Wyvern Lingo are a trio from Ireland, who grew up playing music together and obsessing over hand-me-down albums of Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell and Simon and Garfunkel, along with the RnB of the 90s/00s that then dominated the radio. In 2020, the band released the Brutal Lottery song about the alarming number of refugee children that have gone missing upon arrival in Europe in the last few years. The proceeds raised on Bandcamp supported funding Missing Children Europe’s annual Lost in Migration event, which was organised last December by young migrants themselves. Below, Wyvern Lingo spoke with Missing Children Europe about their work, inspiration and why it is important to support grassroots campaigns.

 

How long have you been singing together and what made you decide to pursue a career in the music industry?

We all went to school together and became close friends around the age of 11. We started writing music together then, and have been doing it ever since! We all started to work and study in Dublin after school, and then got a publishing and record deal when we were 22. Since then we have released 2 EPs, 1 LP and are about to release our second album on the 26th of February.

 

Can you tell us something about the group that not many people would know?
We are Irish, but we recorded our latest album in Berlin and attempted to move there just as the global pandemic started. The result has been a year half in Berlin and half in Ireland, which has been a strange introduction to that amazing artistic city! The first word in our name, Wyvern, is also Welsh, just to confuse things.

 

Why did you decide to support Missing Children Europe?
In 2016, Karen from the band helped to organise a grassroots campaign called 10,000 Missing Children upon learning about the alarming number of refugee children that had gone missing in Europe since 2014. The petition received over 30,000 signatures and went together a list of demands to the European Justice and Home Affairs Council. Leading up to the campaign, Missing Children Europe were incredibly helpful and supportive. Karen wrote the lyrics to the song after this experience and as a band we felt it was only right that revenue from the song should go towards the work that Missing Children Europe do.

 

Why should people download Brutal Lottery and support Missing Children Europe?
The song discusses an uncomfortable truth surrounding the implicit racism in our treatment of refugees in Europe. Missing Children Europe are trying to elevate the voices of young refugees in Europe and bring them to the table with the policy makers whose policy is allowing so many children to slip through the cracks. All profits from downloads of the song from Bandcamp go directly to Missing Children Europe in helping them do this.