Cofio Recorda Remembrance
My attention was drawn last week to this highly unusual yet deeply inspiring project. The music label NuNorthern Soul is bringing Wales and the Balearic Islands together on March 1 to celebrate St David's Day in Wales and El Día de les Illes Balears (marking 41 years since the islands became a Spanish autonomous community. There are 17 of these in total, some happier with their status than others but that's another topic..)
The Welsh film star Rhys Ifans, Mallorcan musician Joan Bibiloni, actor Pep Tosar and Crazy P producer Jim Baron have all collaborated on the EP which is called the Cofio Recorda Remembrance. The standout for me is the stirring Badia Onírica, recited in English and Welsh by Ifans, a beautiful paean to his homeland based on the 1936 poem Cofio by the poet Waldo Williams, which has been complemented with a lush feel and sweeping orchestral string movements. A stunning piece of music bound to feature in a few ‘Best of 24s’.
I was aware that Carwyn Ellis & Rio 18 in a similarly adventurous spirit once combined Welsh lyrics with samba beats but this may well be the only EP I've ever heard to feature recitals in English, Spanish, Catalan and Welsh, although there has previously been cross-pollination elsewhere.
When Wrexham band Mother of Six toured Barcelona they sang in Catalan despite not speaking a word. In a (very pre-Brexit) 2010 interview with the BBC their bass player Neal Thompson said:
"It comes from the European Centre for Training and Regional Co-operation (ECTARC) in Llangollen, the body that administers the Leonardo and Archimedes educational cultural exchange programmes for the European Union. This has fostered a relationship between colleges in Catalonia and Glyndwr University in Wrexham.”
And of course, this is where culture can get entangled with politics. It wasn’t just the Scots studying the independence procés with interest. Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews once extolled the virtues of staunch separatist Lluís Llach’s song L'Estaca on the BBC whilst Plaid Cymru has representation on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Catalonia
But leaving thorny questions of nationhood aside, I think it is positive to see cultural projects promoting the Catalan language abroad at a time when, like Welsh, it is under sustained demographic, commercial and generational pressure. As someone with mixed roots and a slightly ambiguous identity in BCN I am instinctively intrigued by anyone weaving different parts of my own heritage together. I'm proud of this blog being one of the few in existence that seeks to bring English, Spanish and/or Catalan speakers together and long may that continue.