The X Factor: fighting poverty in Wales, the musical way
Every year at around this time it has become a tradition for the Williams family and the local Community Council in Llantrisant ,Wales, to honour my late father’s musical career through the Ifor Williams Awards . These are like a Valleys version of the X Factor but for young people with actual musical ability.
To be fair, though we always try and nurture the really talented and committed , we sometimes award prizes for kids who show a positive attitude towards music rather than talent – a display of sentimentality my competitive and musically rigorous –nay unforgiving – dad would have been contemptuous towards. But then,if he were alive we wouldn’t have the awards so the question of his views doesn’t arise. That settles that. Sorry dad.
My father died in 2006 aged 82. He came to the mining village of Beddau when he was about ten ,his father having been driven out of Cardiff by a resentful constabulary frustrated at their inability to nab Dan the Band (as he was known locally) for the illegal gambling he definitely got up to in Cardiff ‘s infamous Tiger Bay. Having failed to get him before the courts they tended to beat him up at any opportunity and sensing this only led one way,my criminal grand-dad settled for life in the far less glamorous but comparatively safer mining village where my Dad was brought up.That’s where I grew up too.
There being no justice or God, my grandfather’s penchant for violence was matched by an extraordinary capacity to play the trombone ,which he did like an angel, which he wasn’t. He raised his 4 sons as brass band musicians . All played well. My father became the best cornet player in Wales in his teens . He was so good that at 13 the major brass band instrument maker of the day in the UK used him in its advertising.
He played for the best band in Wales at the time as solo cornet player, the Park and Dare band. He was also sold into slavery at 14 by his father to be solo cornet play for a while with the famous Brighouse and Rastrick band. He entered 64 instrumental contests as a soloist and won 64 first prizes. I have a letter from Clara Novello Thomas , a well known concert singer of the 30s and 30s saying that my dad at 14 was the best brass player she had ever heard , when he had supported her on a tour.
In the War he was part of an entertainment group that had Spike Milligan and Tommy Cooper in it. He was friends with Milligan who was once interviewed by the Musician’s Union house journal , and as a trumpet player himself he said my father (who he knew as Danny, his first name) was the best trumpet player he had ever heard. At my father’s funeral we had a brass band play part of an unfinished symphony he started writing when he was 16 and finished in time for Camborne Band to play at 81. He conducted it at their invitation , spontaneously, before an audience of 400. He may have been what Gramsci called an organic intellectual – a status he definitely would have sneered at and which he had attained through a talent which the state had done nothing to nurture as he left school at 15 with no qualifications. I never saw him read a book. He just wrote music on backs of envelopes.
After the War which he never gloried in, taking Milligan’s view, that a lot of strangers whom he had never met were inexplicably trying to kill him, he went back to the factory he had worked in before. He rose through the ranks to become a stork keeper and transport manager before leading a strike and then resigning. He was blacklisted for some years before his brother got him a job working for the National Coal Board as a filing clerk.
On his retirement he became for 15 years an energetic and much loved Labour councillor who was indefatigable in defence of the interests of his constituents . He died un-defeated in an area where Labour doesn’t always win. I can tell you that his dying words according to the nurse who attended were:’when’s he going?’ Puzzled, she asked me to interpret. Easy I said. He hated Tony Blair who kept on saying he would retire in his third term. My dad wanted him to honour that promise sooner rather than later. On the day he died I texted my then boss the Cabinet Minister David Miliband to the effect that ‘my dad gave up the struggle at 4am . His flag stayed red to the end. His last words were ,’when’s he going’ and he was talking about your mate’.
To his credit he responded warmly .
This is the man myself , and his first and beloved Council of Llantrisant , honour with the awards. The area has retained a passion for music and some remnant of its musical tradition. The kids who we support are fantastic. Not at all what you might expect if you weren’t Welsh and thought such things were for middle class kids. Sadly, that may be the case in much of the UK. We seem to be holding on to some social capital in my area ,though it’s a constant battle. Some of the schools help significantly by promoting and teaching music quite effectively, though not all.
The next Awards are in late October. To their great credit the Llantrisant Council co-fund this event with my family. They loved him too. I think they also knew that the area had nurtured this talent decades ago and wanted to use his example as an inspiration to other kids who might have few material comforts at home but who can through music raise themselves to another level. I have to say that if my dad can be an inspiration to them – when he grew up in abject poverty but was as rich as Croesus in terms of his personal culture – then that’s wonderful. But these kids continue to be an inspiration to me and those who hear them, too. There’s a few kids over the years who win this Award on go on to the Welsh College of Music or just carry on playing to ever higher standards. Some give up but retain a love of music. All are lifted through their involvement with music, that great secular mystery.
There’s one ten year old playing for us this year who won a prize two years ago. He played the organ never ever having had any tuition and with no musical background at home. His parents were both mystified and delighted he was so musical and had got support from the Ifor Williams Music Awards. I just feel immensely proud and thrilled that music can still transform the lives of kids who yet live in challenging circumstances. This was an almost entirely working class community when I grew up in it and remains decidedly not the Vale of Glamorgan or a leafy borough of any kind.
I am reminded that Venezuela has taken an advanced position in the debate on cultural wealth combating material poverty with its extraordinary ‘La Sistema’ approach which has brought serious ,classical, musical skills to hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers. And transformed their lives. The Williams Awards do not amount to La Sistema! But they are underpinned by the same values. And they could be emulated and scaled up , if others want to help out.
When I see the Welsh government today struggling to make an impact on the nose-diving Welsh economy, now the poorest in the UK or raise the skills levels of kids at the bottom of the pile, I do wonder if there are lessons to be learned from our own little Big Society social enterprise we’ve got going. With a bit more support – from schools for example who seem to be ever more philistine or worried that such music is ‘western’ or ‘middle class’ and thus not suitable for working class pupils today (which is middle class rubbish of course) – we could have quite a big impact. But there’s a deeper thing missing. I don’t think the issue of cultural as well as material poverty is taken seriously nor indeed the idea that building up ‘cultural capital ‘ can help defeat or at least transcend the latter. I know it can. I’ve seen it in my own family and my community. And it doesn’t cost much. What do we want? La Sistema .When do we want it? Yesterday but tomorrow will do. PS :My dad made money from music too:so will some of the kids who win the Wards in his name. What’s not to like?
