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Orlando, FL. (January XX, 2016): A consortium of Welsh marketing and promotion experts have joined forces under the Bay International Group banner to promote Welsh art, talent, culture and products in the USA. Led by Bryn Yemm and Stuart Rowlands, the new entity’s Corporate Headquarters is based in Orlando, Florida with satellite offices in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire and Los Angeles, California.

“We have thought for a long time that Welsh industries, especially the arts, have been underserved in the United States,” says Managing Partner Bryn Yemm. “At Bay International Group we have the marketing and promotional knowledge and contacts to open those ‘all important’ doors in the USA that can mean the difference between success and failure.”

Bryn Yemm, has made his reputation as an international entertainer and marketer. Yemm was born in Brynmawr (Breconshire), Wales and now spends his time between Orlando and Abergavenny. A successful performer and producer with his own record label Bay Records and Bay Promotions, he is featured in the Guinness Book of Hit Albums UK, and was the subject of a BBC TV documentary featuring his life and work. Yemm specializes in promoting, presenting, hosting, performing and representing corporate interests. Corporate clients have included FW Woolworths, Littlewoods, Variety Club International and Mano Maritime.

Left Front - Bryn Yemm with the Rt. Hon Carwyn Jones AM, First Minister of the Welsh Assembly and the ladies of Bridgend Tenovus choir.

Jonathan Constantine heads IT for Bay International Group. Based in South Wales, Jonathan was educated in Guildford, Surrey and is an accomplished IT and recording systems engineer. He will be working with Bay International Group clients offering full IT services for individual companies.
 
Given the huge opportunities for the creative sector in the USA, the Bay Group team are looking to use their experience to help Welsh firms of all sizes who seriously want to expand their international presence in this exciting and dynamic market. 

For further information: www.bayinternationalgroup.com
Contact: Bryn Yemm:
UK Office: +44 1873 561 574
US Office: +1 321 613 2806

We would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate all our competitors. 2015 was undoubtedly one of the best years yet for our Short Story Competition both in terms of the quantity and quality of entries. Our judges, Mike Jenkins, Gaabriel Becket and Ceri Shaw have reached a decision and the adjudication appears below:-

"Our joint decision is that David Lloyd's story 'Dreaming of Home' is the winner of the 2015 West Coast Eisteddfod Online Short Story Competition . Joint second would be Minstrel Boy by Sally Spedding and Remember Yesterday by Philip Rowlands."

Many thankls for your excellent submissions to all those who participated in this years competition. Details of next years competitions will be announced shortly and we hope that all our 2015 entrants will consider competing again in the new year.

READ 'DREAMING OF HOME' HERE

AmeriCymru: Hi Sioned and many thanks for agreeing to this interview. You will be performing at the Ontario Welsh Festival this year on April 22nd in Ottawa. Is this your first visit to the Americas?

Sioned: This is Côrdydd's first visit to Canada - we performed at Carnegie Hall, NYC in 2013 with the esteemed (Welsh and Royal composer, Paul Mealor) and have travelled to Hong Kong and Barbados, but we are very much looking forward to exploring Canada, especially to celebrate the Welsh Festival. We promise plenty of formal and informal Welsh singing!

AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little about the history of the choir? How common are mixed choirs in Wales?

Sioned: Côrdydd is a Cardiff-based choir, which was established 16 years ago. Mixed choirs have grown in popularity in Cardiff and all across Wales - Côrdydd has indeed been a match-maker for many a wedded couple and maybe this is an instigation for many young people to meet others of the same ilk! Wales is steeped with mixed and male voice choirs history, and it has become very "cool" to be part of a choir of late. Côrdydd does indeed feel like a community and a hub within a vibrant city, and I hope it has a warm, welcoming and family feel.

The choir began when a small group of friends noticed a gap in the choral market in Cardiff - although there were numerous mixed choirs, there wasn't a particularly young choir in Cardiff for new graduates/early twenties/thirty year olds. Hence the birth of Côrdydd. Over a hundred turned up for the first rehearsal which cemented the fact that there was room for more choirs in the city. And fortunately, this still stands today with new choirs springing in every corner of Wales. We are extremely proud to be privvy and part of that exciting scene.

AmeriCymru: What can attendees expect from Cordyyd in Ottawa. Care to give us a sneak preview of your repertoire?

Sioned:   Hopefully, Côrdydd can showcase fine choral singing - we strive to achieve a pure sound, of clarity and excellence - I hope we deliver! Naturally we will perform some of Wales' finest tunes, some recongisable but with a twist; we are at our best singing a capella music and will perform some of Paul Mealor, Eric Whitacre and Morten Lauridsen's works. We are fortunate to collaborate closely with these three composers and will once more, be touring with Whitacre in 2017. We were also chosen to record with Decca/Deutsche Gramaphon label with the world-famous Bryn Terfel, appearing on most tracks of his Christmas CD. We've also won numerous other accolades and appeared on Radio 3, BBC1, S4C - finding time to fulfill all we want to achieve is quite a task, so we will be making the most of Canada!

AmeriCymru: You have appeared, and won prizes at, the National Eisteddfod on a number of occasions. How did it feel to win a prize at this most prestigious of events?

Sioned: It's incredible to think that we have not only won at the National Eisteddfod 10 times, but we are the choir who has won the "Choir of the Festival" (Côr yr Ŵyl) more than any other choir in Eisteddfod history. It's truly an honour, but we never take any win for granted. Each win feels as good as the last, and believe me, there are a lot of nervous choristers backstage before competing!

AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to hear and purchase tracks by Cordydd?

Sioned: We have two websites - www.cordydd.com and www.cordydd.org.uk - we have dozens of clips on youtube and you can buy our recordings with Bryn Terfel ("Bryn Terfel'a Carols and Christmas Songs") on i-tunes.

AmeriCymru: Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Sioned: We hope you enjoy our performances of Welsh, and our various other repertoire. Between ourselves and the Three Welsh Tenors, Cymru has a strong, splendid, and very Welsh presence in Canada! Thank you for inviting us to be part of your special event -  Iechyd Da!

“Good night and good luck!” said the Curator Derek Dunny as he locked the huge wooden front door of the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum.

The only Grade 1 Listed Structure in the whole of the Merthyr Tydfil Borough was imposing looking at the best of times, but on a dark wet Winter’s evening it was downright scary. Safer Merthyr employee Dicky Knight looked around nervously. It was his first night as a security guard and he didn’t feel very safe.

“Everything looks so much more scary in the dark!” he said to his shadow, who was his only companion for the night. Merthyr Council too had to comply with Central Government Budget cuts and were warned that they had to make savings, which is why they employed a youngster on the National Minimum wage to guard their museum, lit at night by solar powered lights.

This wouldn’t have been a problem anywhere else, but as most Merthyr people will confirm, we don’t get sunlight for six months of the year. Knight looked around him dimly, the old stuffed animal heads on the walls seemed to glower at him menacingly and the suits of armour looked ready to follow him as soon as he turned his back. His first ever night shift was going to be a long one. He sat down at the counter on a chair, with just a Pound shop flash light with a Polish battery in it for comfort. His senses were on high alert for every sound or movement as his imagination ran riot. The swirling high wind and driving rain outside didn’t help matters either .He had a mobile phone but he only had 20p of credit left on it – just enough to text HELP to his girlfriend – if he needed to.

In the half-light he carefully unwrapped his silver foil package peering in to see what sandwiches his mother had packed for him -hoping in anticipation for salmon. All he had was cheese- with bread so hard it could have been from Swansea Road. Bored silly after just ten minutes, he began to throw peanuts into the air and catch them in his mouth. He began to throw them higher and higher until one lodged in his left nasal chamber and he nearly choked to death. He sighed to himself as he checked his watch with the flash light 6.40pm....ten minutes gone only another 11 hours and 20 minutes to go. He knew he had to do something so he decided to pluck up enough courage to patrol the place.

After checking the entrance door was locked firmly, he made his way into the art gallery section filled with furniture not good enough for St Fagan’s Museum of Welsh Life. As he walked in, all the portraits on the walls seemed to looking at him. In his mind’s eye, Dicky could see the eyes moving behind the oak panel wall partitions and Frans Hals ‘Cavalier’ seemed to be laughing at him.

“I don’t know what you are laughing about....because the Roundheads kicked your arse pal!” he said aloud to the oil painting.

Dicky almost expected him to answer but no reply came. Dicky had heard wives’ tales for years of the Castle being haunted ...but apart from his teachers at the school, he never saw any monsters. Passing along the Crawshay dynasty, he refrained from spitting in the face of the Ironmasters who had abused the Town and its poor people. He looked around him at Lady Charlotte Guest, translating the Mabinogion into English and realised he was in a place of priceless historical importance to the people of Merthyr. Even so, he didn’t care...he just lit up his little roll-up fag and blew out a smoke ring onto the face of Richard Trevithick.

“Narrow Gauge ...he puffed closing his mouth... Broad Gauge!” he said opening the aperture.

As he grew more confident in his explorations, his stomach started to roll so he decided he would have a sniff around the cafeteria area known as ‘Crawshay’s Truck Shop’ and see if there were any freebies on offer. As he entered the dark underground area , he was disappointed to see that everything was shuttered down and locked up for the night. There was however, a single vending unit sponsored by Diet Coke, containing various chocolate bars , crisps and full sugar cans of coke to encourage healthy eating in the Borough. Dicky didn’t have any coins anyway , but he certainly wasn’t prepared to spend £1.00 for a Mars Bar in any event. He bent down, opened the metal flap and tried lifting his remaining hand up to flick the goods off their metal shelves. The machine was designed to stop this sort of petty pilfering. Bored further he decided to use the toilet. Sitting in peace he relaxed as he sent two beautiful ‘corn dogs’ down the River Taff. Dicky’s peace was shattered, when he looked across and realised that the Council cutbacks included toilet paper too. No velvet...like the brand his Mam and Dad had ‘pampered’ him with at home.

“Shit!” he cursed aloud . He suddenly had a thought. “What about those velvet drapes in the portrait room?” Walking with his trousers around his ankles, he shuffled along like a penguin until he reached the room with the soft curtains. careful to use the inside of the green and brown velvet, he noticed that they were beginning to stick to the wall near the window reveal.

“Shit happens!” he said as he raised his trousers and adjusted his clothing.

And then it hit him. Looking through the doorway, directly at him was a small Egyptian Death Mask of King Tutankhamen, in a small glass display case. It wasn’t the pharaoh that caught his eye but the rod of Osiris next to him. It was perfect to knock off a mars bar from the machine. He made his way to the cabinet and was dejected initially to find it locked.

“Now where would a Merthyr curator hide the key?” he said aloud.

Spying a plant pot, alongside the entrance door he went and checked and bingo there it was.

“Safer Merthyr....that’s training for you!” he said as he flicked the key high in the air, being careful not to throw it high enough to lodge in his nose. As he opened the cabinet, he grabbed the rod of Osiris and made his way back to the cafeteria. He returned minutes later with armfuls of chocolate, three bags of crisps and a can of coke, smiling inanely as he carried the magic rod in his teeth. Putting down his ill-gotten gains, he returned the rod to its place in the cabinet. As he did so, he noticed a cutting about the curse of King Tut and the mysterious death of museum benefactor Lord Caernarvon.

“I‘m not Brendan Fraser ...he said “ the only mummy I’m afraid of is my own!”

He placed the death mask on his face for a second and a few bits of wrist jewellery as a costume and ‘Walked like an Egyptian’ with the ‘bangles’ on. He then foolishly picked up the book entitled ‘Necropolis’ and began to decipher the hierographics. As his dad was a former postman , he had no difficulty in reading the writing out loud. As he finished the last sentence, he heard a dog howl in the distance. Like his father, he too had an innate fear of dogs and that sound was not unlike the sound Lord Caernarvon had heard seconds before his dog dropped dead at the exact time, when Howard Carter opened that tomb, in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

“Anubis...the Jackal Headed God!” said Dicky....”Guardian of the underworld!” he said reading the papyrus parchment scroll aloud, which crumbled to dust as he spoke.

“Where are those drapes again?”

As he made his way to the window overlooking the rear of the castle, two likely lads were digging in the woods behind the castle, looking for the money that a local drug dealer had allegedly buried there.The Gurnos pair of Mac Head and his brother ‘H’ were digging away, trying to find the buried loot. Sudden movement in the window above was noticed by the pair. The movement was the bare arse of Dicky , reflecting the moonlight , as he used the velvet curtains for a purpose not originally intended. Mac picked up a stone and launched it expertly at the aperture. It sailed through the gap in the sash window and landed on the table containing a priceless vase from the Ming Dynasty. It teetered on the table edge tantalisingly for a second, as Dicky lunged like Edwin Van Der Saar full stretch to catch it, in doing so knocking over a Bronze age cup –the only one left in existence- found by Tony Robinson and the Time Team in Swansea Road- as proof that civilised man HAD once lived in Gellideg.

The vase fell all the same and shattered into a thousand pieces.“ I want my mummy!” said Dicky sucking his thumb for a split second , until he realised it wasn’t just the drapes that were humming. When Dicky opened his eyes he was hoping it was all just a ‘nightmare’. But he could see the two teenage drug dealers making their way home with their ill gotten gains on the back of a black horse. More disconcerting to Dicky was that he could see a small bulldog looking at him slobbering away, with ectoplasm dripping from his mouth.

“What the Hell are you....Anubis?” stuttered Dicky.

Beyond the dog in the entrance hall Dicky could hear strange guttural noises – oh...um...chukka...oh um chukka....

Dicky backed away from the dog eventually circling the wall and running towards the strange sound. Dicky stopped ‘dead’ in his tracks, as he witnessed a strange bearded man step down off the canvas of Rolf Harris. He was all in white, like an outline of a person and was almost transparent.

“What are you...?” stuttered Dicky... as the trickle down the back of his leg began to fill his white socks too.

“Can’t you tell what it is yet?” asked the spectre .

Dicky stood white as a sheet (bar for his socks) shaking his head in terror.“ Are you a Rolftergeist?” he eventually stammered.

“I won’t harm you....different to him...he said nodding at the dog....he could put you in ‘Animal Hospital’ if I was to say the word!”

“What word?” asked Dicky.“

Churchill.....he’s my spirit guide...helping the recently bereaved to find their way in the afterlife....a ‘loss adjuster’ if you like ....oh and by the way .... that vase ....it wasn’t me....for insurance purposes....he nodded at the dog....I don’t want to lose my no claims bone-us....it was them out there....those ‘Two little boys’ on their ‘wooded horses’. said the ghost.

“Do you think I should go after them?” asked Dicky pretending he was brave.

“So let me AsBO’s go...son.....!” sung Rolf...singing to the tune of Tie me Kangaroo down sport .

“That’s the trouble in Merthyr ...said Dicky....I haven’t made the place any safer...I had my car wheel trims pinched from this very castle forecourt...and the GTI sport ones cost a fortune....thank God my father gets money in the mail regularly...!” said Dicky growing more confident.

“I know what you mean cobber....lot of ‘poor little blighters’ in the town...they’ll steal anything in Merthyr from scrap metal signs to shitty drapes ( Dicky blushed red at this point)...I even had to tie my kangaroo down sport to stop it being taken from the Park!!! So what are you doing here so late at night Sport?” asked the phantom.

“Having a little ‘Walkabout’ like you really!” said Dicky. “How come you live in that painting?” he asked not so scared now- safe in the knowledge that the dead wouldn’t hurt him.

“Every artist leaves a little bit of their soul behind in their work...you as a fellow arsetist chose to leave your impression on a different material- the drapes...for example!” said Rolf.

“But one thing I don’t understand....I know your career is dead...but I didn’t know you had gone to ‘Dreamstate’!” said Dicky.

“Neither did I until about ten minutes ago!”.......I was stood before the Queen ...she had previously given me the CBE & MBE honours....before she saw my 80th birthday painting of her....she said I was to be made Sir Rolf....for my services to animals and art and anoraks sales ...but then the flunky, told her that David Cameron had rung first, then Nick Clegg second and they had told her that the Royal Family were not immune to the public sector cuts.....then she went all ‘Helen Mirren’ on me.... and the next minute I’m ‘condem’ned to talking like Anne Boleyn.... !” said Rolf putting his head underneath his arm.“ Now I’m looking for a Stairway to Heaven!”

“Stairway to Cefn...I can help you with ...but not that one...you best follow Churchill.....!” said Dicky.

No sooner had Rolf uttered the ‘immortal’ line then the sun came up behind the shitty drapes. “Sun Arise!” wailed Rolf as he headed for the light. As he did so, the front door was opened by the returning curator.

“Enjoy your work experience?” he asked hopefully.

“I quit mate....once a Queen always a Queen...but once a Knight’s enough ....like Rolf Harris head....I’m off!” said Dicky tucking in his chocolate bars.

The curator looked at him somewhat bemused and shut the door behind him.

BUY YOUR RED DRAGON STICKERS HERE

A well-known publishing company in Wales has decided to challenge the decision taken by the UK Government to include the Union Jack on new driving licenses by producing Red Dragon stickers to be placed in their place.

In 2014 the UK Government announced that the Union Jack will appear on every new drivers license from now on appearing alongside the EU banner on the licenses of drivers in Wales, Scotland and England. The decision was strongly condemned by inviduals such as the MP for Arfon, Hywel Williams from Plaid Cymru.

Over 3,000 signed the online petition but despite this the new licenses sporting the Union Jack began to appear in July 2015.

Now, Y Lolfa publishers have produced red dragon stickers that will be suitable to be place over the Union Jack.

‘We believe it is completley unfair that Britishness is being imposed upon us in this way.’ said Fflur Arwel, Y Lolfa’s head of marketing. ‘People are not given the choice to declare their nationality nor show that they are proud to be Welsh.’

One customer, Meurig Parry, wrote to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency last summer after he recieved a new license with the Union Jack on it. He said,‘My new license arrived with the Union Jack on it. I am Welsh, and the flag of my nation is the Red Dragon, not the Union Jack. The people of England are welcome to pay tribute to the Union Jack if they so wish, but I fully oppose any decision that forces me to do the same. This is what the government in London is trying to do by insisting that a Union Jack be on every new driver’s license. This is a purely political move, by using a document that should be completley apolitical.’

Mr Parri received a response to his complaint by the DVLA which explained that the decision taken by the government in Westminster to include the Union Jack on driving licenses was ‘to strengthen national unity’.

‘My nation is Wales. If I have any feeling of ‘national unity’ it will be towards Wales not Great Britain’ Mr Parri added ‘As a free person residing in a democracy, I have the right to my own political opinion. Nobody, not even the government in London, has the right to impose a political opinion on me. And this is what they are doing by ‘strengthening national unity’ as stated in the DVLA’s response.’

Now, Mr Meurig Parry and anybody else who wishes to have the red dragon of Wales on their driver’s license can purchase the stickers produced by Y Lolfa.

The pack of six red dragon stickers is priced £2 and are available from good bookshops and Y Lolfa website www.ylolfa.com