West Coast Eisteddfod wrap-up report, at last!

I'm months behind when I intended to do this, the week after the West Coast Eisteddfod in Los Angeles, but I've been wrapped up in the wrap up and couldn't finish it! If I've gotten anything wrong, misspelled or incorrectly given someone's personal or business name or forgotten to include anyone, please let me know at gaabib@gmail.com and I'll fix it.

I think this was the best event we've done so far. It came off absolutely fantastically and Ceri and I owe a HUGE thanks to our partner in this year's event, Lorin Morgan Richards , as the guy on the ground and coordinator and creator of the Welsh Mythology and Legend Art Show , a fantastic addition to the event in itself. Lorin has even done a book of the works that artists contributed to the show and, if you weren't able to attend, you can get it here , with an original work by Jen Delyth on the cover.

Loads of people kept telling me it was the best event like this they'd ever been to, comparing it to a good party and there was just a lot of good and happy feeling and it was really nothing but fun. We had a wonderful display of these great panels on Welsh immigration to the US, generously loaned to us by the people at visitwales.com on behalf of the Welsh Assembly and a ton of people went through that, me included.

Ceri and I drove down from Portland, which was a 16-hour+ drive I used to do, way too fast, each way a couple of times a year, flat out without stopping except for fuel and, ahem, freshening up. I couldn't do that this time, getting older and too damned tired, so we stopped at a different cheap hotel each way, which are better not mentioned. This was Ceri's first trip down I-5 and it wasn't what he expected "California" to be, which I found kind of funny. Everyone hears all about Hollywood and maybe San Francisco but they don't know about the hundreds of miles of agricultural land in the middle. We had hours and hours and hours of driving through dusty acres of olives, grapes, citrus and other stuff, the breadbasket of the west coast.

The event was held at Barnsdall Art Park in Hollywood, the site of an incredible Frank Lloyd Wright home, the Hollyhock House (below), which Wright designed for theater patroness Aline Barnsdall, who donated the house and eleven acres of its grounds on Olive Hill to the city of Los Angeles for use as a public art park, which it remains today:

The wonderful people from Barnsdall offered children's activities during the festival, including helping people name their houses in Welsh. Barnsdall is really a treasure and the people of LA are very lucky to have it. I hope we'll get to do some more events there in the future, it's a great place.

For the first time, this year our Maes B (the second field, the place at the eisteddfod where other entertainment is happening) was outside and it really had a fun, carnival kind of feel. We had fantastic food supplied by Alex Catering , who came up with a great menu of dishes to serve, which included a very generous but light fish and chips (chips dusted with curry powder, mmm!), Glamorgan sausage, a delicious meat sausage and a leek and cheese pie and more. Their staff were great, very friendly, fast and creative and they were even wonderful enough to show up and do an absolutely awesome breakfast for the vendors and crew sooo early in the morning! I would recommend them for anything and I can't say enough good things about them and our pub, Oberon's Tavern .

It's not much of a West Coast Eisteddfod without plenty of delicious beer and the venue, unfortunately, didn't come with that, so we had a travelling pub. Oberon's Tavern travels around appearing at pirate festivals, fairy and Ren Faires and they set up their bar, tables, etc outside the Barnsdall Theater building. They all appeared in costume and provided constant, fun entertainment along with plenty of beer and wine and even some varieties of mead and a bartender/waitress dressed as a red dragon. The stand-up Comedy portion of the Eisteddfod ended up being in the pub and it was a lot of fun! It was also something else to watch them set up, throwing up walls and the bar and a fence and tables lightning fast and BOOM! Instant pub, manned by a bunch of really fun and lovely people.

Welsh cakes (or bakestones) were supplied by the West Coast makers of those, The Welsh Baker , locally in California. They sold absolutely out by the end and there weren't even samples left! They were delicious.

Friday

The event was started with a performance by the Cr Cymraeg De Califfornia , followed by opening ceremonies lead by members of the California Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - Peter Freeman and our very own Garan Gwyn and Brian y Tarw Lloyd, inspired by and taken from the language used in the opening of the National Eisteddfod in Wales:

Friday night was the opening night concert with performances by Paul Child , Monica Richards and Michael Aston . I'm a Monica Richards fan, so I loved getting to see her and I thought her show was fantastic, experimental and original, with a great multimedia element behind the band on the stage. Paul Child was our headliner of the evening and he gave a wonderful, very powerful performance. His voice is extremely strong, even more in person than a recording, and hits every note precisely, without hesitation or tremor, and he's a great, fun guy to boot! He'd brought some CD's to sell, including one to raise money for the families of the miners deceased at Gleision Colliery. If anyone would like to contribute to that appeal, it's here . Michael Aston came on last, with just a guitarist, and gave a gorgeous, intimate, acoustic performance that went over very well with the audience and a lot of people who hadn't ever heard him before told me afterward how much they liked it.

This was also the opening of the Welsh Mythology and Legend Art Show , which was exhibited in the main floor lobby gallery of the Gallery Theater. Lorin created, organized and hung this exhibition, assigning a verse each from a poem he wrote to over thirty contributing artists he recruited, who produced works to be exhibited at the WCE and included in a book , which is now for sale. Jen Delyth created the cover and exhibited her piece, in addition to original works she had at her booth.

Jen Delyth's cover painting	Other artists' work on display

Saturday

Saturday was the day of the actual eisteddfod and the first day of the Welsh Market. AmeriCymru had a table there and I confess that that's where I spent most of my time, as Ceri was MC'ing, sandwiched between Welsh-American author Jude Johnson and Celtic Jackalope , who did the official event t-shirt . I have to add that I silkscreen t-shirts and their shirts were pretty impressive to me - they're screen printed, not transfers or machine printed (which is about the same lower quality as a transfer, they peel off after a bit) but there's an amazing amount of fine detail in the Celtic Jackalope shirts and they look perfect enough to have been done by a machine. There were a lot of wonderful people there, selling wonderful things I wanted and I tried very hard to get their cards so I could list them below and if I missed anyone, tell me so I can put you on there! Everything was great and I wanted it all but if anyone wants to get me something for Christmas, there were lace parasols and a glass eye with brass wings.... See links below for the awesome vendors that were there!

There were free performances and lectures out on the grounds throughout the day, just some of them included traditional music by Wake the Bard harpist and soprano Nerys Jones, a lecture and demonstration of the crwth by Dr. Marshall Bevil, magician Joseph Schneider, Welsh author John Gower lectured on 'Discovering Welsh History', and Sam Wenger on Legends of King Arthur and Madog and a Welsh language lesson by the Learn Welsh Podcast .

The Competitions

The Eisteddfod took place in the Gallery Theater, below the art exhibit, on Saturday. This was the second year that we've had live competitions and the first year we've had vocal and stand-up comedy. All the competitors were fantastic, I didn't see anything that I didn't like.

The Vocal competition winner was Timo Standing Buffalo . Also competing were George Angelo, Jr., Mia - Chocolate Princess and Tom Lloyd. Unfortunately, I missed this competition, but heard a little from the top of the stairs so someone else will have to blog about this.. :/

The Storytelling competition winner was Chris Chandler , who also won the Poetry competition. Also competing were John McGee, Laura Wolfe-Bosworth, Michael D McCarty, Anthony Burcher and Elliot Hughes. I also missed this one but other people told me everyone was great so, again, someone else will have to blog about this competition.

Nerys Jones performed in between competitions in the theater and Sex Bomb came on stage before the stand-up comedy competition and gave a great set, with lots of appreciation and participation from the audience.

The Stand Up Comedy competition winner was Peter Freeman. Also competing were Jeanette Rizzi and Carlos Escobar . The stand-up competition ended up happening in the pub, which seemed more appropriate, and turned into a bit of a party, great fun! All three competitors were really funny, I'd especially like to see Jeanette Rizzi perform again, I like a good female comic, and Carlos Escobar was extremely funny.

Sunday

More outdoor events happened on Sunday, more wonderful vendors and the film festival.

Dr. Aparna Sharma, Phd, UCLA World Arts and Cultures, opened the film festival with an excellent and extremely interesting lecture on Welsh film and each film in the festival, which included "Y Chwarelwr"(English title "The Quarryman") , "Eldra" and "Y Mabinogi" (English title "Otherworld") . I might be wrong about this but I think this was the first LA showing of these films, I know this was the first showing of "Y Mabinogi" in California.

Thank you, thank you!

It was great to get to meet other AmeriCymru members and members of the American-Welsh community I'd never got to meet before and it was really, really fantastic, beyond words, to see the performances and activities at the event and all the art people created and performed. I felt so lucky to get to be part of this and to see this. I can't express how grateful I am to everyone who performed, who donated and sponsored the event, who came to vend and to visit and attend every part of the event and to bring some accessible public Welshness to LA. Feedback was wonderful, everyone I saw was smiling almost the whole time and it was amazingly fun! I hope we'll get to come back to do this in LA again soon!

Please see the Vendor's list - continued