Welsh music - a selection of useful links to the music of our Celtic cousins

• Welsh Ballads Website
  Cardiff University Information Services - Welsh ballads website.
  
• 'History of the British Bards', Iolo Morganwg, front cover
  About the MS for a projected book by Iolo Morganwyg. On Welsh culture website, Gathering the Jewels 
  
  
• Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales, 1740-1918
  Edward Williams (1747-1826), stonemason, writer, literary forger. Contributed to C18th cultural renaissance in Wales. Bardism. Gorsedd of Bards (he established ceremony).
  
  
• National Library of Wales Journal (Welsh Journals Online)
  Digital access back to Vol.1, 1939. Vol.XV (1967) pp.31-54, Daniel Huws, 'Ancient National Airs of Gwent and Morganwg
  
  
• The Bardic Museum : Edward Jones : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
  Vol.2 of Edward Jones' Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards. 1802.
  
  
• Musical and poetical relicks of the Welsh bards/ Edward Jones, 1794. Internet Archive
  
  
• Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard - wiki
  PBworks wiki for collaborative discussion of late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks. Administrator Dr Karen E McAulay
  
  
• Crowdsourcing Bard group bibliography
  List of late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks for group exploration, part of Crowdsourcing the Bard project.
  
  
• King Edward's folly: crowdsourcing the Celtic bard
  Tiki-toki timeline, Nov 2011
  tags: Timeline bards minstrels metaphors Tiki-Toki
• Times Higher Education - Brunel's academic griot will 'fight dead image of poetry'
  Benjamin Zephaniah takes a new post at Brunel University. He sees himself as a latter-day bard, or "griot" (African word) - a poet and political activist who speaks his work - part of the oral tradition.
  
  
• Thomas Gray Archive : The Bard, a Pindaric Ode (1757)
  Very influential poem, inspired many more writings on bardic themes. Role of bard championing liberty, and many images recur in later poetry etc.
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Customs and Traditions
  Charity Dove drew my attention to this useful weblink. I'd come across the People's Collection Wales, but not this particular niche.
  
  
• High Hats and Harps: the life and times of Lord and Lady Llanover
  Lady Llanofer, the bee of Twent. Research by Helen Forder. Book forthcoming, soon. Spring 2012.
  tags: Lady Llanover Wales harps 19th Century
• Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales
  
  
• Harp Centre of Wales (Telynau Teifi Harps)
  Harp makers. Includes clip from BBC programme about Telynau Teifi.
  
  
• Fflach Music from Wales
  Welsh music supplier
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Home
  Successor to the Welsh "Gathering the Jewels" cultural heritage website.
  
  
• People's Collection Wales - Home
  Associated with Culturenet Cymru
  
  
• Chronology of Welsh songbooks (Karen McAulay Tiki-Toki timeline)
  
  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Celtic Diaspora

"Whittaker" thinks it's important for Celtic musicians to be aware what's going on in other Celtic lands.  With that in mind, we've added a few Welsh CDs to the Whittaker Library stock.  Take a look here.

Image by Ogwyn Davies

I've also been indexing useful websites onto my Diigo account.  Here are the Welsh sites.

And then - did you think I'd omit the Irish websites?  (Me, half-Welsh, wed to a Scot, two of whose great-grandparents came from Ballymoney; I have genuine Celtic pretensions!)

Whittaker's Winter Holidays



Christmas 2011

 The Royal Conservatoire of Music is closed between Christmas and the New Year.  The Whittaker Library will reopen on Wednesday 4th January 2012.

Library Team Christmas Dinner 2011

Library Ladies Christmas Headgear

Because 'Whittaker' is on holiday, his blogposts may be rather sporadic.  But he can't leave you totally bereft of helpful updates! 

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Corff y Gainc: Welsh Folk Melodies

Here is a useful digital archive of folk melodies from old Welsh sources.  It comes from Chris Grooms, who also maintains www.docgrooms.com.

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard - sourcing digital copies of Welsh collections

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard

PROJECT INTRODUCTION: We are examining late 18th and 19th century Welsh songbooks to see what their prefaces etc tell us about their cultural background.  In literary terms, all the introductory matter is called the paratext.  So, we're looking for minstrels, bards, harps and other symbols of a Celtic Welsh past; also for metaphors which give away clues about what mattered to the compilers of these songbooks, and the audiences they were intended for.

PROJECT LEADER: Dr Karen McAulay, Music & Academic Services Librarian at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

PROJECT MEMBERS: currently, we're a handful of librarians, but interested literary scholars and librarians would be very welcome to join us.

• All good crowdsourcing projects have a wiki - here's our Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard wiki. 

There are also two Tiki-toki timelines:-

• Introducing project: King Edward's folly - crowdsourcing the Celtic bard 
• Chronology of Welsh songbooks .

Help is needed locating digital copies please.  Some are on Internet Archive (see the wiki resource bar), but others remain to be found.