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>> Patrick Rimes: Welcome to the American Folklife Center's Homegrown at Home concert series 2021. We're Vrï from Wales, and it's our absolute pleasure to be performing for you today. The American Folklife Center will release a concert every other Wednesday from now through September 22nd at noon, East Coast US time. And each artist will be there with you in the chat section to answer questions, so be sure to say hi. After each concert is released, you can continue to find the video on the Library's website or YouTube channel.
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GPrynhawn da, a chroeso i Gymru. Good afternoon, and welcome to Wales, specifically the Tabernacle Chapel here Cwmafan in the beautiful Afan Valley. For those of you who are not aware of Wales, we are a small but very beautiful country nestling next to England in the British Isles. If you are aware of us, then you'll probably know that we are the land of song or Gwlad y Gan. And it's largely thanks to places like this, the Methodist chapel, that we have such a rich tradition of hymn-singing. As well as a fantastic hymnbook, we also have a very rich repertoire of traditional folk music which was largely ignored and forgotten during the 20th century and is now, I'm pleased to say, making a fantastic revival. I'm Patrick Rimes, and along with Aneirin Jones and Jordan Price Williams, from this very village, we are Vrï, and it's our mission in life to -- as well as relishing the hymns -- to really bring that traditional folk music back to prominence. 
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>> Jordan Price Williams: Hello, and thank you for joining us here in Tabernacle Chapel in Cwmafan. And rather appropriately so, we started our set there with an old Welsh hymn tune that was of a traditional origin called Dewch i'r Frwydr. And we followed on then with a tune I wrote for my dog, who's called Cyw who is a spaniel, and "cyw" means "chick" in Welsh. We've been very lucky to use this incredible space here today, which is the chapel that I was actually baptized in, as well as my father and my grandfather. And so we get to honor this by playing a really popular and very beautiful hymn tune called Crug y Bar. 
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>> Patrick Rimes: As we've already alluded to, the tradition of chapel singing is one of the jewels in Wales's musical crown. But while these hymns were being sung to the rafters during the Reformation, our traditional dance music wasn't faring too well, as it was cast aside as an instrument of sin. Fiddles were hastily hidden in the ceilings, harps buried under floorboards of the kitchen, and this traditional music all but died out. We owe a huge debt of thanks to the Romani gypsy people in Wales who didn't much care what society thought of them. And thank goodness for that, because they singlehandedly preserved this fantastic repertoire of tunes. And they didn't half-like [phonetic] to dance. 
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>> Aber-hunthee [phonetic] at the foot of the Brecon Beacons where the river Hunthee [phonetic] meets the Usk. I know this place well. Twenty years ago, my father Tim Williams was a soldier in the Watton, Brecon's 18th century army barracks. Two hundred years before him, another Tim Williams in the same barracks was writing this farewell ballad on the departure of the 23rd Regiment from the town of Brecon to the island of Guernsey. In it, he talks about the beauty of the land and the virtues of the people of the town, and how the soldiers are leaving to fight and to be buried in a foreign land. 
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>> Aneirin Jones: Well, sadly, we've come to the end of our performance today. But we just wanted to say a massive thank you or Diolch enfawr, as we say in Wales, to Thea Austin and everybody at the Library of Congress for having us. We've really enjoyed putting this concert together and it's been a massive honor. Hopefully soon in the near future, we could come and play in person for you. And also a massive thank you to my Mairwen Crockett who provided this chapel, the Tabernacle, in Cwmafan, Wales for us this afternoon. We're now going to finish off with a very popular slow Welsh tune. It almost became the melody for our national anthem. It's called Glan Meddwdod Mwyn, which translates to "good-humored and drunk," which could've been a very appropriate name for our national anthem. We really hope you enjoy it. And Diolch enfawr [inaudible]. Thank you. 
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