Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
hyrwyddo a dathlu cerddoriaeth Cymru
promoting and celebrating the music of Wales
+44 (0)29 2063 5640
6. BBC Wales & WOMEX
One of the real media coups to arise from the event in Cardiff is that the BBC commissioned an hour-long documentary about it, called WOMEX: The World’s Music Comes to Wales.
​
The key figure in this commission and programme was Christina Macaulay, commissioning editor at BBC Wales since 2012 and also the executive producer. Besides the superstar music events like Glastonbury and the BBC Proms, music simply isn’t something that features very often on British television, even less now that budgets have been cut and BBC Four, the arts-focused channel on the national network, is no longer commissioning new programmes. The argument is that music on television just doesn’t get big audiences, and, as Macaulay explains, without having an arts strand or an arts magazine programme, it’s hard to argue the case for these specific one-off programmes. However, argue she did and having made the case that WOMEX would “make great telly”, they won the commission.
​
Two things really helped secure the decision to make the programme and one was the foresight of WAI’s Eluned Hâf, who was insistent that people like Macaulay at the BBC, Radio Cymru and Radio Wales were all part of the initial WOMEX steering group. As Macaulay explains: “I knew about it way in advance, which is helpful. Somebody says to you six weeks before an event, you should cover this, in telly times, that’s too late. The budgets are already committed… it’s just a nightmare.”
​
The other fortunate factor was that S4C, the Welsh language public broadcast channel, had earmarked it as being of interest and broadcast the whole opening gala concert, so resources could be combined. The programme, presented by Bethan Elfyn, featured live footage from the opening concert at Wales Millennium Centre and snippets of some of the international showcasing artists, including We Banjo 3 from Ireland, African groups Debademba and Sidi Touré, and Cumbia All Stars from Peru. These short, atmospheric scenes of live musicians giving it their all and audiences fully engaging and having a party, really gave a sense of just how multicultural the event was and also demonstrated that it wasn’t just an industry networking event, but a real celebration of fantastic live music. One particularly memorable vox pop contribution came from a happy local ’Diff onlooker who said: “I thought it was like a festival for women! I went on the website and was quite impressed, as I didn’t know it was a worldwide thing!”
The programme also featured various interviews from participating industry folk and musicians, including Catrin Finch’s Olympics comparison. Another contributor was John Rostron, then chief executive of the now defunct Welsh Music Foundation, who spoke about the need to professionalise the Welsh music industry, training artists and managers. He also congratulated the Welsh band 9Bach, who had just announced that they had been signed to Real World Records, leading Rostron to remark “why isn’t there a Real World equivalent in Wales? We’re missing that… what we’re going to work on is to develop a label that’s at that level.” The concluding words were given by WAI’s Hâf: “One of the main reasons of getting WOMEX in Wales was for that catalytic effect on the music and the industry in Wales. That’s a long-term effect… the opportunity to understand what it is they need to do so that they will be prepared… And that we do have artists showcasing in WOMEX without it having to be in Wales, and that’s when we’ll start to feel the effects of WOMEX.”
One of the main reasons of getting WOMEX in Wales was for that catalytic effect on the music and the industry in Wales!
%20showcasing%20on%20the%20Horizons%20stage%20at%20WOMEX%2013%20(photo%20Yannis%20Psathas)_e.jpg)
The programme’s producer Macaulay is circumspect about how much the Welsh music scene has changed since 2013. “If you scratch beneath the surface, it’s quite a small group of people… there’s the same personnel to some extent.”
​
Although Macaulay has lived in Wales since 1993, she was born and grew up in Scotland and is a passionate folk music fan (she plays whistles): “I’m a TV professional, but I’m also a punter, I go to a lot of gigs!” Given this background, Macaulay is more qualified than most to compare the two nations’ music scenes and their relationships to traditional music. “When I was growing up in Scotland, there was no opportunity to play Scottish folk music,” Macaulay recalls. “There were no specialist music schools for Scottish folk music, the Fèis system didn’t really operate at that point, so folk music was basically The Corries and men in jumpers and beards. And then if you look at the Scottish folk scene now, it is utterly, utterly transformed in 30-40 years.” As she says, there are lots of reasons why and how that’s happened, one of them being Capercaillie, the band who were instrumental in breaking the mould and lighting the touch paper for the trad and Gaelic revival. She also cites the opening of the specialist music school in Plockton as being a key moment, and the change in teaching at the conservatoire in Glasgow. “When I was growing up, the conservatoire only did classical music. The idea that you would go to the conservatoire and learn how to play the bagpipes was, ‘What? That is just not happening!’”
​
As anyone who is familiar with Scottish music will know, the country now prides itself on their traditional music courses. Not only has that changed the musical spectrum and meant more young people going through conservatoires and forming bands, but it has also created employment for musicians – something that is still lacking in Wales. “That’s part of the problem in Wales – it’s very difficult for musicians to earn a living.” There are however signs that things are slowly changing, thanks to the appointment of Tim Rhys-Evans, who is now the director of music at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) and, says Macaulay, “is very open to developing a degree which will have traditional music in it”.
Patrick Rimes, founding member of both Calan, who featured prominently in the gala concert, and of VRï, is now teaching at the RWCMD. As Macaulay says, he’s exactly the sort of inspirational figure needed within education to encourage young students to continue exploring their own traditional music. At the moment, she says, citing her own violin-playing daughter as an example, kids learning music in schools are only taught from a classical perspective: “There’s no encouragement to engage with Welsh folk music whatsoever because the peripatetic tutors who do instruments like violin, they’re all from a classical background, so they don’t necessarily engage with it at all.”
​
But it’s not all gloomy, as Macaulay says, because there is plenty of great young talent in Wales – musicians who aren’t just performing on their home turf, but who are now getting booked on the festival circuits further afield. Macaulay was up at the Orkney Folk Festival earlier this year, where she saw VRï playing to packed venues across the islands. “They went down an absolute storm,” she recalls, adding that the largely local audiences were surprised as “they had no knowledge of Welsh music, they were like, oh, these guys, wow!”
​
Another band that Macaulay feels excited about and who first showcased at Celtic Connections in 2022 (the subject of another BBC Wales documentary), are AVANC, whose members include rising harpist and singer Cerys Hafana, and Rhys Morris, who is running weekly Welsh folk sessions in Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. “AVANC were formed out of the Trac system [as the first national youth folk ensemble] and Patrick Rimes was their mentor and teacher.” As she concludes, “Patrick is just amazing. He is like the folk god in Wales, and it’s interesting that he’s been in that position for ten years. If we didn’t have Patrick Rimes, I think Welsh folk would be struggling a lot more than it is!”
​