative process of writing songs is truly inspiring to me as I relate to it a lot.

It's very important to me that lyrics have meaning and are memorable. I've never wanted to write directly about feelings like love in the way a lot of artists do.

I loved studying Welsh literature at school and have written a lot of songs that is directly influenced by poems we have worked on.

She wrote a song in Welsh and English (‘Yr Alwad’ and ‘Shout Out’ respectively) for the Visit Wales 2015 National TV & Online Campaign, advocating for the Welsh language at the same time. She has marched in support of the Welsh independence movement, attending the 2019 event where over 5,300 people gathered in Merthyr Tydfil because she was "disappointed with the racism, fascism, unfairness and chaos" she had seen in politics recently.

In my own experience, Crawford was very encouraging of me learning to speak Welsh when I was fortunate enough to meet her after she performed for free at the World Big Sleep Out in Cardiff in 2019, a charity event raising money and awareness of homeless people. And even in lockdown last year, in the heart of COVID-19, she took part in re-recording the first ever Welsh charity single ‘Dwylo Dros Y Môr’ (‘Hands Across The Sea’) to raise money for Community Foundation Wales’ Coronavirus Resilience Fund and other causes fighting the pandemic.

Again, being a Welsh-speaking singer-songwriter, there is no valid claim of ‘publicity stunt’ in her doing these things with such a small audience, but do not let me undermine the difference it has made in the Welsh-speaking community. The Office of National Statistics, though they may need more persuasion, have said they are consulting the public on the inclusion of a Welsh ethnic-minority option in the Census 2021, and Crawford has started conversations on the many topics she sings about. Crawford shows she genuinely cares about these issues and acts on them through the power of her music.

Personally, Crawford is significant to me as a Black female artist in many ways, as a true role model of what every musician should be.

She opened me to an endless musical world beyond my first language, English, and was the first Welsh musician that I loved with her song ‘Enfys Yn Y Glaw’ ('Rainbow In The Rain').

She introduced me to folk being mixed with blues and R&B in one colourful sound that I’d never heard before.

She showed me that, while lyrics should be written with careful attention, music must be more than its lyrics and the melody can sing far louder than the words you don’t yet understand.

And, beyond music, she has done so much more for me.

She gave more heart to my Welsh identity. She showed me that Welsh is a worthy language of expressing yourself in even if many fewer people will understand; that speaking Welsh is a choice to follow and to continue because it is a resilient language that has lived on despite its repression, prominent in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

She showed me that the more important side of respect rests mainly in what respect you have for yourself, not the respect you draw from others.

She showed me that being significant does not mean crowds of undying fans and wealth and fame, but the perseverance to continue with what you care about no matter how far your voice reaches and that passion is worth far, far more than recognition.

And that latter point above, for me, is the most significant mark Kizzy Crawford has made of all.

So, here I say that the significance of Kizzy Crawford as a Black woman in music extends far beyond her music and, ironically, beyond her outreach - it is the way that she shows small actions made wherever possible make a less visible but larger mark.

And that, yes, you can very well be Welsh, ‘golden brown, and proud to be’.

indie
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About the Creator

Rosina Writes

I'm 19 from Cardiff, on a gap year, and I love creative writing! I joined Vocal+ because of the 'Little Black Book' competition and thought it'd be a great way to challenge myself alongside writing novels.

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