By ’remixing’ the Radio Cymru archives, I have created a new multi-media work to celebrate the Hundredth Anniversary of the first Welsh language broadcast, on February the 13th, 1923. The work blends voices, old and new, with an original musical response: a combination of the historic, and the contemporary.

Amleddau presents the voices and recordings of the Radio Cymru archives in an immersive work, a blend of sound, music and film. In combining these with a contemporary musical response, the voices and sounds, and what they represent are returned into our communal memory. A mix of original recordings, and iconic symbolic events reflect the originality of our culture, and how we perceive ourselves.

Another significant influence on this work is the City Symphony film genre of the 1920’s, such as the famous Berlin, Symphony of a City by Walter Ruttmann, and collaborator, the composer Edmund Meisel. The genre is unique in that it combines music and abstract, symbolic film imagery to convey the essence of the City, and a strong sense of place. As Cardiff is so important in the history of Welsh broadcasting, I have ‘borrowed’ this approach, and in utilising the modern technology of the atrium in the BBC Central Square building, create a modern equivalent.

Amleddau is a celebration of our broadcasting tradition, and its pioneers, also those who fought for the freedoms we now take for granted. It is a tapestry of sounds and stories, spoken by iconic, and ‘real’ people; with the sounds of these lives influencing the musical narrative responses. At the heart of the idea will be the archives themselves, and the rhythms of dialect, being heard once again, returning into collective memory. 

Link to Wales Arts Review article

Link to BBC Cymru Fyw article