MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC. A CHOIR OF FIVE HUNDRED MEN SANG IN THE CEMETERY - IT WAS MUSIC TO WAKEN THE DEAD
by Sara John Being born and brought up in the Rhondda Valley I was deafened at an early age by people in the street talking themselves hoarse, brass bands and silver bands playing loudly enough to be heard far away in Taffs Well, if not Woolworths in Queen Street, Cardiff, and choirs, male, female and mixed, singing for the sheer joy of it. The Rhondda, shortly after the Coronation, was a very busy place once again. Less so than when it was the leading producer of the best steam coal in the world in the early years of the last century in my grandparents’ times. However, by the nineteen fifties with rationing trailing off and (almost) full employment there was an air of prosperity gently breezing down the streets. To add to the hustle, bustle, noise and energy there was always the sound of my particular favourite: the clash- bang - bang - clash of coal wagons in the railway sidings being prepared to leave the valley with coal which had been hiding in a very dark place for hundreds of thousands of years. Adding to all of that, there were still a number of horse-drawn carts delivering to households. Milk, probably the first to call in the very early morning, and, do you remember the birds pecking the silver foil lids and helping themselves to the cream? Milk was not homogenised in those days - but it was delivered, and, in glass bottles! Fruit and vegetables; Thomas and Evans with crates of fizzy pop including American cream soda, limeade, and dandelion and burdock which I thought was only for fathers. That is what I was told. Telling fibs to kids seemed to be perfectly acceptable in those days. In the 1950s with life returning to normal there was time and energy to enjoy what the Valleys had become famous for - Music. In various forms to suit all tastes, including choirs, brass bands, light opera, and musical evenings as well as professional theatre and operatic companies from the rest of the United Kingdom, They offered a cacophony of sounds. How did this all come about I wonder? Dean Powell writes in his latest book, “Victorian Wales was a heartland of competitive choral singing, galvanised by a musical intensity the likes of which 18 CARDIFF TIMES
had never been witnessed before”. (‘A Royal Choir for Wales’ Caxton Press 2021) Buy it and devour it! The Industrial Revolution was well underway in the Merthyr Valley In the early 1800s. The furnaces lit up the night sky and could be seen and smelt for miles around. The Aberdare Valley was developed by mid-century and in the 1870s seams of coal were being won in what had been known as Ystradyfodwg and Glynrhondda which soon would be known, worldwide, as The Rhondda Valley. Parallel with all of this were the many fervent Religious Revivals that swept South Wales. There was just one Anglican Church that began as an early Christian settlement in the sixth or seventh century. There was one non-conformist Independent Chapel in Cymmer, Porth and a big stone chapel called Nebo in the hamlet of Heolfach in what is now known as Ystrad. The stone steps at the back of the site lead directly to the river bank. Adult total immersions in the river were performed by the Minister. I was taken to one such service by my grandmother as a child. It was very dramatic! The Rhondda River ran black and shiny in those days. The warning from parents was firm and frightening - go anywhere near the river and you will be taken to Pontypridd market and sold to men from away. So? I wondered to myself how could those ladies and gentlemen dressed in long white linen robes take the risk of treading in the river? I was very young then and years and years away from reading The Book of Revelations. Young men, many from Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and the west of England, flocked to find work and lodgings in the valleys. The Valleys were crying out for manpower. The country had had a hard time after the Wars against the French, the business of the Corn Laws, and the decade that became known as the Hungry Forties. Interestingly, the benefits of migration and emigration went both ways. Young people from elsewhere who saw no possibility of honest paid employment in their home areas discovered, through the chapel networks, the way to help them achieve an opportunity to move to areas
