Album: Nynke, Alter (Crammed Discs)

She's Dutch and sings in Frisian, but is influenced by the flamenco/fado tradition, thus allowing us to speculate on how Beowulf might have sounded syncopated gently on an elemental frame composed of oud, bouzouki, guitar, marimba and flugelhorn.

This is apt, since Nynke's themes are elemental too, to do with the passing of the seasons and so on. She sings with a leaf-blown shimmer of a voice. "Se kundige de maaitiid oan," as they say in Frisia.