We fre­quent­ly play Celtic music on Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio. Gen­er­al­ly, we tend to focus on the music of Scot­land and Ire­land. Sim­i­lar­ly, we often play Eng­lish music, includ­ing some of the tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish Coun­try Dance pieces from Play­ford and oth­ers. We do not, how­ev­er, often present a pro­gramme that includes music from Wales.

Today’s Fea­tured Music seeks to redress the bal­ance by includ­ing both Welsh tra­di­tion­al music and tra­di­tion­al songs from Eng­land, both in their orig­i­nal form and in the shape of mod­ern orches­tra­tions and arrange­ments of old­er songs.

The des­tinies of Eng­land and Wales have been linked since the ear­li­est times. In the days of the Roman occu­pa­tion, Wales and Eng­land (Cym­ru a Lloe­gr in Welsh) were admin­is­tered as a sin­gle unit, the province of Bri­tan­nia. A Welsh iden­ti­ty grew fol­low­ing the depar­ture of the Romans in the 5th cen­tu­ry and con­tin­ued until Wales was con­quered by Edward I in the 13th Cen­tu­ry and then con­sol­i­dat­ed by the Laws in Wales Acts of the 16th Cen­tu­ry which brought the same legal sys­tem to both countries.

While Eng­lish con­trol con­tin­ued for cen­turies, often oppres­sive­ly (and includ­ing the sup­pres­sion of the Welsh lan­guage), it has begun to be relaxed in recent decades, with the re-emer­­gence of the Welsh cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and the Welsh lan­guage thanks large­ly to Cymdei­thas yr Iaith Gym­raeg (the Welsh Lan­guage Soci­ety) and the result­ing advent of Welsh broad­cast­ing, cul­mi­nat­ing in the estab­lish­ment of the Nation­al Assem­bly for Wales in 1999 in the cap­i­tal, Caerdy­dd (Cardiff).