please?

I’m so angry I’m wasting yet another of already so many of my days off trying to come up with a definite plan for my next holiday in Wales (first, I was going to slowly travel northward before heading for Manchester and boarding a plane to London; then, I decided to fly to Anglesey and travel slowly back to the south instead; now, seeing just how long it’d take me to reach my first destination from the airport and just how expensive it’d be to spend a couple of nights, the first one literally just a night, there, I’m struggling to devise a plan… C) that I thought it’d be a good idea to give myself a break and focus on the marvellous music I’ve been listening to for the past couple of hours (no link? Suspense! lol).

Last year, I spent most of my first weekend in Wales at Tafwyl, Cardiff’s annual Welsh arts and culture festival (yes, that came from its website). It’s free, it’s family-friendly, there’s food, there’s music, you’re welcome if you’re a Welsh speaker and you’re welcome if you’re not. It was in (?) the castle grounds, the weather was lovely and I bought the first season of Y Gwyll (which I obviously knew, and had watched, on Netflix, as Hinterland - am I confusing you with a name in English and a video in Welsh? Sorry, that's not on purpose; I just wanted to link the pronunciation of gwyll in the Welsh title) on DVD from one of its stalls selling all sorts of souvenirs. I hope I won’t need to reactivate my Facebook account just so I can find several photographs a classmate took while we were there (though I almost did so just because I was dying to share the music I’m listening to with the world - the world meaning about 200 people in my case; then I remembered this blog).

So, last year, I had little idea what the festival was like - and no idea at all who’d be playing. If I’m not mistaken, we’d been given a programme at the university, together with timetables and maps and leaflets about the course we were doing, but I’d obviously not taken the time to check it out. I had, however, had a look at the website as I was planning my trip - which doesn’t mean I’d got curious enough to go on YouTube and search for the names in the festival’s line-up (two links now, see?). No wonder I’ve been listening to the (no, I wasn't there - I feel like crying now) same (this time I was there - and so happy to be) music (I was in three others - wish I'd been in more -, not in this one) for… my whole adult life, basically. Anyway. A year will soon have passed, and I still don’t know any Welsh music other than the few songs some of the teachers (tutors? Should I call them tutors?) showed us. I like most of them, the songs, I mean (and all of the teachers, or tutors, except for that one, that girl, not that really good one, the other, who took an obvious dislike to me for, I can only imagine - I don’t treat my own students like that, so I’ve no actual idea -, she took my being late for class as a personal affront), but I was starting to feel like I could use some new ones.

I wasn’t looking for any when I thought of visiting Tafwyl’s website again, I was only trying to - what was I trying to do? Kill time? No, that wasn’t planned. As wasn’t my greatest discovery of 2017 so far, perhaps my (second - third! Fourth?) greatest musical discovery of the last… twelve years or so (I’ve told you I’ve been listening to the same music forever), singer-songwriter Aled Rheon. If you google his name and you happen to be using a computer in Brazil (other than your own, which will probably show your usual British or American or Australian or German or whatever results, I don’t know, I understand but a thing or two about ICT), there’ll be a box on your right informing you that he is “Irmão de Iwan Rheon”, Iwan Rheon’s brother (brawd Iwan Rheon, if the little Welsh I managed to learn hasn’t vanished yet), and the fifth link on your list of results will direct you to a Wikipedia entry, in Portuguese, about Iwan Rheon. Call me a complete ignorant (an ignoramus, a student of mine recently wrote in an essay), but it took me a while to figure out why that was the case - I don’t know many Welsh artists, shame on me, and I don’t (ta-dah) watch Game of Thrones (or should I say GoT, in a useless effort to sound less of an outsider? No links necessary in this case). And you may call me snobbish too, since you’re at it (nah, hope you aren’t), but I prefer to keep things as they are to me at the moment and keep saying that I know Aled Rheon, the musician, not his brother (his brother - see? His, not - anyway, lol), the actor (who, surprise, surprise, is actually also a singer - what a lucky family, right?).

I’ll finish this post off with two videos (one on each underlined word, exactly) and one appeal: could you, fluent Welsh speaker who’s reading this (hey, you, you there, yes; I understand you’re not fluent in Welsh yet, don’t worry - would you please forward this post to your fluent Welsh speaking friend? Diolch yn fawr!), please (os gwelwch yn dda - something, the fact that I can't even find it on Forvo?, tells me I can’t even say ‘please’ in Welsh properly, I hope this something isn’t right) transcribe and share the lyrics to the song he’s singing in Welsh? Plîs (this one I remember - it exists, guys, my non Welsh learner friends, it’s not a joke, trust me)? I’ve tried to find lyrics to Welsh songs before, pop songs, I mean, and was surprised to find so few of them. I wanted to try to learn some by heart, to try to improve the little Welsh I’ve got, but was suddenly reminded of the early to mid 90s, when there was no Internet anywhere near me and we English language learners had to rely on song lyrics published by language schools in promotional leaflets (no, I didn't study there - sorry you can't use me as advert material, Mr Fisk) or, worse still, on translations read out by radio broadcasters (whilst the songs were playing, it was painful to hear, yes - but then what else could we do?...) - the bravest amongst us would risk a transcript of their own, which they’d shyly share (not on Facebook - which Facebook? I’m talking the pre-Internet era here!) with closest friends and family (“Foi o que eu entendi, mas não sei se tá certo.”). At the moment (ar hyn o bryd - Memrise helped me to remember that one; diolch, eto, Genia!), I’ve barely got enough Welsh to spot one or two familiar words or phrases in the songs I listen to and to sing along to the chorus, basically. I can’t venture upon the much needed task of transcribing Welsh song lyrics yet (dim eto, not yet). So can you help me (and the many other Welsh learners who’d love to be able to sing a whole song one day in a not so distant future, preferably)? Diolch yn fawr.

P.S. Don’t you think Aled Rheon sounds somewhat like (this is actually The Swell Season, but it's him too, anyway) Glen Hansard (used to sound about a decade ago)? I don’t mean their voices, I mean their styles - there was even a video (the one in Welsh I linked above, yes) which clearly reminded me of a scene from Once. I love Once (the film, I reckon I can safely say I hated the musical - brought a scarf, not a CD, back home just because of the film), I love Glen Hansard, no wonder I was so impressed by Mr Rheon (the other brother). Mr Hansard was one of my greatest musical discoveries of the last dozen years, BTW, as were Brazilians Criolo and Vanessa da Mata (who wasn’t in the list when I mentioned it two paragraphs ago) and… Someone else I can’t remember now (when did I first listen to Buena Vista Social Club?...) but will certainly mention in a further post about Welsh music (there’ll be at least one more, although I don’t know when, for the Aled brother wasn’t the only name which struck me as definitely worth listening to in this year’s Tafwyl’s list of artists - anyone else going to Tafwyl this year?).