| Welsh Language Music Day | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Various |
| Dates | 8 February |
| Location(s) | Cardiff, Wales |
| Years active | 2013–present |
| Website | www.gov.wales |
Welsh Language Music Day (Welsh : Dydd Miwsig Cymru) is a music festival founded by radio presenter Huw Stephens. Events take place on the day at its base in Cardiff, as well as previously in London, Swansea, and even as far as Brooklyn and Budapest. [1]
Despite the Welsh language having words for music ( cerddoriaeth , cerdd or alaw), the colloquial term miwsic, borrowed from the English word music, was used instead to promote the event.
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The festival takes place annually in Stephens' hometown of Cardiff, Wales, as well as hosting events in other UK cities including London, Caernarfon, and Swansea. The first Welsh Language Music Day took place in February 2013. [2] Artists who have been highlighted include Mellt, Gwenno Saunders, The Gentle Good, Chroma, Adwaith, Candelas, Meic Stevens, Los Blancos, and Alffa. [3]
Organisations across Wales are involved in the yearly event, including Sŵn, BBC Horizons, Forté Project, Clwb Ifor Bach and Big Fish Little Fish. [4]
Events have been held across the UK, including venues in Cardiff as well as: [5]
Independent events have also been organised by Menter Iaith in the following: [4]
During each years' events, organisers research the streaming popularity of Welsh language music acts globally.
The 2018 event found the most popular Welsh artists on Spotify were: [4]
The survey also found the following artists were most popular on Shazam: [4]
The Music of Wales, particularly singing, is a significant part of Welsh national identity, and the country is traditionally referred to as "the land of song".
Pwllheli is a market town and community on the Llŷn Peninsula, in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It had a population of 4,076 in 2011, which declined slightly to 3,947 in 2021; a large proportion (81%) were Welsh speaking. Pwllheli is the place where Plaid Cymru was founded. It is the birthplace of the Welsh poet Sir Albert Evans-Jones.
Lewis Edward Valentine M.A. was a Welsh politician, Baptist pastor, author, editor, and Welsh-language activist. He was the first leader of the Welsh political party Plaid Cymru.
Penyberth was a farmhouse at Penrhos, on the Llŷn Peninsula near Pwllheli, Gwynedd, which had been the home to generations of patrons of poets, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island, but destroyed in 1936 in order to build a training camp and aerodrome for the RAF.
Huw Meredydd Stephens is a Welsh radio and television presenter, currently broadcasting on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio 6 Music.
Clwb Ifor Bach is a Cardiff nightclub, music venue, Welsh-language club and community centre. It is known to the Cardiff Welsh-speaking community as Clwb and is often known by others on the Cardiff music scene as The Welsh Club.
Meic Stevens is a Welsh singer-songwriter. He has been one of the most prominent figures in the Welsh music scene for over five decades, and played a key role in establishing the popular music scene in Wales. He is described by some as "the Welsh Bob Dylan" and has also been compared favorably with musicians such as Syd Barrett. Stevens's songs are mostly sung in his native Welsh language and have a mystical, faintly psychedelic flavour. His work has influenced groups such as Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals. He is largely unknown outside Wales.
Gwenno Mererid Saunders is a Welsh-Cornish musician, known mononymously as Gwenno. She has released three critically acclaimed albums as a solo artist: Welsh Music Prize winner Y Dydd Olaf (2014); Le Kov (2018), her first album in Cornish; and Tresor (2022), which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.
Brian Morgan Edwards was a Welsh businessman and politician who sponsored the first Welsh-language recording studio for popular music. He was described as a political "maverick".
Owain Owain was a Welsh novelist, short-story writer and poet. He also founded Tafod y Ddraig, which became the Welsh Language Society's main voice from its inception in the 1960s to the present day.
The Tafwyl festival is an annual Welsh-language festival which takes place in Cardiff, Wales. It culminates with a two day open air festival, normally held in Cardiff Castle.
The Y Selar Awards are awarded annually for the best Welsh language rock and pop music, by the Welsh language music magazine, Y Selar. The awards ceremony is the only one specifically for Welsh language music.
Gwilym (transl. William) are a Welsh-language pop rock group from Anglesey and Caernarfon. The band consists of members Ifan Pritchard, Llyr Jones, Llew Glyn, Rhys Grail, and Carwyn Williams. The group was founded in 2017.
Cool Cymru was a Welsh cultural movement in music and independent film in the 1990s and 2000s, led by the popularity of bands such as Catatonia, Stereophonics and Manic Street Preachers.
Horizons is an arts scheme and music festival launched jointly in 2014 by BBC Cymru Wales and the Arts Council of Wales to develop new independent contemporary music artists. It is curated by BBC presenter Bethan Elfyn.
Adwaith (transl. Reaction) are a Welsh language indie rock group from Carmarthen in West Wales, formed in 2015. The group consists of Hollie Singer, Gwenllian Anthony and Heledd Owen (drums). Signed to Libertino Records, they released their first album Melyn in 2018. Both Melyn and its follow-up Bato Mato (2022) won Welsh Music Prize awarded for the best album from Wales, making Adwaith the first act to receive the award twice.
John Gwilym Jones was a Welsh dramatist, novelist, short-story writer, drama director, academic and critic, considered a pre-eminent figure in those fields. In particular, he is widely acknowledged to be one of the two greatest 20th-century Welsh playwrights, along with Saunders Lewis; of his many plays, Hanes Rhyw Gymro (1964), Ac Eto Nid Myfi (1976) and Yr Adduned (1979) are considered masterpieces. Almost all of his work was written in the Welsh language. A writer in the modernist tradition, he is credited with introducing Brechtian techniques, stream-of-consciousness narrative and Freudianism to Welsh literature. Creative writers such as Kate Roberts and John Rowlands owed him a profound debt, and a whole generation of critics were influenced by his work as a teacher of Welsh literature.
Welsh pop and rock music is popular music of Wales produced commercially in Wales.
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