Taran release fan favourite Gobaith following Y Llais success

Stephen Price

Fresh from her success on Y Llais, the Rose Datta-fronted band Taran have released their new single, ‘Gobaith’.

Having played the track live for over a year, Taran have finally released fan-favourite ‘Gobaith’ (Hope) via Jigcal Records.

One of the band’s favourite songs to play live, the track is brought to life by its solid drums, full guitars and powerful vocals, with its emotional lyrics providing its depth.

After Rose’s recent success on Y Llais (The Voice), her experiences have brought new creative ideas to the band.

The band has been busy recording with Mei Gwynedd over the past few months, with more music to come soon.

It’s hard to believe how much Taran have achieved in the time since their formation, and we sat down with the band to discuss their meteoric rise to the top and the inclusivity of their music and the Welsh language.

Taran have been gigging relentlessly, released two singles, ‘Pan Ddaw’r Nos’ and ‘Barod i Fynd’, appeared on the front cover of Golwg magazine, and released their first EP, ‘Dyweda, Wyt Ti….’.

When Rose, Zelda, Rhys, Nat and Steff come together to compose, they clearly pull in the same direction, creating energetic, catchy and fresh songs, and they have a very bright future ahead of them if what we’ve heard (and seen) so far is anything to go by.

Debut EP

The talented group from Cardiff released their first EP in July 2024, which was recorded and mixed by Mei Gwynedd at JigCal’s studio.

Congratulations on the success of your first two singles and EP – has it been a surprise to you all to see just how well they’ve done?

Thank you, the reaction has been brilliant and we’ve managed to engage with people across Wales.

It’s been a pleasant surprise seeing stations such as Môn FM giving us plenty of airtime as we’ve not had the opportunity to play in north Wales yet. Fingers crossed for next year!

So you’re all friends from school, but how did the band form?

It’s true that we were all at Ysgol Glantaf when we got together but as we span three school years we didn’t know each other very well.

We have our music teacher, Mrs Amanda Williams, to thank for bringing us together. Menter Caerdydd were looking for young people to form bands to play at Tafwyl 2023 as part of the Yn Cyflwyno project. Our names were put forward and we were paired with our mentor Mei Gwynedd.

It couldn’t have worked out better. We gelled immediately and, inspired by Mei, we somehow managed to write three songs and perform our first gig in a fortnight.

Is singing in Welsh important to you and why?

Singing in our native language is very important to us and that isn’t going to change. Being bilingual is part of who we are and something to celebrate. 

We’ve been astonished by the amount of opportunities we’ve had because we’re singing in Welsh. As well as local gigs, we’ve been fortunate to benefit from the amazing array of Welsh-language music festivals taking place over the summer months. Next year we hope to be taking our music to more festivals, all over Wales.

There seems to be a change in the air with more Welsh artists using Welsh such as Gwenno and Adwaith but still finding an audience outside of Wales – and it’s this uniqueness that really sets them apart on the world stage – has this inspired you at all?

It’s great to see Adwaith achieving success singing in Welsh in the Netherlands, but of course there should be nothing unusual about that.

It’s important for us in Wales to accept music sung in other languages, otherwise we’d cut ourselves off from a range of influences. Good music is good music; whatever the language.

Taran are nowhere near being ready to take on a foreign tour, but, if and when we do, you can be sure that we will be flying the Red Dragon! Adwaith and Gwenno have proved that it can be done so who knows, perhaps in the future, we can follow in their footsteps.  

Do you listen to much Welsh language music yourselves? If so, who are your favourites?

We’ve all grown up on Candelas and the Welsh classics of yesteryear such as Bryn Fôn.

We’re all fans of Fleur de Lys and we sometimes include a cover of Sbectol in our set.

We played a tremendous gig with The Night School, a bilingual band from Swansea, and since then we all spin their new EP regularly. 

As a young band you really reflect modern Cardiff – any thoughts on that and representation for younger people in Wales? And indeed representation for modern Wales on the world stage.

We may appear a diverse bunch but in truth we just reflect the reality in every school, college and workplace in Wales.

We’re all proud of our roots and proud of our Welshness.

The main thing we want to stress is that just as music is for everyone, wherever they live, whatever their backgrounds, so too is the Welsh language.

The summer will be a busy one for Taran as they play Tafwyl, Maes B and the Main Stage at the Eisteddfod, among many other gigs to be announced.

Listen to new single, Gobaith here.