2. A Wales WOMEX bid?

One of the other key people in the Welsh WOMEX story is Ben Mandelson, musician, record producer and founding director of WOMEX since its first edition in 1994.

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Mandelson is on the supervisory board of Piranha Arts, the Berlin-based company that organises WOMEX, and although he sits on the Seven Samurai jury sessions as a facilitator, he’s keen to stress that he isn’t part of the showcase jury.

However he is instrumental in the selection of host cities and explains how the procedure works. “We make a call out for proposals for host cities every three years, so it’s quite a way ahead. We actually had nine host cities proposing for that year [2013]. And it came down to the three (Dublin, Glasgow and Cardiff), where we actually made site visits and tried to weigh up the balance, and that was in 2011, so it’s a two-year process.” 

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Ever the diplomat, Mandelson is clearly not about to spill the beans on why Dublin and Glasgow weren’t successful on this occasion. But he does give some insight on why the WOMEX team chose Wales and Cardiff. 

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“I think all three cities that proposed for that year all had great and positive things. But basically Cardiff had everything we needed at the time [size and accessibility], in one great bundle. And of course, the team was so enthusiastic and so into it,” he says, before adding quickly that of course, the Irish and the Scots were too!

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There is inevitably always a sense of rivalry between the Celtic neighbouring nations, albeit of a gentle and good-natured variety, especially when it comes to traditional music. It was ever thus. 

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“The whole Celtic thing is such a weird one for Wales, because technically, if the measure of the success of anyone’s living culture is the language that’s spoken, then Wales should be at the top. And yet most people in the world would never associate Celtic-ness with Wales,” says Hâf. “We culturally camouflage ourselves, and I think it comes from a lack of confidence and an inferiority complex.” 

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The reasons for this are complex and multifarious and worthy of a whole separate piece. But suffice to say that the English suppression of the Welsh language causing centuries of trauma lie at the crux of it.

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Returning to the subject of the difference between Scotland, Ireland and Wales and their musics, Mandelson elaborates on his view of the matter: “If you ask people about Scottish music, most of them have some random idea. And if you ask about Irish music, well there’s an Irish pub in every city in the world. There isn’t a Welsh pub, unless there’s one in Puerto Madryn in Patagonia maybe! And the Scots have such a presence in the Scottish diaspora as well. The Welsh tend not to have that public presence. I mean, there’s the Eisteddfod and the rugby. And the singing at the rugby is a very Welsh thing, so I’m not saying Wales is invisible. But the Scots and the Irish were definitely ahead of that.”

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As Hâf recalls, there was an undeniable prejudice towards the fact that Wales were intending to put in a bid. “There was talk that different cities in the UK and Ireland were going for it and we thought, well, why can’t we? And everyone was like, ‘Poof, no chance! Wales, what has Wales got?’ You know, there was a lot of arrogance around it.”

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But Mandelson remembers a determined Welsh team who responded in a very particular kind of way: “It was really kind of an awakening of ‘We are a nation, we have a voice, we have arts, we have tradition. We’re not the poor cousins across Offa’s Dyke, we are a real, dynamic place with our own voice, language, culture. And we want everyone to know it and not just the rest of the UK and the Republic, but actually, we’re on the world stage’.” As Mandelson says “they were really committed to ‘Wales: The Wake-up’.”

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In order to facilitate the bid, the Welsh formed a company called Cerdd Cymru: Music Wales. “The whole idea was to bridge the music industry and the artists,” says Hâf, although admitting that there’s still work that needs to be done on that. Cerdd Cymru comprised three representatives from the Welsh Music Foundation (Dafydd Roberts, John Rostron and Alan James), two representatives from the Arts Council of Wales (David Alston and Lisa Matthews-Jones) and Hâf from WAl. 

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Within Team Wales there were some incomparable figures, who Mandelson acknowledges. He pays special tribute to Hâf “who’s a firecracker, just fantastic,” he says. “She’d had a lot of experience with her previous career working at the European Parliament and so she had that internationalist view and really understood what it’s like to have a European presence, very important.” And not forgetting, of course, the chairperson at the Welsh Music Foundation with whom Mandelson had a long personal and professional relationship: “the late lamented and wonderful Alan James. He DJ-ed at the first WOMEX in 1994 and was one of the driving forces.” As Hâf recalls fondly “Alan was the wind in our wings. He told us ‘we have to do this now!’ He navigated the process.”

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