Cymru - Land Of Song !!!

WALES: IS IT STILL THE LAND OF SONG ?

To be born Welsh is to be born privileged; not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with music in your heart and poetry in your soul.

How many Welsh expatriates have that message somewhere in their homes? And how many believe it is still true?

Surely not those who equate Welsh singing with what currently happens at international rugby matches in the Millennium Stadium. At the recent Wales v Wallabies World Cup game the only meaningful singing occurred at half-time, when the PA system played a recording of Tom Jones singing Delilah. Even then, if the group near me was anything to go by, the vocal contribution of the Australian supporters was every bit as vital as that of the home fans. Despite the fight-back by Wales in the second half, there was more Waltzing Matilda than Bread of Heaven in the few desultory refrains that could be heard.

With the advent of colour TV, watching the game on TV became a tempting option. The experienced supporters retired from the fray in their thousands, handing on their tickets to their grandkids. Suddenly, the average age of Arms Park supporters plummeted, as did the quality of the singing. It has never recovered, though there have been occasions when massed choirs have been employed to gain some response from supporters whose main knowledge of sacred music comes via Max Boyce's Hymns and Arias.

But don't think for a moment that the decline in singing at rugby internationals signals the end of Wales as the land of song. Male Voice Choirs have been a threatened species for over half a century, but that, to a large extent, is an illusion. Certainly, most choirs have a high average age, but that is because most new members join male voice choirs relatively late in life, partly due to the more mature appeal of the style of music, and the extra availability of practice and concert time when family commitments lessen in middle age.

A long list of Welsh male voice choirs is currently displayed on the new Visit Wales website, www.homecomingwales.com, while the tourist board pamphlet lists 112 active groups - and it is by no means exhaustive. Two of the choirs that have sung with the Sydney Welsh Choir on tour in Wales are among the groups left off the list. Occasionally, it is true, a choir may be forced to close, but then a new one like Swansea's Phoenix may start up for the most unexpected reason. On my recent visit to Wales, I was able to attend a practice of Wales best known choir, the Morriston Orpheus. Despite the defection of members to the Phoenix, I can assure all Morriston's Australian fans that the choir is in great spirits and singing beautifully under its new music director, Joy Amman Davies.

The recent rise to stardom of a relatively obscure, if well credentialed, male voice choir, the Fron (Froncysyllte), must surely have encouraged both exponents and supporters of such choirs. Their CD, Voices of the Valley, sold at an unprecedented rate for a 'classical' recording, reaching Gold Disk status one week from its launch in late 2006 and eventually gaining Platinum Disk status. There is certainly a public for this form of music and plenty of incentive to take part. We can expect to see the Fron in Australia before too much longer.

To most Australians, a Welsh choir must be male-voice. Few outsiders realise how many ladies and mixed choirs there are in Wales, along with a huge number of children's choirs. In late September I attended a concert in Treorchy put on by the Welsh Association of Ladies Choirs, and compered in brilliant style by Roy Noble. About a dozen ladies choirs took part in that concert, but there are many other female voice choirs, unrepresented at that event, regularly performing in South East Wales.

One such is the Caerphilly Ladies Choir, which I saw in practice and in performance in September. Its members have helped host the Sydney Welsh Choir on three of our tours to Wales. It is ironic that I was able to attend both the male voice practice and the ladies practice in the same school on the same evening, one choir upstairs, one down, yet the two choirs seldom meet except when they stage a joint concert with our visiting Sydney choir.

In late 2006 and early 2007 there was an entertaining Welsh language TV series called Codi Canu, in which four mixed choirs were created and their development chronicled as they competed with each other to win first place. The prize was to sing the national anthem at the Millennium Stadium on the Wales v England rugby international day - an appropriate reward as the choirs in question represented the four professional rugby franchises in Wales. The singers chosen were not allowed to be current members of other choirs, and some had great difficulty singing in tune or pronouncing Welsh. But the finished product was surprisingly good, at least when the choirs were allowed to perform with piano accompaniment in an indoor setting.

Another recent TV hit has been the comedy drama Con Passionate, which won the European TV award for its category early in 2007 - a first for a Welsh language program. This highly entertaining series was based on an imaginary Welsh male voice choir and its female conductor, played by Sian Cothi. It certainly makes choral singing seem anything but humdrum. The general dialogue may be Welsh but the expletives are very English.

The fact that VisitWales, aka the Wales Tourist Board, has finally taken to advertising choirs as an attraction shows that choirs are becoming increasingly in vogue. Only a few years ago, publicity material on Wales concentrated on rock bands and ballet and esoteric pastimes such as bog-snorkelling - choirs and eisteddfodau were 'Old Wales' and not appropriate to the new image being developed. The recognition of Wales around the world as the land of song was not considered worth saving. Perhaps, at last, common sense is prevailing and Wales will start to capitalise on the positive image its choral singing has created.

There isn't enough space to delve deeply into Wales as a land of soloists, but the outstanding success of Bryn Terfel at the highest operatic level and of Katherine Jenkins on the semi-operatic level indicate the impact Welsh singers are making. Both Bryn and Katherine have their own annual festivals (one in Faenol near Bangor; one in Margam near Port Talbot) and their guests include established international stars and aspiring local singers such as Paul Potts. Dennis O'Neill, Rebecca Evans and Jason Howard are just three of the other well known classical singers in Wales, but their world fame hardly compares with such Welsh stars of the pop music world as Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey.

Wales is certainly better known for its singers than for its instrumental music, but Wales possesses more professional orchestras than ever before, while individual instrumentalists such as harpist Catrin Finch would be hard to beat. Meanwhile, though the number of brass bands in Wales has slipped since the old coal-mining days, Cory Band from the Rhondda was declared British champion band again in 2007. The success of Welsh composers like Karl Jenkins has further boosted the status of music in Wales. It is nice to see that his composition, Adiemus, is used by Tourism NSW as the backround music advertising this state of ours on the other side of the world from Old South Wales.

Wales now has some remarkable music venues. The Sydney Welsh Choir sang in the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea in 1990 just after Pavarotti had flown in especially to record in it. The following day we sang in the beautiful Eighteenth Century Orangery at Margam Park - a small but exquisite venue. Cardiff now has the magnificent Millennium Centre as well as the beautiful St David's Hall along with several other large performance areas. Add the many Welsh cathedrals (our choir on tour has sung in Bangor, Llandaff, Brecon, and twice at St David's), the huge performance centre in Llangollen and new theatres in many towns in Wales and there are plenty of places for choirs to sing.

Even the ruined castles of Wales make great venues, Choirs are usually reluctant to sing outdoors without professional microphone arrangements, but the heavy stone walls of castles like Caernarfon Harlech or Conwy create brilliant acoustics, as the Sydney Welsh Choir has discovered many times over. So, there are choirs to sing, places in which to sing, and audiences willing to attend - even in the damp chill of a Snowdonia summer.

Wales is still the land of song, and there is still music in your heart for most Welsh people, though it's more likely to be pop music rather than hymns. But as for poetry in your soul - well, that requires an article of its own, which I'll soon get round to writing.

Clive Woosnam
18 November 2007