Canu gwerin a’r Gwerin

Wedi gwylio cwpl o raglenni ar Meic Stephens ar S4C heno, dyma fi ymchwilio’r Google amdano a dod ar draws erthygl gan Meic arall, Meic Llewellyn, y tro ’ma, ar y pwnc Celtic and Oppositional Strands in the Contemporary Popular Musics of y Fro Gymraeg and Euskal Herria. Diawl erioed, ond mae’n ddiddorol. Ac yn ddoniol:

Among the cultural characteristics often perceived as uniting the Celtic nations are languages that share a common ancestry, and whose patterns of expression have many marked similarities. There is also felt to be a common distrust of centralisation and rigid organisation, and a delight in the unexpected and unpredictable, beautifully caught in Oscar Wilde’s aphorism ‘consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative’. From Roman times onward, these aspects of Celtic culture have been exoticised, romanticised and ‘othered’ by representatives of more politically coherent cultures to the extent that all too often the Celts appear to become no more than the negative images of those who have displaced and marginalised them; the fairies of western Europe. The continuing power of such representations can be seen in the ‘joss-stick Celticism’ of many today; in a discussion-group conversation on the internet recently, I was advised by an American woman called Ravyn (with a ‘y’ of course) that I would be able to recognise distinctly Celtic elements of any music if, and presumably only if, I had a ‘Celtic soul’.

Joss-stick Celticism, ie wir.

Hyrddiaid uffernol

Dw i ddim yn gwybod pam (wel, ocê, dw i yn gwybod pam, ond dw i ddim am ddweud) ond dw i wedi bod yn edrych ar raglenni “I 80s”, hwyr yn y nos ar BBC2.

Gallen nhw fod wedi arbed lot o arian ac amser gan ddangos y llun ffeindiais i wrth fodio trwy archifau Textism.

Dysgwyr ym mhobman

Dadeni’r Cymraeg – yn Vermont:

As a child in an area of Vermont known for its slate quarries and the Welsh workers it attracted a century ago, Janice Edwards watched as her ancestorsí language and culture slipped away.

Now Edwards and others are working to restore the Welsh to their area. Edwards has been studying the Welsh language at Middlebury College for about six years, and from her home in Poultney she runs the Welsh-American Geneological Society and helps with the Poultney area St. Davidís Society, of which she is a founder.

Diolch i Chris cope, rhestr CMC