Social & Industrial Context.

The hymn stems from a time when the coal industry was still at its most influential in the industrial valleys of South Wales and when deacon-dominated nonconformist chapels were filled with the sound of four-part harmony singing. It was a time that saw the population of the Rhondda rise from 542 in 1801 to 113,735 in 1902.

If the coal industry dominated peoples’ working life then outside work the presence of the chapel was equally commanding. These two distinct features of valley life – the chapel and the colliery are key to understanding the development of working-class music making.

It was a time of unimaginable change – to feed the black gold’s insatiable appetites for workers new communities were quickly built with little thought for the people who would live in them. Unplanned rows of monotonous terraced homes clung precariously on valley mountainsides with few or no amenities. It was a very harsh, and often all too brief life in these new communities. Workers were an expendable commodity as there were always plenty of people looking for work. In the coalfields of Britain between 1868 and 1914 a miner was killed on average every six hours or seriously injured every two. In the South Wales coalfields, which were the most dangerous to work death or injury was a more frequent occurrence.

Yet despite the immense social deprivation of the Victorian era - the high infant mortality rate, the threat of colliery accidents, lengthy poverty-stricken strikes and unimaginable day-to-day hardships - people found an escape by expressing themselves through song.

Unique within the Celtic nations is the Welsh preference for song over musical instruments or dancing. The communities of the South Wales valleys and the Rhondda in particular, were united in a musical intensity that we will never see again.