The Color of Hills and Water

by Roseann Lloyd

It's said that ancient Celtic warriors, women and men, went into battle naked and covered their bodies with blue paint, as though they were savages. What should be added to this story is that this paint, which they made from the woad plant, contained antiseptic properties that protected them in battle.

And you can't tell the difference between blue and green when you're driving down to the sea, especially that windy one-lane road coming down to Solva and you say the only expression you know in Welsh: tylwyth teg, tylwyth teg, it's a song all to itself and you believe it, for you've traveled through the tree tunnels and stood under the dark hawthorn trees with their sudden cloud of faery bloom, and you can't tell the difference between blue and green when you're squinting sea side and the wind blasts your bleak city thoughts out of your brain and the water dances up to throw aqua blue across your field of vision, turquoise and forest green, even, too, and it's no surprise that old Welsh has a word for a color that means both blue and green: glas, the color of hills and water, it says in my word-book, and when you're walking along the hedgerows from your car to the sea you sense all that glas humming hot around you and you know it's the color of life, the color from which the fuchsia foxgloves burst and you keep walking and when you walk into the deep wooded garden you come upon blue poppies, yes! you're not even stoned and the poppies are shimmering blue, brindled with sun and green, and you know for a fact that glas should become an English expression, too, and you say it out loud, glas, your second word in Welsh, and only then do you see the blue warriors skating through the deep green woods, the blue warriors, leaf-splashed, sun-brindled—all our city wounds cured by blue.

Wales

by Nicole Evans

Upon that rock

a mile from my ancestral home, 

I recognized in the mossy landscape

a softness similar to my cheekbones.

This recognition bore, too,

a heartbeat

not unlike the bleating of a lamb

or mountain streams through stone.

In my sight

I saw a horizon known

to him and her and her before me,

their name I carry into a life 

to them

distinctly unknown.

But I wonder, were they to see me

here,

whether they’d recognize in me

their cheekbones,

and heartbeat, too.

Who Plays the Harp?

by Shannon King

In memory of the Welsh settlers of 1865 in Patagonia

Who plays the harp in Patagonia?

I would like to know.

Is it Morgan le Fay?

Who stowed away

and brought her music, too?

Is it Eirlis Griffith or Merridith,

in the teashop in Trelew?

Who sings to the harp in Patagonia?

Do Owain, Blodwen and Lewis

sing in the chapel

where Clara leads the choir?

Do they sing songs of Y Wladfa

remembering folks in Aberdare?

Do the jackass penguins bray?

When the good folk of Gaiman

kneel in their pews to pray?

And when Rachel Jenkins long ago

led the men to dig,

Did they sing Cwm Rhondda or Crugybar?

And dance a little jig?

Who listened to the harp in Patagonia

in those times so far away?

Not only good people of Y Wladfa

but I would like to think

the Patagones, as well,

Tehuelche and Mapuche,

who riding along their trails one day

heard beauteous sounds never heard before

and stopped quite still to listen.

And when the tremolos faded, they prayed,

“Oh! Let these people stay!”

The Welsh Appreciation for the Written Word

by Mary Mergenthal

From the time of their arrival in America, the Welsh sought ways to “get the news” of marriages, births, and burials on both sides of the Atlantic; of Welsh events here and there—Eisteddfodau, Cymanfaoedd Canu, celebrations of St. David’s Day. Because the early Welsh community in American was so spread out well before radio and telephones, the printed word had to do.

In 1720, fifty years before this country became the United States of America, the first Welsh-language book here was published in Philadelphia. By 1850, there were 36,000 Welsh immigrants in America. By 1860—45,000! They settled mainly in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but some went on to Alabama and even California. Consider that these were Welsh-speaking immigrants. Many (possibly most) spoke no English when they arrived. They were not illiterate, certainly—far from it. These were contestants for the Poetry Crown at Eisteddfodau back home but they were conversant only in Welsh.

In his address “Forging a National Welsh-American Identity: The First Decades of the Welsh-Language Periodical Press in the United States” at the virtual 2020 North American Festival of Wales, Prof. Jerry Hunter, School of Welsh and Celtic Studies, Bangor University, shared a telling quote from a reader of one of the early papers (mid-19th century): “Your paper gives us a way to ‘shake hands’ with another Welsh person.”

Y Drych (The Mirror) became the fifth Welsh-language newspaper when it began in Utica in 1851. It was a weekly, nondenominational newspaper. Its four predecessors (all fairly short-lived) had been Methodist, Baptist, or Congregational periodicals. Hunter also pointed out that by 1861 all of the Welsh press was decidedly anti-slavery. Y Drych continued solely in Welsh until the 1930s, when it became unreasonable to maintain readership when so many descendants of those first immigrants no longer spoke Welsh.

I had the distinct privilege of owning and editing Y Drych for its final 12 years, until its 150th birthday in 2001. At that time it was sold to a third party and by 2003 was merged with Ninnau (We Also), a Welsh bimonthly newspaper in English, with some Welsh sections. Ninnau had begun publication in 1975. That paper, still publishing regularly under the editorship of Dr. Megan Williams, now uses Ninnau/Y Drych as its title. Fittingly, it is now back in New York State where it began 200+ years ago. Its current home, Trumansburg, is only 125 miles from Utica.

I Remember Richard

by Kathleen Motzenbecker

“To begin at the beginning...” –Richard Burton, breathing life into Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood”

Is it possible to remember someone you have never met? November 10, 2020 marks the 95th birthday of Richard Burton, the Welsh actor who died at age 58 in 1984. Many millennials have never heard of him or may only know him vaguely as one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands (they married and divorced twice). Others may recall a much-vaunted stage career that melded into films with his actress wife. He was famously nominated for the Academy Awards seven times, yet never came home with a golden Oscar—perhaps in retribution for the affair that scandalized even the Vatican back in a more parochial world.

But if you heard his voice reciting poetry or read his personal diaries (which were published by his widow in 2005) then you not only remember Richard Burton, the actor, but have a part of Richard Burton, the reader and writer, emblazed on your soul. His voice and written words are a portal into one of the most fascinating people of the 20th century.  

His voice has been described as a “mellifluous baritone,” but it was more than that. Richard’s voice reverberated with a sensational timbre that resonates even decades after his passing. I was riveted the first time I saw him on the screen, his light blue eyes flashing through black and white in John LeCarre’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” He made an overcoat look dashing as he played British spy Alec Leamas. In one of the film’s most iconic scenes, he climbs over the Berlin Wall with actress Claire Bloom in tow. Burton represented a cool and detached soul, but his voice gave even that character great warmth.

Wales—the mythological land of sea and coast, of sky and waves—bore forth this tremendous talent. He was born Richard Walter Jenkins, in the small village of Pontrhydyfen, near Port Talbot. He was the 12th of 13 children and his mother died when he was a toddler.

The year of his birth was 1925, when Britain was waxing and waning between two world wars. Work options were few, aside from going underground to the mines. This was not Richard’s destination, thanks to a drama teacher named Philip Burton—a man of education, books, and theater. He taught Shakespeare to the future Hamlet of the Old Vic and Broadway, fostering the talent to be heard around the world.  

Adopting his teacher’s surname, Richard Burton strode across stages. His voice boomed as though from seaside valleys, washing out his Welsh accent. Here was strength and virility—a forceful fusillade through verse and poem, scripts and dramas. And then, of course, there was Elizabeth. They were world’s first modern superstar couple. They lived, traveled, and drank lavishly, which led unfortunately to their divorce, remarriage, and divorce again. The public and paparazzi (still in its infancy) were fascinated by their story as they fell from the stars, mere mortals after all. It is easy to characterize them as a couple, to discard their tremendous individual talent. This does a disservice to their creativity, which crackled most in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”—the first film directed by Mike Nichols.

Now, nearly three decades after his death, Richard Burton’s voice is alive and well. Where can you hear it? The internet, of course! Type his name into any search engine and you will hear his velvet hum voicing the words of Shakespeare, John Donne, or his fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas. Indeed, Burton’s recitation as the main character of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the world’s best. For anyone looking to deepen their appreciation of poetry, there can be no better recommendation than listening to Richard Burton’s voice recite verse.

Lastly, the diaries. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. All through the decades, through the ups and downs of a dazzling life, he took pen to paper and wrote his insights, idiosyncrasies, adventures. This is not a celebrity tell-all but the inner thoughts of a highly educated man who read and wrote constantly. 

Deep in the heart of Wales, his original diaries are now nestled in the seaside town of Swansea. Downstairs in the university library, this treasure trove is kept under the careful eyes of archivists who transcribed “The Richard Burton Diaries” from a young schoolboy in Port Talbot to playboy of the Western World. Ninety-five years after his birth, these keep him alive and well for us all—to listen, to learn, and to love.

It’s Never Just a Song

by Ilene Dawn Alexander

I. Turn Your Radio On

It is significant that virtually all hostility [to the word culture] has been connected with uses involving claims to superior knowledge, refinement and distinctions between ‘high’ art (culture) and popular art and entertainment.

–“Culture” in Keywords by Raymond Williams

“He’s Welsh, you know.”

“Did you know she’s from Wales?”

Whether a visiting weekend or weeknight during a longer school break, staying at 131 Morgan Street in Tracy included a variety show that will have brought the six of us together. My grandparents, my great uncle, my parents and me, lounged in the smallest room in the house with the biggest oil stove in the house. A standard-sized cabinet TV always in the furthest corner. The adults taking up three comfy chairs and one couch, with a dining chair brought to the archway. Me, I’m sat on the floor, using the book-packed secretary, the largest piece of furniture in the house, as a backrest.

We might have been watching shows headed by Johnny Cash, Tom Jones, Dean Martin, Ed Sullivan, Hee Haw, Dinah Shore, the Hullabaloo dancers, Flip Wilson, Sonny and Cher, The Smothers Brothers, or Glen Campbell. Whatever it was, if someone Welsh guested on the show, Gram or Dave called it out. When it was Tom Jones on Ed Sullivan, I’d have heard—

Yes, they'll all come to meet me

Arms reaching, smiling sweetly

It's good to touch the green,

green grass of home

The old house is still standing

Though the paint is cracked and dry

And there's that old oak tree

that I used to play on

—with my mom singing along quietly, quite beautifully.

There was a daytime Tracy soundtrack, too—thanks to the kitchen radio Grumpy switched on as soon as he poured the first coffee: KMHL out of Marshall, or KELO from Sioux Falls; always, the choice depending on the weather. As others ventured to the kitchen easing into the day with coffee and eyes turned to the backyard birds, the radio sparked first conversational gestures: Good song, that one. Well, what do you think about that…? Or maybe we’d sing along—me the soprano, Uncle Dave the responding bass for something like Ray Stevens’ 1972 “Turn Your Radio On”:

Turn your radio on

(Oh yes turn your radio on)

And listen to the music in the air

Turn your radio on

(Oh yes turn your radio on)

And glory share (Glory glory share)

The radio stayed on while making food, but switched off during meals and clean up—the only sound then, family. The radio played while we Scrabbled at the kitchen table, and whispered into the nooks of the house where the reading of books and magazines and newspapers took us to new worlds, reflected our world to us from other perspectives as we relaxed into a book, challenged existing knowledge when it was news reportage engaging us from places we’d not ever known—or didn’t yet know—firsthand.

At home with my parents, our bedroom clock radios were tuned to our preferred local station: KYSM for Pops, KTOE for Mom, and KMSU for me. Each offered “just right” sounds to bookend a day. With my parents’ brilliant 78 and 33 album collections, my stash of 45s, and all sorts of concerts at local schools and colleges, our home-in-Mankato soundtrack was multigenerational, multicultural, multigenre. Thanks to a red-lidded portable record player, and my grandparents’ patient willingness to hear me out, I regularly linked the music of my Mankato home to our Tracy homeplace.

My soundtrack now grows via digital radio, podcasts, performers webpages, and Twitter follows—all offered by people I’ve never met. My work colleagues will stop to hear English and Welsh language tracks during Janice Long’s early-afternoon-in-Minnesota BBC Wales broadcasts. My friends in the younger-than-40 category ask after Doctor Who plots (BBC Wales as its modern producer), seek Welsh author and music recommendations. For these swaps, I dip into the music stash I’ve accumulated by listening to Wales DJs including Bethan Elfyn, Adam Walton, Vicki Blight, Lisa Gwilym, Roy Noble, and Frank Hennessy.

Thanks to the world of apps, smart devices, and computers, I’ve found a made-in-Wales-right-now soundtrack that draws from folk, pop, rock, punk, and rap performers; from singer-songwriters, and blues, jazz or easy listening stylists. From performers who began their careers in the 1950s up to those emerging in one of the BBCs “introducing” show. The Wales-right-now radio broadcasts includes special programming to feature Welsh voice choir interviews and recordings, sounds of both sermons and songs in church services, and segments from high culture venues—performances from the Welsh National Opera, as well as musicians and speakers at both the National Eisteddfod of Wales.

When I hear Tom Jones’ “Green, Green Grass” on the radio, Murry the Hump’s version is the B-side in my head. This Cardiff-playing-circa-2000 band acknowledges rolling joints rather than rolling hills. Quite different moods and modes in this pairing, though similar narrators—Welsh working class men. The newer song pushes back on the economic, social, and demographical damages imposed by an English

Tory ruling class that extracts value from Wales. We’re tasked with looking back in order to see now, if there’s any hope to move forward:

My dealer drives a 3-wheeler

Lives in a house

By the side of the sea…

On Wednesday’s I call in to see them

I don't want to be them

Just call in to see them…

It's my green green grass of home

It's the only way we can be free

In this pairing, I feel change—and changed, and prepared to anticipate changes around the corner while riding along with the ups and downs. And, again, I hear Gram’s kind reminder on visits during PhD-school to take a good long pause to think and recognize how and why home had changed, or had not, if I was expecting family and home to see the Evan-Stafford-Alexander girl who’d taken shape there, and also the girl I carried on becoming while interacting in my new worlds and roles. This seeking to understand the multiple how and why of change, this is a Welshness my Hannah learned from her Hannah. It’s a thread I rediscovered recently re-reading Border Country by Raymond Williams:

“I can’t come here and pretend that I’m Will Price, with nothing changed.”

“Nobody is asking you to do that…You saw me and your Gran: we were different. How many, ever, live just like their fathers? None at all like their grandfathers. If they’re doing the same work, they’re still quiet different.”

–Son and Father

II. Homely Welshness

Switching it over to AM

Searching for a truer sound

Can’t recall the call letters

Steel guitar and settle down

May the wind take your troubles away

Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel

May the wind take your troubles away

–“Windfall” by Jay Farrar

For the last seven miles from Walnut Grove, it’s karaoke time in my car as I switch from local radio to phone apps so I can bellow along with a two-song loop while the rolled down front windows let in that glorious wind. In this loop, “Windfall” is joined by David Byrne’s “Buck Naked”—

Runnin' naked, down the state highway

Runnin' naked, in the middle of the day

Runnin' naked like a tom cat's behind

Runnin' naked

but the cat don't seem to mind

And we're buck naked now

In the eyes of the Lord

On long Easter or Labor Day weekend journeys from the mid-1990s onward, heading to Tracy required a naked heart and open brain. For this 2012 trip to see the newly built 131 Morgan Street, a unit of four affordable family homes, the trip offered me two days of space—visual, cognitive, affective—to think with the wind, to walk with my camera as an eye on change, and to loop on foot around what had been the homeplace.

131 Morgan Street began as a 2-storey, wood-framed, 2-up, 2-down building with a wooden sidewalk, and expanded to a 4-up, 4-down, front-porched home on a quarter-block lot. Two streets down from the main intersection of Tracy’s two blocks long, two blocks deep downtown, Hannah Evans Stafford and David Franklin Stafford established a five-generation, 120-year homeplace for the Evans-Stafford-Alexander family. A second Hannah, my Gram, and my Grumpy, Claude, held the tenancy for the middle generation, making for their four boys a homely place—in its United Kingdom sense of a simple and cozy, rumpled and always incomplete space. I am the only child of son #3, the goddaughter of son #4.

In this home, I was expected to do chores, to read, and to be seen and heard at the table whether the conversation was topical or convivial. Always, I was expected to know History and history, whether personal and local, world and political, geographic and cultural. The story telling captured oscillations—ups and downs, the terrible painful times and joyful celebratory times that we survived whether the experiences were passing or persistent—whether these involved family and community stories, current news in and beyond the US, or layered histories set out in the books of my homework bag and of the hardback volumes occupying pride of place in the living room secretary.

Of all the history texts, the History of the Welsh in Minnesota, Foreston and Lime Springs, Iowa, was stored in a special place—dining room sideboard. Gram hefted the leather-bound, gilt-lettered, taller-than-my-hand, one-side-Welsh-the-other-English tome to the dining room table for visiting relatives, and a pestering granddaughter. We’d trace Hannah Evans across those pages: 1870 in Cambria Township with her parents and multiple siblings, then in 1871 heading to Lake Sarah Township, a School Marm at age 18. Marriage to a Civil War veteran in 1877 landed her in Tracy to also begin a school, a business, and to rear six children who would be active in this small town’s Welsh civic, church, and cultural communities.

We’d trace the family story, too, through the books in the house—there was always egg money, or an extra carpentry job, or just one more boarder taken in to buy books. On the shelves an unabridged Shakespeare, all of George Eliot’s novels parsed out in segments sized to fit in a lady’s decorative purse, world and US histories for children, Mein Kampf as a testament to the orchestration of fascism, and a much loved collection of Zane Grey paperbacks. Gram linked the breadth of reading to what she called a Welsh penchant for hearing peoples’ stories in their own voices, and for being working class people always engaged in lifelong learning.

In this homeplace, words were everything. In using them, we shaped who we were, and resisted being who people told us we were. In experiencing them, we shaped how we understood the world—principles, perceptions, and practicalities.

In college, Gram passed the first Hannah’s 1874-5 teaching journals to me, with a few lined notebook pages drafting later “pioneer” remembrance writing that were published in area newspapers. The journal pages included pen, ink and watercolor drawings, scribed song lyrics, composed school lessons, and transcriptions of then-current poetry for performing at public orations. Within these texts, I began tracing what she valued: The lines of poetry extolled abolition and temperance, despaired of enslavement and forced migration of indigenous tribes; and balancing love’s tenderness with a call to end domestic violence through temperance. In reading the journals while beginning to teach women’s studies courses and drafting a masters-degree-school thesis focused on family, most powerful were the lessons on world geography and history, and on language use. Among the exercises and lessons, she set out three writing rules: one focusing on the necessity of correct spelling and punctuation (still working on that), one that I can’t call to mind in these moments of writing and editing, and one that has always been resonant, and is even more so as I write now:

Write just what you really think.

What I really think is that I seek a “homely Welshness,” one that respects, even embraces, a bit of pushing back on hiraeth. Of this word, Welsh poet Menna Elfyn links its etymology to two early Welsh words she parses as parallel to ‘long – field,’ and from which she asks, “What will you fill that long field with?” So much. Acreage and forests and rivers and weirs and waterfalls of secular and agnostic, radical and activist, home and community, queer and classed, multigenerational sounds of history, literature, and culture.

Of “fight[ing] against the idea of hiraeth” she adds:

“I don’t like this idea that Welshness has this sentimental looking back attitude to life, people wanting things back as they were. I much prefer my hiraeth to be looking forward, forward looking, and wanting, around the corner, for things to be better.”

Where a more sentimental hiraeth Welshness prevails, as in many Welsh-American organizations, I feel, almost always, the trespasser.

In coming to articulate homely Welshness as a forward-looking hiraeth, I first had to name the bad Welsh-Minnesotan that I am. For example, I can neither read nor hear Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, or A Child’s Christmas in Wales without resistance to the texts’ cadences, gossiping heart, and anchoring backwards. Among his age contemporaries, it’s Raymond Williams as a adult educator, essayist, novelist, and theorist whose tone, textures, and takes on life in Wales—in the world, with Williams as part of changing the world—who speaks to my working class reader, thinker, activist, always-a-teacher soul.

The perhaps more damning bad Welsh-Minnesota confession I can make is that the music typical of Gamanfa Ganu or male voice choir programs does not stir my heart nor open my ear to listening with care, or sense of belonging. I watch Welsh friends at programs and events in this tradition that I help design locally—I feel their joy and connectedness. I can see the congregation of my growing up Welsh church transformed by senses of mutuality and mattering while singing those songs in that sanctuary.

While I feel the energy of my friends’ deep affections for church and chapel hymnody, four-part harmony, Welsh composers like Karl Jenkins or Joseph Parry, and the voices of vocalist Katherine Jenkins, young Charlotte Church, or Sir Bryn Terfel, I long for them to ask about, listen to—simply acknowledge—my homely Welsh music.

So many musics—the Welsh music of pubs and bars, of blues and hip-hop, country and americana, rock and rage, queer and quiet, standing room only and backroom venues, street performances and after hour gigs.

“This one's for the freaks

The beaten down and crushed

The shy and withdrawn

Or just out of touch

May you stay like freaks

May you make mistakes

May your will never break”

–“Underdogs” by Manic Street Preachers, 2007

III. Nothing’s Ever Just a Song

When the wind stands fair and the night is perfect, when you least expect it, but always when you need it the most: there is a song.

–The 12th Doctor

Are you crying?

No, it’s just the wind.

Nothing’s ever just the wind.

–The 12th Doctor and River Song, “Husbands of River Song,” 2015

Llangurig, Wales, this was the point from which I could venture by bus to Newtown, Llanidloes, and Caersws, each as landing places where I could explore home territory for Solomon and Ann Evans, my Wales-based people who sailed away in the 1840s with toddler daughter Ann. Thanks to record shops in Cardiff and Aberystwyth, as well as Music Mouse in Llanidloes, I was ready to be sat on a hill above the River Wye—to listen for the wind, and to write a bit while I streamed music I’d transferred to streaming technology from 2008—an iPod Nano the size of a postage stamp.

Even with the newly purchased Welsh bands and singers the Manics, ‘Phonics, and Super Furries, nearly filling my Nano, it was Mankato’s own City Mouse who so appropriately ruled random play: “Sittin’ On Top of the World,” and “Our Town”—

And I don't worry

Because I'm sittin' on top of the world

Sleepy river town,

people there don’t fool around

They say they like it there just fine.

Walkin’ down Broadway,

you see lots of people frown

Don’t let them fool you,

that’s the way they smile

In our town

I was sat in the place where Gram’s people began—here, as in my town, the wind rumpled my hair, caressed my heart, chased grass, and frosted my eyes until I cried. I was there, and back home; there, and where I would go next.

Wind became another music in my ear when I was in Tracy, a town that’s low and flat, humming in B-flat when quiet winds leave Buffalo Ridge at Ruthton—or howling in some dissonant chord when a wild winter wind escapes the Ridge to ice the flat lands. Being at Trafel Gwyn, another space above sea level, I thought of prairie incomers driven away by the wind, and those who tuned their ears and lives to it. My Evans’ were the latter, hearing the wind in the world behind them, and feeling it coming around a corner they hadn’t yet explored.

From that hill, I wrote a postcard to my friend Dave, who’d then been part of City Mouse for 30 years, to note my deep appreciation for all of those years. Mainly, while I was sat on that hill, I thought about sitting in the backyard on breezy evenings while I was an undergraduate spending more time with Gram after Grumpy’s death. In talking about the history courses I took each quarter “for fun,” her rememberings included what she’d read about the race- and worker-rights activism of singer Paul Robeson, what she’d heard her Hannah say about Robert Owen, a cooperative utopian socialist who was from Newtown, or what she’d experienced during the years just after World War 1 when Morgan Street was a boarding house filled with veterans working the rail line during the day, and screaming in the night with their war memories. My dad’s two older brothers scoffed at our conversations, calling me a trouble-maker for talking nonsense with Gram.

As blessed as my parents’ small communities were for me, the social hierarchies, monoculture, and closed ranks of both Tracy and Wells moved my parents to leave their homeplaces. These were also the reasons Mom transferred our membership from the primarily Welsh, small Zion Presbyterian congregation to the larger Centenary Methodist Church. There she found an expansive social gospel mission, a lead minister with an ecumenical philosophy, and a Youth Choir whose songbook included Great Day of Singing hymns as well as 1970s music—Oh, Happy Day, Morning Has Broken, Lord of the Dance, My Train, and the song that first came to Youth Choir rehearsals because of confirmation class conversations about war, race, activism, and Christianity: “What Color Is God’s Skin”—

He looked at me with his shining eyes

I knew I could tell no lies

When he said Daddy

why do the diff’rent races fight

If we’re the same

in the good Lord’s sight?

In the musical, oratorical, educational, and service dimensions of this church, the splendid array of world religions were ours to explore as members of that Youth Choir, as confirmands, as readers in the church library, and as parishioners who knew Jesus to not be white. There we might draw on the messages to become polytheists, perhaps converts to other religions, perhaps someone recognizing a connection to church that was cultural rather than religious, or perhaps—as it was for me—to combine all of these in a particular agnosticism.

In the ministry traditions of social gospel, social justice Methodist churches, Vin Walkup’s poem conveys the core in speaking of music ministry:

He came singing love,

He lived singing love,

He died singing love.

He rose in silence.

If the song is to continue,

we must do the singing.

If the song is to continue…

We must all sing, and there is not one story to sing. Musical Welshness is not only church and chapel, nor is it only choral and choir.

If the song is to continue…

We can listen in the wind for the singers and songs, instruments and ideas, wit and wisdom, purposes and prayers of all who sing to us of home.

If the song is to continue…

Winds from the four directions will convey songs we need when we least expect them—whether a new song, homely song, Welsh song, Grandmother’s song.

For the song to continue…

I write, borrow the essay form for allowing words to take a comfortable amble toward ideas one might express in the company of friends, who might then weigh ideas as they journey, or in next conversations.

For the song to continue…

I needed to wind my way round to a music-informed Welshness that aligns with my heart, with my experience of Welshness, and of Wales across the world.

For the song to continue…

I’ve needed to accept that my musical Welshness is likely a homely one—in the US way of defining that word, unattractive—to most people in my Welsh-Minnesota world. And to know that they welcome my trespasses into their territories. For all of us, it’s not just the wind, nor just a song.

In the end, then, I’ve landed at knowing my identity not as “bad Welsh girl” but as “another Welsh girl” among the many who celebrate Wales as the land of song. One who does this by looking forward from my “homely Welshness.” One who has built a damn fine soundtrack thanks to the folx who launched—and sustain me—in the journey:

Ani Glass | Badfinger | Betsy | Beverley Humphreys | Bonnie Tyler | Calan | Catatonia | Cate Le Bon | Catfish and the Bottlemen | Cerys Matthews | Charlotte Church | Dafydd Iwan | Dan Bettridge | Deyah | Dave Edmunds | Duffy | Funeral for a Friend | Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci | Gruff Rhys | Gwenno | Hannah Grace | John Cale | Jon Langford | Joy Formidable | Kizzy Crawford | Laura Evans | Los Campesinos | Mal Pope | Manic Street Preachers | Meic Stevens | Meredydd Evans | Stereophonics | Super Furry Animals | The Anchoress | The Hennessys

—and as I write, Jodie Marie