{"id":9731,"date":"2012-02-01T06:55:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T11:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9731"},"modified":"2025-03-12T12:44:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T16:44:56","slug":"midweek-music-break-pendyrus-male-choir-cwm-rhonnda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/midweek-music-break-pendyrus-male-choir-cwm-rhonnda\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Pendyrus Male Choir, “Cwm Rhonnda<\/em>”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[Image: the valley of the Rhondda]<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve mentioned before that while writing\u00a0Seems to Fit<\/em>, I used a variety of musical playlists to put me in the proper frame of mind for a given chapter. The selections on the day’s playlist were among those which (so I imagined) would be favorites of the character most heavily featured in the section or chapter on which I was working at the time. Two characters, for instance, were World War II veterans, so (naturally) they listened regularly to Big Band\/swing music… and so did I.<\/p>\n

Actually, I took it further: one of the two preferred the\u00a0smoooooth<\/em> sound of\u00a0Glenn Miller; the other, the more raucous Benny Goodman Orchestra. They argued about it periodically, one sarcastically, exasperatedly<\/em>, and the other with gentle good humor.<\/p>\n

Anyway, a handful of chapters scattered throughout recount the story of an eighteenth-century Welsh brewmaster named Emrys ap Rhys, and how he came to brew a particular ale which plays a significant part in S2F<\/em>‘s storyline. Even Emrys had his own “My Music” sort of playlist, which may sound like a tall order… unless you know about the history of music in Wales.<\/p>\n

Briefly,\u00a0the Welsh love<\/em>\u00a0music<\/a>, particularly choral music — and further particularly, choral music performed by men<\/em>. The tradition goes back centuries, with much of the music composed and sung in the performers’ native Welsh language rather than English. As it happened, then, it wasn’t hard to build a good soundtrack for\u00a0the Emrys chapters.<\/p>\n

One tune in particular stands out.<\/p>\n

“Cwm Rhondda<\/a><\/em>” (Welsh for the Rhondda Valley, in South Wales — the Rhondda being a river there), like many tunes<\/a>, isn’t in itself a song to be sung. It has no words of its own. Instead, the melody which goes by that name is used as a scaffold for the lyrics of a hymn: several hymns, in fact. Although the tune<\/em> is\u00a0sometimes described as the unofficial national anthem of Wales, the hymn<\/em> has no lyrics of a typically national-anthemic sort. (Given the title, for instance, one might expect a praise song about Nature’s beauty on display in the countryside of South Wales.) Instead — at least in the versions I know of — the supplicant just asks God for help on his or her journeys through life and the world. Nowadays, the tune also underlies the chants of You’re not singing anymore!<\/em> which erupt among Welsh fans, from time to time, when their football teams are on the field.*<\/p>\n

(The specific circumstances calling forth this chant, apparently, are a form of\u00a0Schadenfreude<\/em>: delight in someone else’s troubles. If one’s culture encourages one to burst into song when things are going well, then a sudden turn in fortune tends to shut one up.)<\/p>\n

My favorite writeup about “Cwm Rhondda<\/em>\u201d is the one on the h2g2<\/em> site<\/a>. (This is the pre-Wikipedia and often much more informal online encyclopedia originally established by Douglas Adams as the Earthbound counterpart to the one described in his\u00a0H<\/strong>itchh<\/strong>iker’s G<\/strong>uide to the G<\/strong>alaxy<\/em>\u00a0series.) It’s tempting to quote the entire piece, but I’ll offer just\u00a0this:<\/p>\n

‘Cwm Rhondda’ is a belter of a hymn that defies one to sing it quietly… It is the very embodiment of hwyl<\/em>, the Welsh love of homeland and of culture, and as such has come close to supplanting the official Welsh national anthem. This is especially the case at rugby ‘internationals’, where the faltering, bathetic, falsely-devout Land of My Fathers<\/em>\u00a0[JES: that’s the <\/em>actual\u00a0Welsh national anthem]<\/em><\/span>\u00a0is soon dispensed with in favour of something far more robust. England fans often respond with their own countermeasures, often the Negro spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot<\/em>, but soon buckle under the sonic onslaught of ‘huge gangs of tough, sinewy men\u2026 terrorising people with their close-harmony singing.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ha!<\/p>\n

Anyway, here’s the Pendyrus Male Choir<\/a> (Welsh-language version of their home page here<\/a>), and “Cwm Rhondda<\/em>“:<\/p>\n