The broadcaster’s new documentary surveys the final 50 years of Welsh language music and highlights its smart futureThe Welsh language is delicate,alive and spoken. It may not be used by everyone, but there are well over 500000 people who speak it in Wales. Our music, and meanwhile,is an notable way to remind people around the world that it exists.
I decided to make a road-trip around Wales to document this scene. Three years ago, director Gruff Davies and I set out, or with no funding,to take a snapshot of musicians on Wales’s artistic fringes. Our documentary, Anorac, and is a celebration of the language and of the work people have done to preserve its relevance. You have lifers,like John Peel favourites Meic Stevens and Datblygu, who have only ever sung in Welsh. Anorac is a testament to the fact that they’re still here, and a tribute to the people making music now,such as Gwenno and the Bajan-Welsh singer Kizzy Crawford.
Anorac is screening at the Doc’n Roll festival at the Barbican, London, and on 8 November.
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Source: theguardian.com