Prynhawn Da! by Max Syedtollan
Artist, composer and researcher Max Syedtollan arrives on bison with 34 minutes of merrie-making madness, written for a parade-performance by basketmaker Lewis Prosser and informed by the tradition of masked mummer’s theatre.
Written to be blasted off the back of a lorry, ‘Prynhawn Da!’ accompanied a troupe of huge wicker figures - Parsnabler o Grog, Vogum Gertlin, The Woman with The Big Head and Goyle Cornett - as they paraded down the streets of Newtown, Swansea, Cardiff and Caernarfon as part of a new series of Mummer’s plays written by Lewis Prosser. Mummers' plays are traditional folk performances often tied to Christmas and New Year and staged in streets, homes or pubs. They’re secular affairs, performed primarily for fun - a sort of ancient carnival with roots over 500 years old. Re-imagined for 2025 for a series of performances called ‘Making Merrie’, basket-head Lewis Prosser handcrafted huge wicker costumes using regional willow basketry techniques, wrote a nonsense script of blended Welsh and English and combined improvised movement with carnival procession for local performers. All that was left was to find the right music.
Enter a MIDI fanfare from the mind of Max Syedtollan. Half Encarta MindMaze, half acid Pitbull, Syedtollan blasts any trace of twee off the streets with a healthy dose of ridiculousness and modern revelry. Global earworms like Calabria 2008 are reworked as parpy parade bangers, Rossini’s William Tell Overture redone with rewinds, drum kit and clarinet. It’s a warren of global pop riffs, muddled by memory and wonky sight lines, sped up then slowed down so as not to cause a stitch, wheezy recorders blowing like your niece in her first nativity. A dirge draws the merriment to its natural conclusion, the final boss: death, a low disintegration of strings and symphony, a human voice appearing for the first time to lead us out. It's a hyper, richly coloured world until it's all over - life and death in symmetry as Peter Greenaway had it in a Zed and Two Noughts. Indeed, Syedtollan shares Michael Nyman’s ability to perfectly brace the serious against the stupid, to shift effortlessly from one visual context to another and to create something totally new yet strangely familiar. Good afternoon, Prynhawn Da!
Tracklist
| 1. | Prynhawn Da! | 34:18 |
Credits
Gordon Bruce / mastering
Harry Irvine / clarinet
