Eisteddfod 2012 with Cerys Matthews

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I'm Cerys Matthews and this is one of Europe's

largest cultural festivals.

It's the National Eisteddfod of Wales.

It's a week filled full of poetry and music

and just about any other cultural activity you can think of.

For thousands of people in Wales,

the first week of August is the most important week of the year.

From every corner of the country and beyond,

people arrive at the Eisteddfod to enjoy a week unlike any other.

I'm a singer, so I've competed here since I was under 12, every year.

It's a tradition. We've been coming here for years.

I just like meeting everyone, seeing all my friends.

Going to see people singing.

If you speak Welsh, if you are learning Welsh,

if you don't speak Welsh at all, there is plenty of welcome for everybody here.

But for some,

there's a serious point to all this, too.

In the big pink pavilion, and on other stages around the site,

there's a whole week of competitions lined up.

Dancers, singers, brass band members, everyone's put in hours and hours of practice,

and there's no doubt that winning is the aim.

-We came second last year.

-But first the year before.

We're looking to change that this year.

I'm a bit excited and a bit nervous.

Quite nervous because there's some difficult parts.

If I mess them up, then they'll know it's me.

There will be winners and losers,

and a prestigious Chair and Crown to be won by the nation's best poets.

For these competitors, the Eisteddfod is the culmination

of a whole year's effort, it's like an Olympics of the arts.

This year the festival is in the Vale of Glamorgan,

just to the west of Cardiff. It's one of the wealthiest parts of Wales,

with 14 miles of heritage coastline, rolling farmland,

well-to-do market towns and, of course, Barry island.

My first 24-hour experience of the National Eisteddfod

was in a field like this.

For many teenagers, this will be their home during the week.

Bands play here at night, and the guitars come out.

In fact, I count my first proper guitar-playing public appearance

as being from my tent here in Maes B.

# Initiate a tear

# Go back home...# 'Catatonia was formed soon after.

'This is one of those Eisteddfod performances from the early days of the band.'

# ..I've got your photograph

# A frozen reminder of what it just can't do. #

It's hard to believe that was 20 years ago,

but I was as interested then as I am now in the history of music and literature,

and the Eisteddfod is steeped in both.

So, let me introduce you to one of those traditions.

It's called Cerdd Dant and it's a completely unique form of music.

# Mae gwyll yng nghoed Sain Ffagan ers hir uwchben Llancarfan

# Ond harddach fyth ar noson oer yw'r lloer uwch Aberddawan. #

The Cerdd Dant competition is one of the big features of the Eisteddfod,

and one of my oldest friends, Elinor Bennett, knows all about it.

Elinor, we've known each other a long time,

and I'm very happy to be here to ask you now, what is Cerdd Dant?

Cerdd Dant is a uniquely Welsh form of singing.

It involves a melody being played on the harp, uninterrupted,

as a solo almost, and then the singer will sing verses

which will fit into the original melody, and use a counter-melody,

which must fit with this original melody of course and sound OK.

So, Elinor plays the traditional melody, Ash Grove,

and sings her own melody against it.

# Nico annwyl, ei di drosta i a'r neges fach i Gymru lan

# Hed nes dei di i wlad o fryniau sydd a mor yn cuddio'i thraed

# Lle mae'r haf yn aros hiraf Lle mae'r awel iach mor ffri

# Lle mae'r mor a'r nefoedd lasaf Gwlad y galon, dyma hi. #

Diolch, Elinor.

I love the words in that song saying the summers last longer here in Wales,

and the sea is bluer and the sky is the bluest.

That's poetry for you!

In this Eisteddfod they're using the theme from Schindler's List for the Cerdd Dant competition.

Wow! Well, that's a pretty sad and very beautiful tune, isn't it? Yes.

-Stunning.

-I look forward to that.

-I think it's in D Minor.

Do you want to hear a little?

PLAYS THEME FROM SCHINDLER'S LIST

It's something like that.

-That's the mood of the music. So the words must be... Very sad music.

-Very sad. Minor.

And that's very much the character of the Welsh people.

-They love the minor chords.

-We love the minor chords.

-Do you know, even the major songs sound minor in Welsh?

-Yes.

And here is one of the groups who wove their own melody

against the Schindler's List theme.

# Fe grach boerasom ninnau yn wyneb cariad

# Pan faglau dan y pren ar stryd y dre

# Ei bwnio yn ei gefn a dwrn a phastwn

# A sgrechian gyda'r dorf, 'Croeshoelier ef'

# Yr oeddem ninnau yno

# Ond rydym rhywsut wedi hen anghofio. #

Now, the Eisteddfod has many ancient traditions -

the stone circle, the druids and their robes,

but in fact they're not as ancient as you might think.

They were all the brainchild of one man, called Iolo Morganwg.

He was born here in the village of Flemingston,

just a few miles from where the Eisteddfod is being held this year,

and he was quite a character.

In the church where Iolo Morganwg is said to be buried,

I met up with historian John Davies to try to untangle fact from fiction.

So John, the druids and the ceremonies are not as old as we think, are they?

Well, they're over 200 years old,

which as traditions go, is pretty old I would say.

It was a case, I think, of the invention of tradition,

and the man who invented it was Iolo Morganwg, Edward Williams,

which turned out to be the Iolo Morganwg of Glamorgan.

Which is where we are now.

We are, in Flemingston, where he lived for most of his life.

What did he bring to the Eisteddfod specifically?

Well, he brought the idea of the Circle of the Bards,

which he said went right back to the druids, pre-dated the Romans,

pre-dated Christianity. He was a Unitarian.

He latched it on to the Eisteddfod in the late 1820s.

And, of course, the standing stones, the circle of the Gorsedd.

He came from the Vale of Glamorgan,

which he called the paradise of Britain by the way.

Lots of stone circles in the area.

Lots of stone circles and cromlechi and that sort of thing.

He was inspired by the idea of stones standing up.

Didn't he dream up all this imagery?

He did dream up. He had a very powerful imagination, which may, some people suggest,

have arisen from the fact that he was taking opium.

Wasn't there a prescription found?

There was a note from a chemist in Cowbridge saying,

"Enclosed are 30 grains of pure opium, not all to be taken at once."

I asked a doctor, "If you took 30 grains of pure opium, what would happen?"

"You'll explode," he said.

FANFARE

For many, the highlights of the Eisteddfod are closely associated with Iolo's druids,

and you can see them on stage to announce the major prizes.

But the tradition of performing poetry at an Eisteddfod

goes back a long way before that.

-Gwaedd uwch adwaedd. A oes heddwch? ALL:

-Heddwch!

This prize ceremony is for the Chair, awarded for a poem

written in a unique alliterative metre known as Cynghanedd.

TWM MORUS PERFORMS CYNGHANEDD

This is poet and musician Twm Morus, and he's proudly continuing

the folk tradition where Cynhangedd has its roots.

Even if you don't understand the words, there's an addictive rhythm and sound

which is ancient and modern at the same time.

This kind of rhythmic beating and reciting,

that's like hip-hop or something, like an early form of rap.

It is. It's the same principle, reciting words with a regular beat.

Gwir aflonydd Gwair fel ynys

Gwedy'r ymwrdd Gwaed ar Emrys

-A braw dyrys. ALL:

-A braw dyrys.

-Define Cynhangedd for me.

-What is life, Cerys?

-Define Cynghanedd!

-In a nut shell.

It's a sound system, which is independent of any language.

I can say, "Gabara cric hic a hwci" and it's correct Cynghanedd.

But I don't know if anybody speaks that language anywhere.

-Maybe on some distant planet.

-Essentially it's inner rhyming.

-It's inner rhyming and alliteration.

-At the same time.

At the same time, and various... Thousands of little things.

-Different patterns of inner rhymes.

-Yeah, a sound system.

It's like Celtic patterns on crosses, those old crosses, interweaving patterns.

Can you write poetry in different languages using the Cynhangedd rules?

It can be done. My first love was a plover.

Beautiful things her wings were. Tiny eyes shining at night.

Though mainly in the moonlight. We ate cakes by a lakeside.

I caressed her crest and cried all night. Then the kites called.

Unshaven and dishevelled, he saw from the bristling sedge,

my playmate's handsome plumage.

She made a tryst. Kissed the kite, so dearly in the starlight.

I thought of only one thing. My plover lover leaving.

-So it can be done.

-That's brilliant. Tremendous stuff.

For Welsh poets, composing is a craft you work at,

honing a line to perfection rather than hanging around waiting for inspiration.

No-one knows that better than Gwyneth Lewis, the National Poet of Wales.

It's her words that have been set in stone on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre.

This week she won the ultimate accolade,

the Eisteddfod Crown, for a poem with a theme of islands.

And she's just adapted Shakespeare's The Tempest into Welsh.

It's being performed here as part of the World Shakespeare Festival.

So, what challenges did she face

when translating Shakespeare into the Welsh language?

Aside from the issue of Shakespeare, who could be daunting,

the main thing is that the rhythms in poetry in English and Welsh are completely different.

Shakespeare drops naturally into this five-beat line.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Whether it is better, and so on.

Whereas in Welsh, in poetry, we count syllables.

Even if we were to count accents, the structure of the language

puts the accent on a different part of the word, on the last but one syllable.

In English you're going "tee-tum" and in Welsh you're going "tum-tee",

so I had to be cunning about how to, kind of, cheat the Shakespearean sound.

SHE SPEAKS IN WELSH

Kai Owen is relishing the prospect of playing Shakespeare in Welsh.

Gwyneth Lewis has done a marvellous job of still keeping

the richness and rhythm of it, still keeping the heart of the story,

and still keeping the beautiful language of Shakespeare alive.

The poetry of the Welsh language fits superbly to the poetry of Shakespeare.

It's a match made in heaven, in my opinion.

Every night in the pink pavilion there are concerts

and competitions going on.

One of those concerts this year has a musical setting of a poem

that's famous not here in Wales, but in Hungary.

MUSIC: "The Bards Of Wales" by Janos Arany, composition by Karl Jenkins

The poem, which is as well known as the national anthem in Hungary,

is called The Bards of Wales.

It's been set to music by acclaimed Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.

It started when this Hungarian, called Lazlo Irinyi,

approached me and told me about this poem, which I had not heard of.

Everyone I have spoken to since, Welsh people,

have also not heard of it.

It's called the Bards of Wales.

It's an analogy really, written by a Hungarian poet.

It tells of the dominance of a large country over its smaller neighbour.

For sensitive reasons he couldn't write the poem in Hungarian,

so he set it in Wales.

King Edward comes to North Wales and beheads the bards.

MUSIC: "The Bards of Wales" by Janos Arany, composition by Karl Jenkins

The work was commissioned by Lazlo Irinyi,

and he told me about the significance of the poem to Hungarian people.

For us, this is a story that speaks very high of the Welsh,

about their courage.

Something we Hungarians also needed

-many times throughout our turbulent history.

-With Russia?

Well, with the Turks, with the Osman Empire, with the Austrians,

with the Habsburgs and then with the Germans and then with the Soviets.

And so throughout history, Hungary has gone through many times

when this sort of courage that the poem talks about, was badly needed.

The poem has been recited very often in times of need,

in times of oppression.

MUSIC AND CHORAL SINGING

This work has already been performed in Hungarian and English,

and this concert was its Welsh language premier.

On the stage too this week we saw clocsio, clog dancing

and Tudur Phillips has seen a big increase in its popularity.

This has changed quite a fair bit.

Basically now there are loads of groups around Wales,

loads of young kids coming in and doing the tricks

and steps that I was struggling to do, later on.

So are you going to teach me a few basic steps?

This is called pitter patter,

because it is sounds like a pitter patter, pitter patter.

So basically you put one front and then back. And then the left.

And then sort of jog.

-You've got it.

-Is that it?

-Spot-on.

You'll be on the stage next year.

-You've mentioned the tricks.

-Yeah.

The really famous one is the one with the broom

and the lad jumps over the broom.

That's the hardest one. But a bit easier is this, you can use this.

-I called it a macyn.

-It's a handkerchief.

-I'm going to stand back now.

-And I just jump over it.

-OK, let's have a go.

-OK.

-Brilliant.

-Do you want to try?

-No, thank you.

I did try it later but let's leave it to 15-year-old Trystan Gruffydd,

and this is the winning performance in the Boys Solo Dance.

CROWD CLAP ALONG

APPLAUSE

And hand-in-hand with clog dancing, an instrument which is also becoming popular, the triple harp.

MELODIC HARP

This is 13-year-old Math Roberts.

I caught up with his dad, Dafydd, in the family caravan

to find out more about this historic instrument.

Tell me, Dafydd, what makes this different to the single row harp?

It's the triple harp.

It's called triple because it has three rows of strings.

The two outside rows, you see here,

they are like the white notes of the piano.

They are like a reflection of each other.

They are both outside, those two the same.

And then the middle row, they are like your black notes on the piano, the chromatics.

RUNS THROUGH SCALE

-I noticed you're playing on the left shoulder, why is that?

-I play on the left shoulder, yes.

I'm not left-handed. That's the way I was taught.

So you use the right hand, the strong hand for the big bass strings

and the left hand for the melody,

which is the hand closest to the heart for the melody.

-Can I have a go then?

-Sure.

-Brilliant. Thank you.

I don't know where to start.

-So this would be the C.

-The C's are red, the C's.

I can't do it.

OK.

That's the first, yes, so same again.

CERYS WHISTLES ALONG

Yeah?

OK, one, two, three, four.

MUSIC: "Pwt ar y Bys"

Yey!

Oh, gosh!

So here's Dafydd showing how the triple harp should be played,

with one of Wales's leading folk bands -

Ar Log, which in English means "for hire".

ROUSING FOLK MUSIC MUSIC

Music is everywhere at the festival

and just off the main drag is this, the Hay Bale studio.

And this is young band Yr Angen recording an acoustic session

in quite the best-smelling studio I've ever been in.

And the walls really are made of hay.

SINGS IN WELSH

On the main site there are performances by bands, big and small, most of the day.

And a young musician who's just about grown up with the Eisteddfod

is singer-songwriter Al Lewis.

-So was the Eisteddfod one of the first places you played?

-It was.

I mean, I remember when I was back in school I was a member of a choir

and we were lucky enough to get to the main stage

in the St David's Eisteddfod about ten years ago now.

I just remember coming out on stage and just that sea of people,

I'd never experienced anything like that.

So it definitely helped for when later on in my career

I was getting to see bigger audiences.

You can look back on that and use that experience to help you.

And then you started playing, writing your own songs,

playing the guitar, setting up a band around yourself.

That's the brilliant thing about the Eisteddfod.

Like we see today they have a stage for artists

who write and sing their own material and you have an audience there,

ready-made, wanting to listen to you, so it's perfect.

-Do you want to sing me your song today?

-All right then.

-In fact, please sing your song.

-It's called Treading Water.

# You might say

# What difference do they make

# These small little things?

# But truth be told

# Well they weigh

# Heavy on my shoulder

# These small little things

# These small little things

# But all I know

# Maybe it's the wrong way to go

# So are we simply

# Treading water

# Whilst looking out for

# Something better?

# And are we simply

# Treading water

# When maybe what we need

# Is a simple change of scene? #

I've spotted another familiar face out on the Maes

although he usually sports a twisty moustache on that well-known TV advert.

It's Wynne Evans.

This year has been a big year for you, in Welsh terms.

You have been learning Welsh on the television. How's it been going?

It's been OK, actually. It's hard.

Much harder when you come to it later on in life, as it feels that I am.

But it's something that I'm going to persevere with this year,

this is going to be the year to crack it.

Last year was your first Eisteddfod. You have come back this year.

Not only are you a judge for a competition, but you are going to be donning those robes,

-you are going to become a druid, aren't you?

-I am, yeah.

And it's something that's kind of fascinated me for many years

and never really understood it.

But, yeah, it was decided that I would be accepted into the Gorsedd, which is the druid.

And, it's a huge honour. It's something fantastic.

Have you tried it on?

No, but I'm really worried that they kind of come in the wrong size for me,

I'm going to have Ronnie Corbett's druid outfit.

You'll look like a Cossack or something.

Let's go back to the judging, what are you going to be looking for when judging the competition?

It's hard to be that side of the table.

I've been a pundit before, criticising other people's decisions but never kind of doing the deciding.

It is hard because you are looking for different things.

You are not just looking for where the voice is now,

you are thinking where the voice could be in two, three, four, five years' time.

So let's hear the top two competitors.

This is Menna Cazel Davies.

OPERATIC SOPRANO

And this is Elin Pritchard.

OPERATIC SOPRANO

So did Wynne and his fellow judges choose the right winner?

Elin Pritchard and Menna Cazel Davies.

Ah, he hedged his bets and the prize was shared between Elin and Menna.

APPLAUSE

Caryl! Caryl!

Well, here we are at one of the week's traditional ceremonies,

courtesy of Iolo Morganwg and his opium-fuelled imagination,

the induction of Welsh worthies into the Gorsedd.

It's probably the nearest thing in Wales to getting an MBE.

These days, people from all walks of life

see it as an honour to be made a member of the Gorsedd.

As well as poets and intellectuals,

nowadays sports stars are just as likely to don the druid's robes.

And there's Wynne. And it looks like they've got his size right.

Well I've had a great week here in the Vale of Glamorgan,

witnessing the roots of Welsh culture, still alive and kicking at the Eisteddfod.

Next year it's going to be in North Wales. So go check it out.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.