I have old favourites I have followed since the sixties or seventies; Beatles, Bowie, Neil Young and Joni will always hold a place in my heart, though their belated offerings give diminished returns as the years’ progress.  There are perennial idols too in Dylan and Leonard Cohen that I return to time and time again, and who are still capable of greatness even in older age.  Then there are the younger ones, who emerged maybe in the eighties or nineties and who are still writing and performing great music.

And the best of these late bloomers is Martyn Joseph; Welsh boy supreme.  He is almost a latter day Dylan (without the dose of vituperation) singing songs of protest, of Wales, of love and despair, and of hope.  He started off on Sony and I think they wanted to turn him into some sort of a ‘pop-star’.  He turned away from them and has ploughed his own furrow ever since.  He plays live constantly and is very popular in Canada as well as Europe and here.  He has his own record company and sells mostly by e-mailing his constant fans with news of concerts and new albums.  Because he isn’t tied to a big record company he releases something almost every year, and has indulged himself by whole albums of covers and a few live concerts.  But he still writes enough new good material to fill whole studio albums too.  He can rage and play rock’n’roll and can sing ballads too, descending almost to a whisper in the tender lines.

I have seen him live almost every year for a while now, and he never disappoints, creating an intimate atmosphere, as if he is singing just for you.  He also has a habit of shaking his audience by the hand as they leave the auditorium.  He genuinely doesn’t want any more fame than he has, and to make enough money to keep going and making music seems his only goal, except, in his quiet way, raising our consciousness that there is a different way than the greedy materialistic war-mongering road the world seems intent on.

More than all the others he is the one I admire most, to have made a career out of music without compromising his soul is a great achievement.