Page 12
by Donna Boyce
The Smithsonian has an annual festival on the National Mall -- this year Wales was the featured country. A number of our WSCO members were in attendance -- some as visitors and several who were working there. Come with us to the Festival!
Mabli (Maria Teresa) Agozzino (2009 WSCO St. D.D. seminar presenter and CWSS member) was working behind-the-scenes, before and during the Festival, interfacing with the participants from Wales. She said, “Both Sundays, Sian James led us all in a gymanfa ganu...amazing how we all know our parts (thanks Ann Gillard!). It was a treat…bumping into old friends and new.”
Mabli let me know that there are YouTube videos with coverage of the festival – you’ll find some links within this article and some at the end.
Another person with a unique view of the Festival was Shirley McKee (CWSS language coach and former WSCO board member) who volunteered the first three days in the Welsh Language Tent. While the organizer from Wales was teaching Welsh in the Story Circle area a couple times each day, Shirley kept activities rolling in the tent – when I came upon her she was sitting in front of a large hanging chart practicing Welsh words with a child.
Shirley “saw a number of people I knew, or whose names I recognized. My most surprising encounter, though, was with a family that, until a couple of years ago, lived in the Missouri town where I grew up.” Shirley said the inflatable globe they had on hand in the tent was intended to be a toy and language tool “but many people also came to us to see just how big Wales is (it’s 80% of the size of Massachusetts).”
I ran into WSCO president, Ken Evans, and his sister, Ruth Bostic, from St. Johnsbury, VT. For Ruth, “the highlight of the festival was the music...The men’s ensemble with the young woman directing, singing and playing the harp was my favorite.” Ken also felt the ensemble with the director/harpist “was special among all the performances.” See and hear Parti Cut Lloi with Sian James at the festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hBVzzHq7wE&feature=related.
Ruth also commented: “A trio of men sang and played instruments and one of them showed us clogging” (The group was Crasdant and that poor man was clogging on one of the hottest days of the year – I was sitting with Ruth and Ken for this performance. All the Festival musicians playing harps, guitars and fiddles with gut strings had to re-tune them constantly because of the humidity that day) “It was nice to be part of the whole festival atmosphere with all the different booths and many people milling about, and I enjoyed guessing who among those people might be of Welsh descent.”
Ken included among his highlights “having the Capitol and Washington Monument always in view” and that “the singing workshop ‘Lift Up Your Voices’ was fun and was encouraging ‘non-singers’ to sing and ‘singers’ to improve…we were staying with my sister’s son in the D.C. area and he was preparing wonderful Welsh suppers that he got off the Internet, and we were joined by our older sister’s son…making it THE highlight of the trip.” A great tie-in with the Festival – Welsh suppers and a Welsh family reunion!
I learned from Menna Morgan (our contact with the National Library of Wales for the Wales-Ohio Project website) who was working in the Welsh Roots tent that Margaret Lloyd, daughter Megan Lloyd, and two grandchildren were on the Festival grounds, although I never caught up with them that day.
Margaret said, “It was exciting to see all the tents exhibiting the various crafts that are so much a part of Wales – building coracles, carving love spoons, making musical instruments like the harp. I particularly enjoyed an interview given by Rhodri Morgan, Welsh Labor Leader, talking about Wales today, also listening to a panel of National Eisteddfod winners telling what the Eisteddfod had meant to them and how it helped them to achieve the successes they now have had.”
Megan wrote, “Seeing the Draig Goch flying high and signs written in Welsh with the Washington Monument in the background was quite impressive. I was thrilled that my children (Daniel Lloyd Irwin, 5 years old, and Kate Lloyd Irwin, 3 years old) could experience the music, tastes, and language of Wales so close to home. (They) enjoyed the kids’ crafts…also liked the language tent, which featured many children’s books in Welsh. However, their favorite experience was checking out all the different types of llwybr cyhoeddus or public footpath gates, from ones you walked through to ones you climbed over.”
Jeanne Jones Jindra, Director of the Madog Center for Welsh Studies, and her intern Sioned Wyn, who was literally just off the plane from Cardiff, attended the Festival during its second week and both were impressed and thought that “the Welsh Assembly Government and the Smithsonian organizers did an outstanding job of presenting both the traditional culture of old Wales and the vibrant nature of contemporary Wales.”
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