Guys, you NEED to watch this!

[gothams3rdrobin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ8ARTHmJEY

This is part of 'Only Boys Aloud's performance at the National Eisteddfod on Saturday, singing 'Sosban Fach' (Little Saucepan). It's an extremely famous Welsh song, particularly sung at sporting events and is the signature song of Llanelli's rugby team (they keep a saucepan atop the goal post! *grins*

The thing about this, though, is that the choir was only formed about five months ago, with the specific goal to perform that night, by the director of our famous South Walian choir 'Only Men Aloud'. These teenage boys come from all over the South Wales Valleys, which was once famous for its Male Voice choirs, but this is now dying out - the idea is to do something about that.

So, just five months rehearsal, and the thing about the Eisteddfod? Everything is in Welsh - English is completely forbidden within the main tent. So they had to get their heads around songs in a pretty much foreign tongue too!

I wish I could show you the rest of the performance - and the epic show done by 'Only Men Aloud', but this is all I could find on YouTube. Some dedicated soul basically videoed the performance off his monitor so he could upload it, but for all that the quality is excellent!

"Mae gath wedi scrammo Johnny-bach..." - That darn cat! ;-)

Comments

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

Actually it's, A'r gath wedi sgrapo Jonni bach. :P

[gothams3rdrobin.livejournal.com]

*affectionate rasp* I know that - I was typing it from memory at the time. The teacher who taught me the song in primary school wasn't much good at his Welsh either.... I think it was the PE teacher, trying to get us all hyped for that trip to Llanelli RFC! ;-)

I have since looked it up on Wiki, 'cause I never learnt more than the first verse, and I just can not get the last verse to scan! *laughs*

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

Really? I didn't think it was that bad.

[gothams3rdrobin.livejournal.com]

Meh, I've never been all that good at the tune anyway. There's just a lot more little words in the last verse than I expect to find, and it throws me.

Plus I'd listened to the 'Only Boys Aloud' version five or six times so I had a slightly less familiar arrangement in my head ;-)

[aprilmay430.livejournal.com]

I remember that song from when I was a child - that was about the only Welsh I ever heard from my mother's side of the family aside from "Gad dy lap" and "Ach a vie" (and I'm not even sure if that last one's really Welsh or how to spell it.) ;-)

[gothams3rdrobin.livejournal.com]

'Ach i fi!' is most definitely Welsh :-) Even the non-speakers (like me!) know it. It's basically an exclamation of disgust, like "yuck" or "Ewww" - a lot of non-speakers pronounce it "Uck ee vee", 'cause of it's similarity to 'yuck'.

Not heard 'gad dy lap' before, though - what context was that used in?

[aprilmay430.livejournal.com]

"Ach i fi!" was my grandmother's favorite expression and the closest she ever came to swearing. (I remember her gasping in horror when she heard somebody saying "Bloody hell" on television.)

According to the website I looked it up on, "Gad dy lap" means "stop your babbling" although I remember translating it as a kid as "Shut up." :-)

[gothams3rdrobin.livejournal.com]

Hee - I need to remember that one! Usually I copy Rowan's headmaster and say "Yn dawel!", which basically means "Quiet!"