Gwenno: ‘I was scared of using Cornish in the past. You feel like that with languages that are more fragile’

When the Welsh singer-songwriter Gwenno tours England, no one understands a word of her lyrics. “But they’re so open to my point of view,” she says, smiling. Growing up speaking two languages fluently – Cornish and Welsh – has endowed her with a split musical identity. “[If] I sing in Welsh, because of my lived experience with it, I feel I’m getting on the soapbox, because protest and campaigning has informed my Welsh language experience,” she explains. “Whereas Cornish is this really intimate home language that’s to do with my imagination. They are two very different personalities.”

Gwenno’s latest album, Tresor, is the first ever Cornish-language record to be shortlisted for the Mercury Prize – today she’ll find out if she’s won. Certainly, she would deserve it. Tresor is a resplendent body of work, a tapestry woven from fine threads of history, folklore, and Gwenno’s own life. Into this she has sewn together patches of psych-rock, indie, chamber pop and Breton folk.

Born Gwenno Saunders, the 41-year-old was raised bilingual by her father, the Cornish-speaking poet and linguist Tim Saunders, and her mother, Welsh activist Lyn Mererid. English is her third language, which she’s using in conversation with me over Zoom from her living room in Cardiff. Her dark brown hair is tucked behind her ears, framing her face; every time she grins, it’s like watching a sunbeam bounce across a pool of water.

“I was raised in such a Celtic household,” she says. “[To speak Cornish] is to be able to tap into something that feels ancient and contemporary at the same time. It’s become useful to me as I’ve taken hold of it – I was potentially a bit scared of using it in the past. You can feel like that with languages that seem more fragile.” It was only in 2010 that Cornish was taken off Unesco’s “extinct” languages list; today there are around 1,000 fluent speakers in the world. (On its release, Gwenno’s 2018 album Le Kov was credited with spurring a 15 per cent increase in people taking Cornish language exams).

She is profoundly aware of the strangeness in having Cornish as a first language, given she was brought up in Wales (only a handful of people speak Cornish as their main language outside of Cornwall). It’s what prompted her to visit St Ives for a week in January 2020, expecting to feel like an outsider. “That disappeared as soon as I got off the train,” she says. She wrote the majority of Tresor there – when the fishing town was deserted of tourists and the sea had turned grey and wild – then returned home to record with her husband, producer and musician Rhys Saunders. There, they worked on songs such as “Anima”, with its parps of brass and gasping wheeze of an organ. Those earthy sounds contrast against her lyrics, delivered in a lilting, diaphanous falsetto: “Krogen war dreth/ Dywes po Eva/ Ow sevel a’th rag/ Paradis.” (“A shell on a beach/ Is it a goddess or Eve stood in front of you? Paradise.”)

Where “Anima” melds mythology with Christianity, “Tonnow” is about Gwenno losing her sense of sexuality when she became pregnant in 2015. Synths rise from the deep in eerie wails and clicks; violin notes shiver and disappear back into the darkness. “Yn-dan an tonnow/ Yma hwansow gwyls,” she sings in an echoing siren’s call. “Under the waves/ There is a wild desire.”

She struggled during her pregnancy. “It really impacted me,” she says. “You don’t realise the physical and mental [toll] it has, and I wanted to document it, because it completely changes your outlook.” When it came to actually giving birth, she felt completely unprepared for the experience: “It’s the worst thing to happen to you. I was flabbergasted,” she says. “My initial feeling was, I cannot believe [women aren’t] running things, to have gone through this. You feel like you’re dying. Many women do.”

Being pregnant also reminded Gwenno of the body issues she’d faced in the past. She quit school when she was 16 for Las Vegas, where she performed with Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance show. Returning to the UK, she joined indie-pop girl group The Pipettes and enjoyed some time in the charts, thanks to the retro-pop of singles such as “Pull Shapes” (2006). Back then, she was painfully conscious of how her body was perceived by the rest of the world. “As someone who’s been a dancer, who’s been told to lose weight, who’s had eating disorders and all sorts, [being pregnant] was very liberating in some ways,” she says. “Your body takes on value in a different way. But then it is nice to get back to yourself, as well.”

Gwenno’s willingness to explore these multitudes of her identity – across a single album – reflects her belief that most people are curious, not fearful, about those different to themselves. “Because we live in a capitalist culture, the question is always about monetary value,” she explains. “And for me it’s going, well actually, regardless of the size of the language or the culture, it’s valid because there’s a community around it.” There’s a curiosity in Gwenno’s music, one that she’s passing on to her listeners. As she sings on “NYCAW”, in Welsh: “Y gwahaniaeth gogoneddus sydd i’w ddathlu ym mhob man.” Or, for those still on the beginner’s course: “The glorious difference to be celebrated everywhere.”

‘Tresor’ is out now. The winner of the Mercury Prize 2022 is announced tonight at 10pm