Welsh Journals

It may therefore be misleading to speak of a Welsh 'mainstream' and a Welsh 'underground' that operate fully independently of one another. The 'core/periphery' model suggested by Griffiths thus has another advantage, because it emphasizes the very real link between the two elements. It might be argued that an important catalyst for creative development was the increased awareness of the place of Wales within a 'global com- munity'. An early manifestation of this in Wales was the emergence of the Celtic League, which lobbied the United Nations on the subject of 'Self Determination and International Protection' for Wales, Brittany and Scotland in 1965, and continued to campaign on Celtic language issues, as well as various other organizations that may be collectively referred to as constituting a pan-Celtic movement. A major step forward for contemporary music culture in the Celtic nations came in 1987 with the release by Sain of Keltia Rok, a collection of rock songs delivered in the six Celtic languages; an initiative with which the Celtic League was heavily involved. The opportunity to establish contacts with musicians in similar predicaments regarding their native languages was taken up by many Welsh artists, but the most active were undoubtedly Anhrefn, who toured Germany three times in 1988, the Celtic nations in 1989, France in 1990, and Czechoslovakia in 1991. The contacts they made in other countries paved the way for foreign bands to play in Wales; the Breton group E.V. played several times in Wales at the end of the 1980s, as did the Basque band Delirium Tremens. Anhrefn also made an appearance in London in 1991 with the Basque punk band Negu Gorriak. Increasing mobilization of regional identity may have been an import- ant factor in the release of various cassettes and albums for explicitly political reasons. Of particular interest is O'r Gad! (1991), an Ankst compilation album produced to publicize the actions of Alun Llwyd and Branwen Nicholas, members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), who were imprisoned in 1991 for vandalizing Welsh office buildings in order to draw attention to the erosion of the Welsh language heartlands through in-migration. Similarly, the Soci- ety's youth wing, Rhyddid i'r Ifanc ('freedom for the young'), funded the release of Oil Gwrandewch Arna'lì ('oi! listen to me!') in 1994. Recently there has been less activity in this field, although the new Cardiff label Dockrad Records released a bilingual compilation album of Welsh artists in 2002 entitled No Apathy l Dim Apathi, with the declared intention to 'expose non-Welsh speakers to some artists who sing in Welsh, and introduce some new English language artists from Wales to everyone'.16 In the meantime, the process of cultural exchange continued until well into the 1990s. Anhrefn, Beganifs, the Jecsyn Ffeif, and Ffa Coffi Pawb travelled to Friesland (a region in Holland with its own language) in