Read on Twitter
1/ A fairly long #DyddMiwsigCymru thread……now with a listenable playlist. Thanks to @ieieproductions for the suggestion!
Rhan Un: Bore Da (Part 1: Good Morning)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ryupd8jgc48tz32/Bore%20Da.wav?dl=0
Rhan Un: Bore Da (Part 1: Good Morning)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ryupd8jgc48tz32/Bore%20Da.wav?dl=0
2/ Rhan Dau: Nos Da (Part 2: Good Night)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uazca4a8bmhz1yv/Nos%20Da.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uazca4a8bmhz1yv/Nos%20Da.wav?dl=0
3/ I think everybody who knows me knows I have been in love with the music from this fair land ever since I first heard Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci in 1996. @nationalelf and @gruffingtonpost would send me albums of new and classic Welsh bands and really fed my insatiable hunger.
4/ In 2014, @gruffingtonpost invited me over for a tour and I fell head over heels in love with this place and moved here in November 2015. Since I’ve been here, I’ve immersed myself as deeply and thoroughly in the music that has come from the motherland as I can. It goes deep.
5/ Deeper than I ever thought. Deeper than I know now. Every time I think I’ve reached the end of my searching and have found all the great music that has been made here, I get turned onto something new
6/ For those who live outside of Wales, you may not know much of its history. Much like the US, it was colonized by the English. Much like the US, the English did their best to wipe out the language and culture. People were punished for speaking Welsh and it nearly died.
7/ The language has made a comeback and there are now Welsh language schools nearly everywhere, but that’s a fairly recent development. Even with the resurgence of the language, fewer than 1/4 of Welsh people speak Welsh with any level of fluency.
8/ At the time the earliest recordings on this playlist were made, to sing in Welsh was a political act in and of itself. It meant limiting your audience to only Welsh speakers.
9/ As such, a large amount of Welsh language music has always been very individualistic and pure because they sing in their mother tongue out of a need to express themselves, not because there are riches and fame to be gained for doing it.
10/ Many of the songs were songs of protest. The Nos Da playlist begins with a few songs about Capel Celyn, a small village town whose citizens were forced to move by the English government and which was then intentionally flooded, becoming the Treweryn Reservoir........
11/ ......to provide water for Liverpool. Next is a song about the importance of preserving the language. Next is a song about the battles the people faced trying to have the language be officially recognized by the government. And so on.......
12/ Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals were the first bands to sing the language on an international stage and I am eternally grateful for them for doing so because they made me seek out what these brilliant, unique bands’ roots were.
13/ (The SFA song Gwreiddiau Dwfn translates as Deep Roots.)
14/ I still have so much music to discover. I don’t know when the next time I’ll be knocked flat on my ass by someone as brilliant as Endaf Emlyn, who gets introduced to me out of the blue. But I know it will happen.
15/ These playlists are but a tiny scratch of the surface of all the brilliant music this beautiful land has produced. I hope you find much enjoyment in it and dig deeper and discover more of it for yourself.
Dydd Miwsig Cymru Hapus!!
Dydd Miwsig Cymru Hapus!!
