They do things differently in west Wales, reckons our regional correspondent Julia Deli, who took in three days of music, performance, workshops and “herb wisdom” in the form of Haverfordwest’s Unearthed Festival…

“This is the furthest west I’ve ever been!” was a phrase resounding on site as people arrived from easterly parts of Wales, and the top and bottom of England for Unearthed Festival. They said it with a note of surprise and a childlike grin, as though they’d travelled to a mystical realm. Artists, too, say they love to perform ‘out here’ – the well-documented west Wales welcome is the resultant blend of those who have chosen to move here and the rock-solid, vibrant, deep-rooted love of music and celebration that is the Welsh birthright.

We’re really proud of Unearthed, a festival whose values were instilled when the teenage Tim Rees used to organise gatherings on his parents’ farm in Solva, Pembrokeshire, and the germ of the idea was born. The vibe of the event is Tribal with a capital T, from the many genres of music, to cooperative living, healing and herb wisdom. By popular demand, the Temple Arena has grown – “bringing a balance to the Main Arena’s energy and facilitating conversations between all kinds of people, sharing knowledge between generations,” Rees says.

The essence of Unearthed Festival: shamanic and organic

Vegan and veggie, organic and locally sourced food outlets, diverse and dynamic artworks, a super-clean site and the general sense of wellbeing that fosters – everything backs up the dream. (The vegan popcorn chicken made a lifelong veggie feel like she’d sinned, while the most unusual thing I sampled was SHOOM’s apothecary-made blend of five oriental mushrooms in a spicy chilli and turmeric drink. According to Chinese medicine, it has  calmative and immune-boosting properties.) There’s always a full programme on the main stages, and in other dedicated corners where bands, DJs and music workshops provide a seamless blend, the soundtrack to our self-selected Vision Quest. The Temple Arena holds all the other things under the sun – sound therapy, shamanic healing, storytelling, practical crafting and stalls. Unearthed is a festival that embraces.

At the beautifully wrought Magic Teapot cafe, on its imaginatively salvaged benches, I fell into conversation with nurses Sam and Mark, asking what had brought them here. “We first found the festival advertised online in 2017, and as we were local, decided to get tickets. We fell in love with it straight away because of its authenticity, community spirit and spirituality. The festival’s visuals amaze us every year!

“It’s grown, but not lost that original feel, and just gets better! We love the people and the real conversations you can have. In an increasingly divided world, it.s nice to have a place like Unearthed.”

Cosmic Cwtching

Tent up, I set off for my first adventure, choosing the Cosmic Cwtch, a cosy and colourful outdoor space with stages and a café. Local DJs Huga Da Bass and Wozza Woz were on the decks: from hippest-hop, retro-funk and soul to skankin’ dubstep, and moodier, urban sounds with crunchy beats and complex, spooky mixes to segue us into twilight. In the euphorically dayglo Dub Corner, I got a taste of Intergalactic Space Kitty – enough to know I’d like more of their homemade ethos – but I was heading off to the Main Arena for a show hosted by Cardigan comedian Claire Ferguson-Walker. 

We need to bottle the sanity-inducing wit of Gloucester’s Jonny Fluffypunk – a trooper I recognised from back in the day, still rad as ever. Declaring he “flies the black flag of anarchy… in one hand”, he also writes poems on libraries and the life experience of confectionery. Lovably grumpy, he’s the epitome of his lyric, “Clash songs played on angels’ harps”, and I won’t forget his take-home advice: “Make cathedrals of your sheds!”

Da Fuchaman’s slow-freight-train groove on the Steppen Roots stage draws us in and gets us involved in an interactive winding-down of waists, shortly before Henge take the stage for their Boosh meets Bill Bailey on Jinsy Island jamdown. Twisted country and western push the frontiers of space, to be replaced by plushest, deepest-pile thrash and discordant, subaquatic rave as they take us into their daft – yet increasingly believable – world for a mesmeric spell.

Sucked back into the Cosmic Cwtch for Wizard And Woops’ set of profound, trancey house and techno, Friday night live performances were rounded off with wild, banging folk tunes and sea-shanties worked up into a frenzy by the ever-expanding Conwy community band of brass nuts, Old Time Sailors. The last amplified sound of the late night/early morning was the final mix by Helios, and at that special distance of one field away, the hypnotic but unlikely combination of hard trance and a folk-pure ethereal vocal was the best lullaby, encompassing all the moods of a brilliant first day of Unearthed Festival.

Brass temple monkey brains

Saturday’s livener was the big percussion workshop with west Wales’ irrepressible Ghanaian drummer Emmanuel Annang. By osmosis, we learn African rhythms: when the fiery energy has consumed us all and first-time players brim with confidence, Annang gets a group of dancers into the centre, teaching steps and gestures in traditional movements. Stretching our legs after that, we found carpenters and bodgers from Cardigan’s Corner Woods teaching useful skills with the draw-knife, their workshop also giving you a turn (pun intended) on one of their pole lathes to make a utensil. Watching the natural process is mesmerising and inspiring, and the friendly crew are steeped in knowledge and lore of all things wood.

The Freedom Stage is in full swing, with Peni Ediker and friends leading a twmpath. Mid-Walian Ediker’s consummate bagpiping as part of Mordekkers has always drawn a crowd for their toe-tangling, intricate reels, and much hilarity accompanies this superfast set. Upping the pace even more back at the Cwtch, Boxheater Jackson and Big Vern Burns totally made my weekend with their old-school tribal trance, met by the smiliest crowd. Seems we were all in a great need to be taken back to those times because plenty of my vintage couldn’t stop talking about what a moment in the weekend that was for them! The loved-up vibe went on to include the Moss Collectiv, who took those rhythms and added live percussion for conscious dance.

With the Temple Arena promising so much, it was time to enjoy one of the free workshops and healing experiences on offer. The friend I’d travelled with had chosen breathwork and rebirthing and had enjoyed some visionary moments so far. I’d had sound baths before, finding them therapeutic and monkey-brain defeating, but this was the daddy of them all! A seven-foot high brass temple gong played by Bear Love and Shion, along with tubular bells and harmonium, creates a massive cleansing sound that vibrates our energetic frequencies: it’s mindbending to appreciate how metal, struck softly with felt amidst thin air, can create everything from a stormy roar to a fragile whisper. Can’t recommend its tonic effect enough! The Temple Of Amor, exploring concepts of sex and sensuality, held a loving cacao ceremony; therapies such as Family Constellations and Qigong were at home in the Gwynvyd yurtspace, and the Tan Tipi was the venue for yoga, talks on foraging and chai by the sacred fire.

Heading back to the main stage, TC & The Groove Family’s slow, deliberate dub and haunting brass rocked us, and Dawn Penn’s sonorous reggae and rocksteady rhythms – exemplified by big hit No No No, of course – could be heard, in various pitches, for the rest of the weekend, as people couldn’t get the tune out of their heads! The dub stylings of Mad Professor – former Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry collaborator, producer of masses of artists and prolific creator in his own right – wrapped up the main stage on Saturday in grand form and to a passionate crowd.

Called ‘walkabouts’ in Festivalese, strolling players add to the colour and never let the mood flag. Cardigan’s street poet Seren Violet had taken it upon herself to entertain the arena longdrops’ captive audience with her moanalogue, or “poo-em” if you will, about festival toilets (which were actually very sanitary in this instance), later appearing in another guise in her diatribe against Alexa and the upcoming event horizon. So kicked off Sunday at Unearthed Festival.

Running from early morning until the wee, the festival’s Vintage Cinema had showings of Studio Ghibli anime, cult classics like Dr. Strangelove and 3D showings of The Lost World and oddly bewitching animation Strange Planet. Younger festivalgoers are brilliantly catered for via outdoor/indoor games, aerial circus workshops, upcycling craft sessions, charcoal making and even debating groups courtesy of PLANED’s CWBR Youth project. Back in the Speakeasy, it was informative to hear how National Theatre Wales’ outreach group TEAM plans workshops in rural Pembrokeshire and north Wales to help communities produce plays and films and access skills.

At Unearthed, you respect the land you party on

Come Sunday on the Steppen Roots stage, we’re graced by the indie-folk presence of Mari Mathias, whose strong, clear voice rang out as she sang the most ancient of all Welsh folk tunes, written in Old Welsh. Her repertoire, songs inspired by myth and legends, especially of this region, all have an otherworldly quality. Bristol alt-jazz band 6161 bring a funky, horn-led atmosphere to the Sunday afternoon arena, and in Dub Corner’s tropical hangout, Aberystwyth’s Idris Sound System lay bass-heavy and uplifting dub and reggae on us. The Scribes from Bristol gave us positive, energetic rap, inspired hip-hop grooves, an awesome beatboxer and belly-laughs with their challenge, asking the audience to hold up unusual items to inspire rhymes – cue a plastic pineapple cocktail shaker and a pair of goats horns being incorporated into their wily rant.

With Nathan Stardust keeping the main stage grooving all day, Sunday was wrapped up by the dynamic Los Pulpos Del Diablo, whose weirdly bendy notes and combo of alt-folk-world-jazz makes a strange kind of gyration inevitable! Stylings of today, with dreamy nods to the 1960s, it’s a happy sort of fulfilment that rounds off the Steppen Roots stage for another year.

As folks wend their way back to tents and vans, even the Main Arena looks clean and cared for, as everyone recycles. “It’s part of the loving respect shown by all to all, and to the land we party on,” Tim Rees remarks. “People have really embraced the open-minded, open-hearted intention, and responded with their own. It radiates out. They’ve rejoiced coming to Unearthed Festival, feeling like the best versions of themselves.”

This framework, and the trust it engenders, attracts people from diverse ‘alternative’ backgrounds. Everyone I speak to mentions a cross-pollination of ideas: the confirmation of new ways to live that others were sharing, round fires and at cafes, bars or workshops. There’s a sense that every moment, experience and conversation are important and timely, and new allegiances are made in the most random settings. People sharing ‘eureka’ moments standing by a life-sized carved Gruffalo; the festival’s populous printing their hopes and dreams on the ground in a mass ritual without dogma; knowledge imparted and received; a mythos added to by everyone present.

We’re sad to say goodbye to our ephemeral Unearthed Festival community, but strong and lasting bonds have been forged. We believe there’ll be another bewildering feast, the veils between dimensions thin here again, as we treasure our memories and the new friends we made them with, at this many-branched and holistically satisfying gem of a festival. 

Unearthed Festival, Yurt Field, Cerbid, Haverfordwest, Fri 16-Sun 18 June.

words JULIA DELI photos PETE BOUNDS / TEGAN FOLEY