About Me
We are: Simon Heywood (guitar, voice) and Shonaleigh (voice). We formed in 2005 and played our first show at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff. Besides both being experienced contemporary storytellers, Simon is a songwriter and guitarist, and Shona is a singer. Javalaka was started as a way of mixing all this together and seeing what it sounded like.Simon holds a PhD in Folklore from Sheffield University and teaches storytelling to Creative Writing students at Derby University. After playing bass in Jabadaw for a spell, he left to write songs and music for Light of the Long Hand, a series of storytelling shows based on Irish mythology. The first show in the series, The Twisting Field, toured nationally in 2006-7, at the Sage, Gateshead, Hay on Wye winter festival, and elsewhere. The second show, The Middle Yard, is touring from summer 2008. Other songs and tunes of his have been played, sung and recorded by Crucible, Hekety, Jabadaw, Olio, Nick Hennessey, Denny Bartley and others.Shonaleigh is a Drut’syla, a storyteller from the Yiddish tradition, and one of the foremost performers on the international storytelling circuit. Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she worked in television, film, and mainstream and fringe theatre before becoming a professional storyteller in 1996. Three years later she formed the group Tashbain, mixing story and song. In 2006 she premiered her latest piece, Fool of the Warsaw Ghetto, at the Hay on Wye Literature Festival.Javalaka is pronounced "ja-VAL-a-ker"!
