FOUR choirs from Wales attended the annual Street Choirs Festival last weekend (Jun 25-26): Côr Cochion, Cardiff’s socialist choir, Wrexham Community Choir.
The Pales Peace Choir from mid Wales and the Welsh Marches, and Côr Gobaith, Aberystwyth’s choir singing for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.
Côr Gobaith’s concert performance included a version of the popular traditional song ‘Sosban Fach’, adapted by choir MD Nest Howells to recall Llanelli Riots of 1911.
During a National Railway Strike, pickets at Llanelli Railway Station were brutally set upon by the police. Two men were then shot dead by troops of the Worcestershire Regiment and rioting ensued, with the deaths of another four people.
Lines of Côr Gobaith’s Sosban Fach ran ‘dynion y reil ar streic am bunt o dâl /a’r milwyr a’u gynnau ddaeth i’r dre’.
The Street Choirs Festival has been an annual event since 1984 and is hosted each year by a different choir. This year it was the turn of Red Leicester, that city’s activist choir which has much in common with Côr Gobaith.
32 choirs participated in the Festival in Leicester. In 2013, Côr Gobaith hosted the Festival in Aberystwyth , attracting around 1,000 visitors to the town for the weekend.
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