May 2003 Broadcast:
Music of Y Fro Gymraeg

This year's Welsh Music Orgy®, music of Y Fro Gymraeg, aired on Tuesday, May 6th, at 7 am, Eastern Daylight Time (UT - 4) and provided 12 hours of musical coverage.

Continuing on from our Celtic Music Orgy® last May, we explored the music of Y Fro Gymraeg. Y Fro Gymraeg is a term used to talk about Welsh-speaking Wales, about a half million people out of a total population of three million whose "mode of everyday communication is largely through the Welsh language, and whose cultural transactions take place primarily through forms and institutions specific to that language."

"Welsh-language popular music took on its present-day, recognizably modern shape in the 1960s, fueled by a burgeoning of cultural assertiveness in the traditionally Welsh-speaking, largely rural areas of the west and North." This Orgy explored 3 major waves of Welsh-language music, from the 60s until the present, and the great variety of musical genres represented. It will also attempt to situate these waves into the historical and societal contexts which gave them rise as the battle for the survival of the Welsh language waged, and indeed, still wages on.

Playlist for May 2003 Broadcast