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Plucking Awesome | J.C. Jones (the initials stand for “John Ceri”) describes his repertoire of Welsh harp compositions as “music that feels like the land.”

MUSIC WITH THE MORAVIANS
Featuring J.C. Jones. Edmonton Moravian Church (9540-83 Ave). Sat, Mar 28 (2pm). Admission by donation.

J.C. Jones walks in a cloud of good energy, which he readily shares. He carefully measures his sentences, expressing his thoughts in gentle, melodious yet idiomatic English that’s a pleasure to listen to. He also speaks Welsh, which is even more pleasant, the language sounding like dream music from the distant past. He gives the impression of a well-behaved and likeable hobbit whom any mother would like her daughter or son to date (although the fact that he’s a freelance musician might give a mother pause). But since I am not his potential mother-in-law, I have no such qualms. So, over a bowl, or two, of potato soup and a plate of veggie chicken with rice, we talk about Jones’s new addiction: old Welsh music.

Jones was already a bandleader, a pianist, a trombonist, and an electric bassist before taking up the Celtic harp. He talks about this latest obsession with conviction and commitment — mastering the harp, and doing it so quickly, is clearly a serious proposition.

It all began around 2007, when he travelled to Wales to learn folk music. “Two local women I studied with proved kind of inspirational: the singer Julie Murphy and the singer/harpist Sian James,” he says. “I remember Sian telling me, ‘While you are here you may as well learn [to play the] harp!’ and so I did.” Later, during his second visit to Wales, Jones worked with Ceri Rhys Matthews, a virtuoso on the pibgorn (Welsh hornpipes) and flute, as well as another harper, Bill Taylor. It was Taylor who introduced Jones to the earliest surviving manuscript of Welsh music, the so-called ap Huw Manuscript, the basis of Jones’s current harp repertoire.

Robert ap Huw (ca. 1580–1665), the manuscript’s author, enjoys a colourful reputation in Welsh history. The scholar Nia Powell, somewhat disapprovingly, calls him a “wanton minstrel,” while others — the 17th-century poet Huw Machno among them — use the more respectful adjective “venerable.”

Perhaps he was both: the story goes that he once saved his own life by breaking out of prison. Today, however, he is chiefly remembered for the aforementioned manuscript, a document as puzzling as it is frustrating. Jones explains: “It is a tablature — the music was written down by means of letters or obscure symbols which have little to do with conventional musical signs. There is hardly a clue to interpreting them.” In other words, what you see is not what you get; any reading of the text is a matter of conjecture. “Some of them have rather funny names,” Jones smiles, “like one of the prescribed systems of tuning the harp, called ‘the boozer’s tuning,’ or like a [string] plucking method referred to as ‘the bee’s plait.’”

Despite these technical obstacles, progress has been made, and Jones relies on the interpretative tradition he has inherited from his Welsh masters. Asked what the music sounds like, he reflects for a second and then produces this perfectly tantalizing description: “It transcends our emotional stereotypes. It feels like the land. Beautiful, yet imbued with a sense of loss. Welsh.”