Blowing the trumpet for Welsh football songs
WHETHER organically in the stands or commercially in the studio, the soundtrack of Welsh football has struck a cultural chord as powerfully as Gareth Bale’s left foot strikes the ball.
Rugby’s repertoire – rooted in chapel hymns, Tom Jones and the genius of Max Boyce – has diminished in recent years as football’s has grown.
I speak as an egg-chaser saddened by the inability of modern fans to move beyond four lines of Cwm Rhondda – it was even piped in for a while – and wondering if anyone can ever take on Max’s troubadour mantle
But football has reclaimed the Land of Song. In those pre-Covid days of capacity stadiums, to witness the Red Wall lift the Welsh team with spontaneous renditions of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau was a thing of beauty.
When Chris Coleman’s men captured the global spotlight to the extent that even Adidas was tweeting in Welsh, the team’s wondrous Euro 2016 journey inspired around 20 songs. They ranged from the Manics’ anthemic official charity record to Super Furry Animals’ first single for seven years.
This time around, The Alarm’s Mike Peters has got the official gig, with fans from across Wales lending their voices to his song, The Red Wall of Cymru. Other eclectic offerings include singer and presenter Ywys Gwynydd’s joyful Ni Fydd y Wal, the equally uplifting Happiness, recorded bilingually by Cardiff ska band the SKAPA Collective, and the bouncing Wales Away from Machynlleth’s The Pumpers.
But it is perhaps a single released today by The Barry Horns – Cymru Rydd – which best encapsulates the way the Welsh football community embraces issues that go beyond the field of play. Politics, identity, socioeconomic issues and history are as likely to be discussed on fan forums as tactics and team selections.
The Barry Horns themselves also represent a truly organic musical experience.
Whereas rugby’s stadium soundtrack in modern times has been a formalised affair with organised choirs and military bands, this funky 11-piece brass ensemble has grown from the grassroots to “put tunes on the terraces”.
Made up of football fans from across Wales – albeit musically. talented ones – and named in honour of the cult Welsh player Barry Horne, the band began in 2011 in a desperate attempt to create ambience at matches.
Their vocalist and songwriter is known as Fez. Cardiff-born and now living in Pembrokeshire, he recalls how the Horns were born: “I founded the band 10 years ago out of a deep sense of despair about Welsh football and how awful the atmosphere was back when we were rubbish and nobody came. It was almost out of a sense of duty.”
The band began to build a repertoire of fan favourites like Andy Williams’ Can’t Take My Eyes Off You and created a five-point “Barryfesto”. In the words of drummer Matthew Redd, it was a “philosophy designed to encourage good spirits even when what’s happening on the pitch might not warrant them – we were doing this for fun, after all”.
They made their debut at the Wales v England World Cup qualifier in Cardiff in 2011 and their eyecatching style, comedy videos and witty musical interpretations soon caught the attention of the media as Football Focus, BBC Radio Five Live and BBC Wales came calling.
The Barry Horns’ profile grew with a passionate and often political Twitter presence and, of course, with the success of the national team. They fuelled a musical renaissance in the stands to match the new dawn on the pitch. As Wales embarked on their joyous journey to the semifinals of Euro 2016, no pre-match fans package or montage of the Red Wall was complete without the soundtrack of Welsh football’s house band.
“In 2016 everything changed,” Fez recalls.
“We were a happy party going to France. We didn’t have to explain who we were as Welsh people anymore because we were now on the world stage. And it was very footballrelated.”
But four years later, Fez feels all that positivity regarding Welsh identity has evaporated, citing examples like the frequent and condescending dismissals of the Welsh language in the Anglocentric media and the housing and cultural crisis provoked by the second home economy.
“The way the world has changed between 2016 and 2021, it feels like it’s not just a battle to exist as a football team anymore, it’s a battle to exist as a country,” he says.
His response is Cymru Rydd,
released today and described in the press release thus: “The incendiary new single from The Barry Horns is an existential meditation on the past, present and future of Wales.
“A call to arms that asks a nation which direction it wants to take. Featuring a symphonic brass arrangement with distorted guitars and bilingual vocals, this anthemic recording also aims to inspire Wales’ football team to light up the European Championships.
“Sonically influenced by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Dog Eat Dog, Ian Dury and Dafydd Iwan, it also features a middle eight vocal sample kindly permitted by Michael Sheen.”
The lyrics reference the Blue Books, the Welsh Not and the ripping of souls from communities “bought and sold for another BnB”. A chorus chant speaks of “self-determination” leading us to “liberation”.
It’s certainly a cri de coeur and a world away from the band’s usual tournament anthem.
“It’s totally different from the song we did for the last Euros, which was very much a party song,” says Fez.
“This was much more of a tortured process, reflecting the anxiety I have about Wales – what’s happening especially in rural Wales. And all we have is words, we’re not rich – well, potentially we could be – we just have art, that’s all we ever seem to have to fight back with.”
He continues: “I just got very sad about the political and socio-economic situation of Wales – what has happened over centuries but also in the past few years, when we’ve had political parties like Abolish the Welsh Assembly forming. In that atmosphere I was in a very introspective space. I wanted to write a song.
“The trombone player came up with this tune. He played it to me and I said, ‘it’s wicked’. So I just wrote verses about the present, the past and the future of Wales – divided up like that, starting in the present, because I’d just read an article by Guardian journalist Zoe Williams, who had insulted the Welsh language and said it was a waste of time. In that whole atmosphere I felt so much pent-up emotion about it.
“The first verse was about how Wales is being treated badly. Then I went into the past. I studied history of art at university but I came into art because I liked drawing. The lecturers said you can’t understand the present without understanding the past. So I made the second verse about trying to make sense of where we are now.
“For the third verse, I needed to have a positive, optimistic and constructive future. So the verses – apart from the third verse – are the problem and the choruses are the solution, a way out from where we are now, a kind of call to arms.”
The Michael Sheen middle eight is sampled from the rousing Raymond Williams Lecture the actor and activist gave in 2017. Fez was alerted to it by a fellow fan.
“What you find about Welsh football is that it attracts a fellowship of people who are mad about Welsh history and that’s how I got into it. It wasn’t through school. I got into it through following the football team. I used to play five-a-side with a guy in Cardiff who told me, ‘You have to watch the Michael Sheen lecture. He basically lays down the whole thing.’ I put it off for a while, I didn’t want to watch something that would make me even more angry!
“But I finally watched it and was zapping around the timeline to find inspiration. And I found that section about Sheen talking about the magic and mystery of the past and the Welsh dragon, and that really encapsulates how I feel about the magic of Wales.
“As a young boy I would look at this old map of Wales at the back of the classroom and it was just enchanting. The shape of Wales, it’s just a magical place. Anglesey looked like a boy’s head wearing a hat and his arm reaching out to the Irish Sea.
“And I’m so scared of the magic of Wales just dying away with the way these old communities are being stripped out and hollowed out, being sanitised into these AirBnBs. Honestly, it keeps me awake at night.
“So that’s where the song came from.”
While Fez would love to hear the song taken up on the terraces when crowds return – “my dream would be to have it played in the stadium over the Tannoy” – he’s not expecting the mainstream radio stations to give it a platform as some will find its message too challenging.
“I don’t think it will get much airplay,” he says wryly.
“The song itself is an acid test of how weak we are as a country and how scared we are and how a lot of our institutions are connected to these bigger things that we’re scared of.
“When we can’t even have a song that is mostly about historical facts, it’s an acid test of the situation.”
With a smile in his voice, he adds: “The words are quite full-on but I tried to say them with a soft delivery. So you can just zone out and enjoy the music if you didn’t want to have the lecture.
“It might come out today and noone will listen to it, but I don’t care because we put everything we had into it. I tried my best and as my Gran used to say, just try your best, that’s all you can do.”
Welsh football fans will expect no less from the players, and as the team embarks on another Euro journey it is exhilarating to see how many of the people who support them are equally interested in the journey Wales itself should take.
■ For more information on The Barry Horns’ single Cymru Rydd visit https://www.facebook.com/ BarryHorns