This special folk album of the year award episode of folk on foot is devoted to showcasing the brilliant album shimley by Kenevin, who is better known to us as Owen Shires, regular on these

podcasts, because we walked with him on the River Kletta, and then he appeared in our

Plagin Carol's edition. But it's great, Owen, to have you here as one of the nominated

albums of the year for Shimley. Congratulations.

Thanks very much. I'm still slightly in shock, if I'm honest.

There's a sort of manifesto for the album on your website, which I read, which says,

and do you mind if I read it back to you because it is really powerful.

A personal dispatch from the struggle to preserve a language, culture and way of life.

The album is a musical petition, a stake in the ground for the diverse and disappearing

in our age of homogenization and mass amnesia.

That's really powerful stuff,

but that was your motivation

for putting this collection of songs together, was it?

Yeah, I can't believe I wrote that.

Did I write that?

Yeah, I feel like I live in a part of the country

where it doesn't get a lot of light of day, really, West Wales.

You know, economically speaking,

it's one of the poorest areas

in Northern Europe, but culturally, it's incredibly rich. And I just wanted to give voice to that,

really, and set it within a contemporary global context, which is we're living in this sort of

age of mass homogenisation and globalisation and gentrification. And if you belong to a sort of minority

...