Rare Bits of Welsh Melodies : Folk music: Cusan Tan, whose instruments include kitchen utensils, brings its unique sound to San Juan Capistrano tonight.

Among the instruments employed by Welsh music group Cusan Tan to achieve its distinctive mix of new and traditional sounds are flute, guitar and Welsh triple harp.

Oh, and a meat mallet.

“We use kitchen utensils for percussion,” said Ann Morgan Jones, reached by phone this week at a rehearsal in Martinez, Calif. “A meat mallet, mortar and pestle, the rim of a pottery jug. . . . They have to be home-groomed sounds.” The group, whose name means “kiss of fire,” plays tonight in the courtyard of the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, the first of 19 performances in as many days on a U.S. tour that ends in Troy, N.Y.

Jones was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, and left at age 15 to study flute at the Royal Academy of Music in London; now based back in Aberystwyth, she’s lead vocalist for the band and writes its material. She also lived for several years in the Yukon, and when the quartet’s regular guitarist, John Rodge, begged off the U.S. tour due to scheduling difficulties, she signed Yukon guitarist Manfred Janssen to fill in.

The group’s secondary vocalist, Sue Jones Davies, also is an actress, and perhaps best known to Americans for her role as Rachel, a Welsh woman, in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.”

Davies and Jones met four years ago picking up their children from school. “We were being mommies,” Jones, 42, recalled. “I saw her on the first day of school and thought she was an interesting-looking woman. My friend said, ‘I reckon you’d get on very well; she’s an actress.’

“We had a cup of coffee. I asked Susie, ‘Do you sing?’ She said, ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ ”

Rounding out the lineup is Robin Huw Bowen, a one-man crusade for the Welsh triple harp who continues his own North American tour when the band’s tour ends. The triple harp has three sets of strings, as opposed to one on the Celtic or classical harp. Bowen’s solo album, “Telyn Berseiniolfy Ngwlad (The Sweet Harp of My Land),” was released in the U.S. on Flying Fish Records.

Cusan Tan’s first recording, called simply “Cusan Tan” and originally on Wales’ Fflach label, was released in the U.S. this week by Firebird Music of Portland.

Jones was buoyed by this assessment in the Welsh Harp Society of America’s journal: “Within the diminutive sea of neo-traditional and contemporary Welsh folk music available today, Cusan Tan sails alone.” Jones seconded that opinion: “There isn’t another band (like ours), certainly not in Wales.” To illustrate her point, Jones, who also plays saxophone and piano, noted that she incorporates elements of New Age, jazz, even Tex-Mex and “a touch of semi-country” in her compositions. And before Cusan Tan, she said, the Welsh triple harp had been used strictly for traditional music.

Throw in Jones’ classical training as an orchestral flutist, and the group’s palette of influences grows even larger.

“You might hear a Bach bass line in the piano,” she said. “Sometimes we do a capella. I absolutely adore Steve Reich; I love Stravinsky.

“But I also love schmaltz--(Rodgers & Hammerstein’s) ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!’ was the first tune in my life that I loved. You can hear it all in my music.

“There’s a definite ‘multi’ feel to it all,” Jones said.

“We’re very odd back in Wales. We don’t just play nice little folk songs. You can’t find a category for us, and that’s always a problem.”

But while Cusan Tan’s sound may very well be unique, its topics are universal.

“The three standards,” Jones said, “life, love, death.”

* Cusan Tan performs new and traditional Welsh music tonight at San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. 7 and 9 p.m. $3. (714) 493-1752.