Do You Hear the People Sing? - The Male Voice Choirs of Wales

Here for the first time is the compelling story of how the male voice choirs of Wales have become symbols of pride and identity, from their origins in the country's turbulent industrial past via the epic contests fought out on the stage of the National Eisteddfod to their status as iconic features of the contemporary Welsh landscape.

About the Author :
Gareth Williams is one of Wales's leading social historians. A well-known writer and broadcaster who has published widely on the history of Welsh popular culture, he is an Emeritus Professor at the University of South Wales and a member of one of Wales's most famous choirs, Pendyrus.

Review :
In the early 1980s, the distinguished historian Gareth Williams turned away from writing about European politics in the seventeenth century, and began researching the history of the popular culture which permeated his upbringing. Since then, he has become the leading writer on those twin passions of the people which helped to define industrial Wales – rugby union and choral singing. This shift in Professor Williams’s career led to an impressive corpus of writing which placed the Welsh experience at the heart of the growing academic field of the history of popular culture, but has also given rise to more popular works which have illuminated to a wider audience the origin of distinctively Welsh cultural forms which are still very much alive. This latest work, while richly underpinned by extensive research, is certainly accessible to a wide readership. The work covers the rise of male choral singing, looking particularly at the social context from which it arose: the very male world of the workplace in the coal and metalworking areas and its competitive ethos, the cultural inheritance of chapel and temperance respectability, the role of the Eisteddfod movement, and also the important European influences. It does this by tracing the rise and fall of individual choirs, of competitions won and lost, and through portraits of key figures within the movement. The book also traces how male voice choirs changed in response to a changing social environment – world wars, the decline of chapels and heavy industry, changing language demographics, up to the demands of the modern media age and the success of Only Men Aloud. It is also an excellent reference work in terms of the history of the primary male choir competitions at the National Eisteddfod. The book is unashamedly written from the perspective of a devotee of choral singing, and one can see the affection towards the world of the male voice choir, and its humour, permeating the work. Do You Hear the People Sing? will undoubtedly delight those interested in music and the history of modern Wales, but will also be of great interest to all who wish a very readable introduction to one of Wales’s most recognisable cultural exports.