Musicality is rich in the way Tony Walsh speaks, not in the backing track, but in the voice itself. Each phrase lands like a drumbeat, each pause carries its own tension, his Mancunian dulcet tones. He’s a poet, sure, but listen closely and you’ll hear it: rhythm, phrasing, and pulse. Spoken word that doesn’t just tell, it plays.

The Beat Beneath the Words

Known across Manchester and beyond as Longfella, Tony Walsh has a voice that moves between performance and melody. His delivery carries the cadences of punk, folk, hip-hop, and sermon, honest, rhythmic, alive. The connection between his poetry and music isn’t abstract; it’s visceral.

In collaborations like “Icarus” with Earlestown’s rising stars The K’s, Walsh’s voice opens the track with layered instrumentation, turning it into something elemental, a Mancunian grounding that transforms narrative into anthem. His verses entwine with the riffs, not in competition but in collaboration, capturing the spirit of working-class artistry: rhythm, resilience, and reflection.

Then there’s “Feels Like This” with Duke Dumont, released in July 2025, a piece that pushes his voice into electronic territory, blending pulse and poetry into something cinematic. It’s the heartbeat of spoken word meeting the euphoria of club culture, proof that poetry can fill the same spaces as basslines and synths, if it carries truth in its tone.

Spoken Word as Sound

Walsh’s work reminds us that spoken word isn’t the absence of music, it’s music in its rawest form. The body becomes the instrument, the breath the rhythm, the silence the rest between notes.

In the tradition of performance poetry, the musicality doesn’t sit behind the words; it is the words. Every repetition, inflection, and hesitation carries intent, what literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin described as “the music of voice, where emotion and meaning fuse into one utterance” (Bakhtin, 1981).

Tony’s delivery isn’t ornamental. It’s structural, built to be heard, not read. To be felt.

Resonance and Reach

The real power of Walsh’s work lies in how it connects. He has the rare ability to bridge poetry and pop, to make verse feel as alive at a festival as it does in a quiet theatre. It’s the same energy that made “This Is The Place” resonate so deeply, that sense that words, when delivered with rhythm and belief, can move crowds like chords.

Through projects like “Icarus” and “Feels Like This”, Tony is expanding what spoken word can sound like, not performance at the edges of music, but a form that stands proudly within it. His voice isn’t just telling stories; it’s playing them.

Resona’s Take

In a landscape where music and language often sit in separate lanes, Tony Walsh walks the line between them with ease. His work proves that poetry doesn’t need melody to sing, it already has one built in, one that is deeply routed in the corridors of Mancunia and beyond.

He reminds us that rhythm lives everywhere: in breath, in speech, in the stories we tell. And that when spoken word meets sound, something deeper happens, the space between poet and musician disappears, and all that’s left is resonance.

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