Glenaphuca 

Released 5th March 2021
 

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Drawing on her dual heritage Glenaphuca is a folk prayer to the ancestors, an album full of evocative, autobiographical original compositions and reinventions of traditional songs from Ireland and the UK. Named after her Grandmother’s farm in East Cork, now an abandoned stone site weathered by neglect and home to birds, briers and lost memories, Glenaphuca sings straight to the wounds held by the maternal lineages of Ireland. Profound and poignant, Lewis pays homage to her Irish roots and the women who came before her. "It is a prayer to their lives and a liberation of the suffering they went to the grave with. It is also a gentle acceptance and reverence of death. Our one constant companion in life."

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She balances compassionate musings and reflections on life, death and loss with the deepest grace. In the elegiac lament for Lewis’s mother White Dress, she ponders life after death, in the lullaby Sweet Dreams her musings on the afterlife extend to its connection with the land of the living and with The Fox and Twa Corbies she honours the natural cycles of death in nature. 

 

In Sister Lover she celebrates the many journeys that Lewis has taken women on when delivering her ‘Embodied Archetypes’ workshops.  Sisterhood, unity, solidarity and community underlie the strong vocal message.  ‘Rise with me and I’ll rise with you, step on my shoulders sister, I’m coming too’. Elsewhere in Ballinatray, Lewis gives voice to the untold story of the women in her family in Cork whose had been incarcerated, silenced and shamed at the hands of the church and state. Glenaphuca gives voice to those silenced, honours those that came before and serves as a permission slip for others to speak up, share their stories, celebrate the natural cycles of life and death and reclaim their female power.

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Glenaphuca was produced by Lewis at Soup Studios, London and mastered by Pete Maher. Featuring guest musicians Elisabeth Flett (Fiddle, BV’s) Matt Dibble (Clarinet, Piano), Hannah Thomas (Cello, BV’s), Maria Rodriguez Reina (Cello on White Dress), Ansuman Biswas (Percussion) and Jonny Huddersfield Helm (Drums)