The singer-songwriter tells Chris Searle what inspires her great new album Can Yr Adar (Birdsong).

“WELSH, English and Barbadian — I have a fantastic cultural heritage to be proud of,” Kizzy Crawford declares. And her love of nature, musicianship and language is what inspires the jazz of this gifted Welsh-Barbadian.

Born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1996, her solo career began just a few years ago but, for one so young, she’s attracting a lot of critical acclaim for her songwriting and performance. Hers is a soaring voice with range and charisma. That’s evident on Can Yr Adar (Birdsong), a new album full of beautiful vocal lyricism, poetic insight and sonic joy, a collaboration with brilliant Bangor-born pianist Gwilym Simcock and Sinfonia Cymru chamber orchestra. It powerfully evokes the Celtic rainforest of Carngafallt in Powys with which Crawford identifies as an archetype of all forests. “Our trees — the world’s trees — are all connected as the lungs and communicators and healers of our planet, without which we would die.

“So the forests of Africa and South America communicate through their roots to the heart of Wales and the rest of the world.”

For Crawford, birds are very much symbols of the African human diaspora and contemporary as well as historical migration from Africa to Europe — “I am part of two worlds, in both I will thrive,” she sings on the album. “I was brought up to be aware that this migration is neither a modern or recent thing. Black people have always been valued and contributing members of European society.” Welsh is Crawford’s first tongue and “it is my emotional language. My songs flow from my emotional responses to nature. I empathise with birds and all living creatures and with the Earth and universe. “This is essentially my spirituality and my family’s. Welsh is closest to my heart and jazz gives me the freedom and chord structure to express this musically – the sounds and notes closest to my musical soul. Sometimes my English lyrics flow as if they are translated from Welsh, even when I write them in English. “Welsh is a poetic and emotionally expressive language which uses a lot of metaphor. Birdsong is both a lyrical description, an emotional response to a real place, and a metaphor for so much that is real and meaningful.” That’s true of the song Rhododendron, about the migration of her great-great grandmother from India to England when she was a little girl. “The song’s lyrics describe my emotional response to her story, through the beautiful plants which grow wild in Carngafallt, but come originally from the Himalayas.” All the musicians spent time together in the natural setting of Carngafallt and the album seeks to “transport listeners inside the deep, rich forests of their imaginations and souls, to connect them with what is meaningful and essential about our relationship to nature.

“We hope to get a visual recording made and that we can find the resources to fund it.”

Crawford is not unique in singing jazz in Welsh. “My younger sister Eadyth sings jazz-soul in Welsh and my earliest inspiration for Birdsong was hearing Ghazalaw live, an amazing Indian ghazal and Welsh folk ensemble with lead singers Gwyneth Glyn and Tauseef Akhtar.” Another inspiration is having been brought up “with strong values of peace, equality and socialism,” she tells me. “My mum is excited that I will be mentioned in the Morning Star!” Crawford’s worth much more than a mention — get hold of Birdsong and you'll understand exactly why.

Kizzy Crawford plays The Islington in London on April 3, box office: theislington.com. Can Yr Adar is released on Basho Records.