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By SALLIE HAN; Times Leader Staff Writer
Friday, September 03, 1993 Page: 1 & 7B QUICK WORDS: WILKES-BARRE
HOLDING A WORLD’S FAIR OF WELSH SONG
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Williams learned to speak Welsh by singing it.
As a boy, the 68-year-old from Wilkes-Barre actually was discouraged from
speaking Welsh.
“Welsh Americans were very fiercely patriotic and felt you should speak
English in America,” he said. “Except in church, where you were taught to sing
Welsh hymns. The Welsh love to sing.”
Lately, Williams has been listening to his collection of Welsh records and
practicing the old, familiar songs.
He is preparing for the 62nd annual Welsh National Gymanfa Ganu, a Welsh
singing festival. Held this year in Wilkes-Barre, it runs Sept. 2 to 5.
Gymanfa Ganu (pronounced ganhmanva gany ) means “festival for sacred song.”
It is a centuries-old tradition that continues in modern Wales.
To keep the tradition alive, Welsh immigrants in the U.S. established the
Welsh National Gymanfa Ganu. It has been held every year at different cities
in the U.S. since 1929.
“Technically, it’s a gathering of Welsh people for the purpose of singing,”
said Jack Pritchard, chairman of the festival committee. “But it’s become much
more than that.”
He said the Gymanfa Ganu, sponsored this year by the St. David’s Society of
Wyoming Valley, is a “cultural homecoming” for Welsh Americans. “It’s to
celebrate being Welsh.”
The festival’s main event is a community-wide singing service of hymns and
anthems on Sunday at the 109th Armory in Kingston. It will be led by Alun Guy,
conductor of the Cardiff Philharmonic Choir in Wales.
A concert of Welsh music will be held Saturday night at the Irem Temple
Mosque in Wilkes-Barre.
Howard Stringer, president of CBS Broadcast Group and Welsh American, will
be the guest speaker at a banquet Friday night at Genetti’s Hotel.
The festival also features cultural workshops for children and seminars on
history, language and folklore for adults.
Pritchard said holding the festival in Wilkes-Barre makes it literally a
homecoming for many people of Welsh descent. He said the Wyoming Valley boasts
one of the largest concentrations of Welsh in the U.S.
When Wilkes-Barre hosted the event 10 years ago, 3,500 people attended the
festival, said festival spokesman Olin Evans. It was the largest number ever.
Attendance this year is expected at least to match that record.
“Wilkes-Barre is really the center of anything Welsh in the U.S.,” said
Williams, secretary of the Welsh Society in Philadelphia. “Many Welsh
Americans have roots here.”
Between 1820 and 1950, about 90,000 Welsh emigrated to the U.S. A number of
them settled in the Wyoming Valley. In 1900, about 20 percent of all Welsh
immigrants settled in the Wilkes-Barre and Scranton area, according to “Wales
in America: Scranton and the Welsh 1860-1920.” The book, written by Welsh
historian William D. Jones, was published recently by the University of
Scranton Press.
Williams said, “To many Welsh people, coming to Wyoming Valley is almost
like going to Wales. It’s like going home.”
He said most Welsh immigrants in the area were coal miners from south
Wales. His own grandparents were among the miners who found work at the mines
and settled in the Wyoming Valley.
During the festival, tours will take visitors out to the Anthracite Coal
Mine and Museum.
Another tour will lead them through local historic sites and Welsh
churches.
Churches, said Williams, were the social and spiritual centers of the
immigrant coal mining communities. At one point, there were about 45 Welsh
churches. Now, there are about 25, he said.
“There could be so many tragedies,” he said. “Religion steeled them
together.”
Singing was a popular and important community activity at the churches.
Composed in four-part harmonies, Welsh hymns require a community of singers.
“It’s wonderful to hear the Welsh sing, blending their voices together,”
Williams said. “When they get together, they sound like a choir.”
Williams has participated in the Gymanfa Ganu for 15 years.
He said what keeps him and other Welsh coming back to the festival is their
sense of hiraeth (pronounced hear-rithe ), or nostalgic longing.
“The Welsh are big on hiraeth,” he said.
“It’s part of your childhood, so it becomes even more important to you as
you get older,” he said. “It’s a very moving experience. It’s a volume of song
and sincerity.”