Nation of Singing Birds - Sermon and Song in Wales and Among the Welsh

The author of 15 previous books for both academic and commercial presses, Ronald Rees was born in Skewen and attended Neath Grammar School. He taught at Saskatchewan and Mount Allison universities before becoming a full-time writer, and his book 'King Copper: South Wales and the Copper Trade 1584–1895' won the Glamorgan Historical Society’s Millennium History Prize. He lives in the historic town of St Andrews in Canada.

The Welsh love of song, and hymns in particular, is legendary – perhaps no other nation has sung them with such fervour. This is a comprehensive history of hymn writing and singing in Wales and amongst the Welsh diaspora in North America, from the days of the Protestant Revivals to the multitude of Welsh Male Voice Choirs across the globe today. It considers the influence of key figures such as William Williams Pantycelyn and Ira Sankey and also looks at Welsh preaching, the mesmerising, musical style of which can be heard in the voices of famous speakers from Dylan Thomas to Martin Luther King Jr.Painstakingly researched in libraries and archives in both Wales and America, including information from emigrant letters and diaries and local newspapers of the period, this is the definitive history of the Welsh love of hymn-singing, and of how hymns and the religious movements and revivals of which they were part fired the imagination and spread via Welsh emigrants to the religious communities of the USA.

• Foreword1. Breaking the Silence2. Controlling the Voices3. Migrant Birds – the Welsh in America4. The Singing Saints 5. Unending Song: The 1904/1905 Revival6. A Brotherhood of Song