In the 1960s, Welsh-language popular music emerged as a vehicle for mobilizing a geographically dispersed community into political action. As the decades progressed, Welsh popular music developed beyond its acoustic folk roots, adopting the various styles of contemporary popular music, and ultimately gaining the cultural self-confidence to compete in the Anglo-American mainstream market. The resulting tensions necessitate the understanding of Welsh pop as part of a much larger cultural process. By surveying the development of Welsh-language popular music from 1945-2000, 'Blerwytirhwng?' The Place of Welsh Pop Music examines those moments of crisis in Welsh cultural life which signalled a burgeoning sense of national identity, challenged paradigms of linguistic belonging, and out of which emerged new expressions of Welshness.
