MUSIC & COMEDY

The Anchoress found a room of her own, creating a one-woman sonic vision on her Welsh Music Prize nominated Top 40 second album, The Art of Losing. 

This was a collection of songs that Elton John called “one of my favourite records of the year”. The Sunday Times named it as one of their seven “must-hear” Albums of the year along with Record Collector, Line of Best Fit, the Mail on Sunday and Prog Magazine, who all crowned the album as one of their best albums of 2021. 

Leila is a 24 year old writer and comedian from South Wales. 

She recently made her Edinburgh Fringe debut with a sellout run of her musical comedy hour ‘Composition’. It was met with critical acclaim – ‘an eye-catching introduction to a comic of promise’ (Guardian).

Described as 'the actual future of comedy' (LMAOnaise), her television and radio stand-up credits include BBC New Comedy Awards 2022 (BBC) Live at Aberystwyth Pier (BBC), Stand-up Sesh (BBC), Stand Up in My House (BBC) and The Leak (BBC). She is bilingual, with Welsh Language credits including Ffyrnig (S4C) and Ni y Nawdegau (BBC Cymru). 

Mali Hâf is a Celtic Pop warrior who blends Welsh folk roots with contemporary electronic beats and fierce dance moves. 

Drawing influence from the likes of Björk’s ethereal soundscapes, Kate Bush’s theatrical flair alongside traditional Welsh influences, Mali Hâf crafts unique soundscapes sung in both English and Welsh. 

Adorned in Celtic war paint, Mali Hâf commands the stage with a captivating blend of ‘ritualism and performance art’.

Mali describes being onstage as a ‘homecoming, a place of complete self-expression and shared passion’. 

Having already captivated audiences with sold-out show and a compelling performance at Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 6 Launch Show, Mali’s unique talent and infectious energy is sure to ignite the Green Man Rising stage.

Bobbi Pickard, probably more famous for being an LGBTQIA+ rights campaigner has maintained her first love of music from an early age. Her unnoticed music career features one of the first UK trans bands, The Counterfeit Dolls who headlined the first two Sparkle festivals in the early 2000s and Vinyl Tap, the Spinal Tap tribute mentioned in the official movie compendium. After concentrating on bass and double bass for over 30 years and playing regularly in bands of many genres, Bobbi now writes music and plays acoustic guitar appearing infrequently when she can fit it into her role model work. 

Coming from Splott, Cardiff, Adjua brings a sophisticated and refreshing sound to the Welsh music scene, with genres spanning alt-R&B, Latin and funk. She was also chosen as Huw Stephens Artist of the week for BBC Radio Wales and is looking forward to some new releases in the new year.

“Your music moved me to tears.”

This is the refrain contemporary folk artist Hannah Scott regularly hears as she leaves the stage.

The best stories elicit profound personal reactions and in the 15 years she has been writing and performing, Hannah has become a consummate storyteller. Her music is shaped by human stories, with family, in all its chaos and glory, sitting at the heart of her work. Her lyrics are powerful and poignant, and her voice feels strangely familiar, though you can’t quite put your finger on why. Her writing may be deeply personal but her music has a universal appeal that extends beyond the melodies you catch yourself humming days after listening to her songs.

The connection she forges with her audiences often finds its most profound expression in the stories shared by audience members after her performances: the woman whose elderly mother lost a sibling in childhood and is moved to tears by Boy

Born in Suffolk and raised by an artist mother and an eccentric entertainer father, with music going back three generations to her songwriting great-grandmother, creativity was always destined to be an integral part of Hannah’s life. At the age of four, her father bought a second-hand piano for £70 from a friend in the pub and she didn’t look back, falling in love with both playing and listening to classical music. Picking up a guitar in her early teens as the influence of her peers and more contemporary music took hold, Hannah taught herself some simple chords that would lay the foundation for her earliest attempts at songwriting.

Hannah’s career highlights include having her song No Gravity featured on the hit international TV series Grey’s Anatomy, recording a live session on BBC Radio 2 with Dermot O’Leary and opening for Madeleine Peyroux, performing to an audience of two thousand. She has also shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Seth Lakeman, Cara Dillon and Fairport Convention and has performed at festivals including Cambridge, Sidmouth and Manchester Folk. Equally at home in small venues, she thrives on the intimacy of performing in spaces where she can look audience members in the eye, and, of course, speak with them after the show.

Hannah is currently working on her third studio album due for release in the autumn of 2024 and the first she will self-produce alongside acclaimed engineer/producer Adrian Hall (Tori Amos, Anna Calvi),. These songs are inspired by the greatest of human emotions - love, parenthood, grief - and an unwavering yearning for life, even during its darkest moments.

“I’m sorry, but also not sorry,” Hannah replies to the audience member moved to tears, so pleased her songs have connected in just the way she hoped they would.

“She reduces women and children to tears - in a good way…” The Guardian

“…and grown men.” Tom Besford, English Folk Expo & Richard Haswell, Liverpool Philharmonic

“This is beautiful.” Dermot O’Leary, BBC Radio 2

Probably the most well-known drag king in Wales at the moment, Justin Drag will be both an act AND a host for our Music & Comedy Stage. 

Providing live vocals and hosting skills on a weekly basis multiple times a week, Justin has worked extremely hard to bring the talents of drag kings to the forefront of drag culture here inxci Wales. Whilst RuPaul's Drag Race UK doesn't accommodate drag kings yet, Justin would be a frontrunner if Mama Ru decided to change the rules.

RONA MAC CAN ONLY EVER BE HERSELF. HER MUSIC [IS] SHOT THROUGH WITH EXPERIENCE, HUMOUR, AND A SENSE OF SURVIVAL" (CLASH MAGAZINE) 

Rona Mac (she/her) is a trailblazer for expression within music. She is a queer Singer-Songwriter creating lo-fi Alt-Indie with Folk and Americana influences, crafted in her caravan home-studio in west Wales. Her music comes raw and unfiltered, aching with the kind of nostalgia found in rural, rugged places. Primarily a guitarist, she weaves satisfying riffs with hooky melodies, using lyrics to reach out to people and make them feel. A budding producer, she strives to build texture, space, depth and grit beneath seemingly simple songs. She gives us a live take on the process in concert by using sophisticated looping and effects to create an ethereal underbelly to tenderly written songs, settling audiences in for a night of tear-drop silence. Funded by PRS for Music and Help Musicians, Rona is working on an album which is due for release in 2024, alongside collaborations with rising artists Dan Bettridge, Gillie, Minas and Wil Owen.  “So much has happened in just two years, and I have worked tirelessly to create music that feels real to me, in hope that it might feel real to other people. My next album is very dear to my heart, and I strive to push at my boundaries to make something that I am truly proud of” 

Marieke Vink came to the UK from The Netherlands in the early 2000s and eventually ended up on the shores of Swansea Bay. An experienced performer of cover songs since her busking days as a teenager she has finally picked up a pen to write her own songs. Those days busking on the streets of Amsterdam have given Marieke a powerful voice and a rare command over her audience. With her trade mark brutal honesty and self deprecating humour, her first batch of songs saw the light of day in 2020 and she has not stopped since."

She returns to Out and Wild to run the wildly popular Sing Along, as well as for a solo set. 

Farah is a singer/songwriter originally from Doncaster. After years of gigging up and down the country as well as internationally, Farah released her debut E.P 'Awaken', in November 2021 raising money for charities supporting survivors of domestic violence and to raise awareness of the trauma survivors experience.

Farah herself is a survivor and isextremely passionate about telling herstory and helping others who feel theyhave had their voice taken from them and for those who live in fear.

In 2022 FARAH was a finalist for Open Mic UK receiving incredible feedback including 'the UK's next biggest R&B Star. 

In 2022 She also joined the Take Back The Beat UK Music Tour and performed alongside artists such as Billy Locket, Push Baby, Sody and Natalie Gray to help raise money for Women’s aid. 

Farah is Currently working on her upcoming EP which is set to be released Autumn 2024.

Out & Wild is infamous for it's Silent DJ sets.

These take place from 10.30pm on Friday and Saturday night in our main tent. We open the sides so you can really be dancing in the moonlight!

For 2024, the legendary DJ Ritu MBE, will be curating our playlists. You will have a choice of 3 tracks to dance to.

DJ Ritu will also be our resident DJ for the sets we play during the solo meet up hour.

DJ Ritu MBE is a globe-trotting turntablist, Fine Art graduate, lifelong equalities activist, and the voice of the UK’s definitive independent global music show, A World in London. Her 37-year career includes two decades at the BBC, co-founding 90s cult label Outcaste Records, and touring in over 35 countries as a band-leader and solo artist. Ritu is a pioneer of the ‘Asian Underground’ and Bhangra scenes, opening doors for other artists globally. She has been decolonising dancefloors & radio airwaves since the 80s, connecting cultures through music, and trailblazing paths for women and PoC artists. She currently guests at events produced by new youth collectives like Daytimers UK and Dialled In.

A musical chameleon, Ritu’s eclectic repertoire encompasses both Western and ‘World’ Music, with specialisms in Soul, Disco, Motown, Bollywood, Arabic & SWANA styles, as well as cutting-edge/underground genres. 

Poet-in-Residence at the 197 bus stop on Croydon Road in south-east London, Penge Punk Poet and Judi Dench groupie, Barbara Brownskirt is anorak wearing and unlucky-in-love. Writing and performing cringe-worthy poetry, Barbara is highly prolific, yet hugely unsuccessful. Barbara has been described as ‘affecting, sad and touchingly unaware’ (VICE) to the extent that her poetry becomes genuinely moving. Her muse is Judi Dench, and she has mother and ex-girlfriend issues. Her main aim is to dismantle the patriarchy, by bringing it down one-person-at-a-time. 

Dryadic's folk-fusion outfit traverses an acoustic spectrum with a Brit/Euro folk core and feisty smatterings of roots and gypsy round the edge. Rhythmical mix-ups underpin heartfelt lyrics, heart-soaring hooks and intoxicating vocals, creating an inimitable balance of trad, new, romantic, feel-good and rousing. Dryadic masterfully commands the audience with guitar, fiddle, keys, double bass and stomp, seamlessly smashing out feminist protest tracks and dreamy queer folk songs alongside each other.

Dryadic has shared stages with Heather Peace, Grace Petrie, Nadine Benjamin OBE at Glastonbury, Pride, Boomtown, Out & Wild, Sistafest, Hammersmith Apollo and countless more. She is also the founder and director of Gloucestershire’s only LGBTQIA+ choir - Queer Voices Gloucestershire.

"Compositions with intrinsic beauty and a relatable honesty, whether that be a rootsy shuffler or a contemporary folk story song.......an entity that is totally unique in today’s musical landscape," A B Records

“Gorgeous folk melodies &; charming showmanship” Overhead Wires Music

"Utterly lush from the very beginning to the very end" GrassRootsSE

Facebook: https://facebook.com/Dryadic.music

Instagram: https://instagram.com/dryadic_music/

Bandcamp: https://zorasings.bandcamp.com/music

Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/Dryadic-Youtube 

Donna has been doing stand-up for a couple of years. She is a queer working-class lass from 'sunny' South Yorkshire, now living in Brighton. She loves the simple things in life and hates the complexities of paperwork and anything involving numbers.

Dani Cooper is a reformed Eastend comedian who specialises in delivering relatable and honest (perhaps too honest) tales of a queer woman in the prime of her life. Her pathological need to connect with strangers shines through in both her act and her MCing.

Swansea based actress, working professionally as a singer and actress known for her powerhouse voice. From pantomimes to working on Thompson Cruise liners and smashing Britain’s got talent semi-finals with ‘The Honeybuns’. Corrin started performing at the late age of 21 I took a HND in Musical Theatre then went on to perform abroad for several years. Returning home she completed a BA(Hons) in Theatre and events and since then worked professionally as a performer, teacher, and producer. She has many credits from shows, ships, theatre and tv. Corrin had worked in many holiday parks as a visiting act and as an entertainment manger. Her hosting skills have bought her to host many charity events, talent competitions, festivals, and gay prides.

TV/film- BGT semi-finalist 2015, Ar y Tracs, A great British cover up, Kevin and Perry go large. 

Theatre/shows-A night at the music hall, Tell me on a Sunday, My fair lady, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Oliver, Student Prince, South Pacific, Carousel, Joseph, Blood brothers, Mother Goose, Puss in Boots, Jack and the beanstalk, Movies and Musicals, The Ceri Dupree show, Stars on their minds, Threepenny Opera, The Canterbury tales, Under milk wood, Return Journey. 

Ships-P&O Ferries Hull, Thompson Island Escape 

TV- Britain’s got talent 2015

Ali Jay runs a monthly queer comedy night in Brighton creating a space for new acts to perform alongside professional acts. Ali Jay also runs stand-up comedy courses for LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people, she is a laughter yoga teacher and loves improv. Ali Jay will be at Brighton Fringe and is hosting the comedy hour at the festival 2024!