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This week Welsh rock ‘n’ roll torchbearers Manic Street Preachers picked up the Inspiration Award at the annual music beano that is the Q Awards.

The latest addition to the Manics’ burgeoning trophy cabinet is just recognition for their truly outstanding contribution to rock music both home and abroad – and it underlined a thought that I’ve harboured for a long time, what are we doing to mark the careers of the present guardians of the Welsh music flame and those that have gone before.

As we are the supposed Land of Song PLC – a term trotted out ad infinitum by politicians and academics as an emblematic identifier of our cultural DNA, you would imagine we would be adept at using that very fact as a key marketing tool to promote ourselves both nationally and internationally.

Yet if you were a tourist visiting Wales and wanted to discover the physical manifestation of our rich musical history, from Bardic beginnings, choral traditions and the present golden seam of wonderful modern contemporary music where would you go to educate yourself, to immerse yourself in our glorious musical heritage?

Sadly and embarrassingly, there is no one place that tells this hugely important story.

And it’s not as if this is some ground-breaking concept I’m proposing here.

Music is celebrated in its manifest forms around the world in places where the legacy of music and song courses through its veins – and these places have become hugely popular visitor destinations because of it.

Look at the myriad shrines to country music in Nashville, the Tamla Motown museum in Detroit, the Beatles Story Museum in Liverpool and most recent of all, in 2015, the opening of The Irish Rock ‘n Roll Museum Experience in Dublin.

How incredible would it be, how much of a flagship attraction for those visiting our country and how wonderful an educational resource for our children would it be if we could develop something similar that would preserve our heritage and tell the little told story of the Land Of Song.

Whatever name you gave it The Welsh Music Story, The Centre For Contemporary Welsh Music or the Welsh Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum – it’s vitally needed to plug a yawning gap in our heritage.

(Image: Tom Houghton)

With music funding being cut in schools and an alarming deficit in those from poorer backgrounds being able to access music – a centre that could offer music tuition, rehearsal and recording facilities and training courses to foster the next generation of Welsh music stars whatever their background sitting alongside an interactive and immersive experience built around an all important commercial base would be a vision I would dearly love to see come to fruition.

I don’t view this as an idle pipe dream. Yes, I understand the financial pressures governments are under in times of austerity, but how important is our cultural heritage to us.

And besides look at this startling figure and tell me that an enterprise that celebrated our music history couldn’t reap what it sowed.

In figures recently released by UK Music the organisation which represents the interests of the UK music industry £4bn was generated by music tourism in the UK, with £115m of that generated in Wales.

Reinforcing this, Motorpoint Arena Cardiff’s own research, conducted by Professor Brian Morgan of Cardiff Metropolitan University, found that it delivers approximately £30m per annum to the Cardiff economy and supports just over 500 full-time jobs, with nearly 30% of its customers coming from outside the Cardiff Capital Region.

While grassroots venues that foster the next generation of music stars have never been under so much pressure (more of which later) modern, contemporary music, rock and pop music, call it what you will, has never been more popular.

So, while a central resource should very much be an aim, we shouldn’t stop there. If music is so important to us why aren’t we celebrating that very fact in our towns and on our streets?

When the Manics’ Faster Studios was bulldozed to make way for another slew of identikit flats earlier this year – this totemic building that had created such wonderful and important music was seemingly lost in the rubble.

As well as being the Manics’ home for more than a decade it was also a haven for many leading Welsh contemporary music makers. It was where The Automatic recorded their monster hit Monster, where many of the tracks featured on Super Furry Animals’ pioneering Welsh language album Mwng were created and where Cardiff noiseniks Future of The Left recorded their Welsh Music Prize-winning album The Plot Against Common Sense. It was a place that had history embedded in its brickwork.

Similarly a stone’s throw away at the corner of Callaghan Square and West Canal Wharf is a unremarkable looking office block. However, it is the site of the long gone Soundspace Studios – a key player in the nascent Cool Cymru scene of the ‘90s and where arguably one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time – The Holy Bible – was recorded.

Yet, you wouldn’t know it. There is no recognition of this fact. A Google search, a bit of digging and an old map might come up trumps if you especially dedicated to discovering the whereabouts of this particularly epochal piece of rock history.

Save a blue plaque on the home of Ivor Novello in Cardiff and a statue of the composer in Cardiff Bay we have seemingly spurned an opportunity to celebrate our more modern musical heroes.

Where are the music trails, the tourist appeal, those Welsh music tours – where is the innovation, the creativity and the celebration?

To my mind the neglect, and I don’t think that is too strong a word is symptomatic of the malaise those in positions of authority be they political or those pulling funding purse-strings attach to the actual cultural value of modern, contemporary music.

Politicians in Cardiff Bay will happily trade on Wales’ image as the Land of Song to promote its interests, but that is just hollow grandstanding and empty rhetoric without tangible investment.

In 2014, the Welsh Government withdrew modest funding of around £140,000 for the Welsh Music Foundation (WMF) – the agency which was founded in 2000 and punched way above its weight in what it achieved for the money that it had to work with, notably in what it appeared to be its last act delivering the lucrative world music expo WOMEX to Wales.

More importantly in terms of legacy was the work it did acting as a central focal point for the Welsh music industry offering sound business advice, training and opportunities for those starting out.

Despite no reasons being given by the government as to why this happened, despite repeated questioning at the time it stated on July 1, 2014: “We are exploring options to develop an advice service that works for all creative industries, including music.”

Three-and-a-half years later, and we are still waiting.

A situation that is shocking – and runs the risk of failing a whole generation of musicians coming through for whom early support is vital.

Where is the Welsh Government’s music strategy, where is its vision for the Land of Song and building a sustainable Welsh music industry?

It was a perverse move withdrawing WMF’s funding given that there remains national organisations for seemingly every other creative industries discipline in Wales, bar the one that is the biggest single participatory art form in term of numbers involved in it at every level. Baffling. And wrong.

That there has been an urgent needs for initiatives such as the BBC Wales and Arts Council of Wales funded Horizons programme, the South Wales Valleys-based Forte Project and the Barod training programmes from Swn Festival – co-founded by Radio 1 DJ Huw Stephens and music promoter John Rostron, the head of Welsh Music Foundation when its funding was removed – to plug the enormous gap left by Welsh Music Foundation tells its own rather sorry story.

However, it is not surprising given how little funding is made available for contemporary modern music in Wales.

Yes, there is Horizons and several other funding routes, but a forensic sweep through the Arts Council of Wales funding list for 2016 returns a miniscule amount in terms of music that is not classical and opera.

Opera continues to receive millions in funding – and while I would never deny that all arts should be considered for support – the disparity in the eye-watering amount it receives when compared to modern, contemporary music continues to leave me bewildered and astounded.

And you can make up your own mind as to which art form is accessible to all and carries a legacy for future generations.

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I’m sad to say that Wales’ attitude to investment differs greatly to that of other countries.

You don’t have to look far from these shores for evidence.

Norway’s funding for contemporary music has soared, from less than £14.5m in 2011 to nearly £36m in 2017, which is impressive for a country with only about five million people, while in Iceland with a tiny population of 330,000 people spending on music in Iceland is around £7m a year.

However, maybe we now sit a crossroads where we can either continue to repeat mistakes and bad habits or we can grasp the nettle and affect great change for generations to come.

If people power has its way, then the former is the way ahead – thanks to one of the momentous and encouraging moments in recent Welsh cultural history.

When the grassroots music venues on Cardiff’s Womanby Street came under threat from developer, the campaign group that rose up scored a huge victory – the aftershocks of which will hopefully reverberate for decades to come.

The Save Womanby Street group was formed by a group of music fans dismayed at continued attacks on grassroots venues and live music in the city.

A petition and subsequent march through the city centre that attracted thousands showed the sheer strength of feeling and the passion for live music.

It also sent a firm message to council and government – “we won’t allow this to happen”.

The after effects so far have been seismic. The group quickly gained the support of councillors and local MPs, and change has quickly been affected.

Planning permission for a residential property next to Clwb Ifor Bach on the street was withdrawn, and Welsh Government, to give them their due on this particular matter, are to introduce the Agent of Change Principle into planning law which makes the onus of responsibility for soundproofing measures the responsibility of a new development, rather than an already existing club, bar or venue.

In addition there was more positive news this week with the announcement that Cardiff council is to buy a piece of land neighbouring Clwb Ifor Bach in a bid to protect the street’s live music heritage, which the council would then effectively lease the land back to the venue to allow it to expand.

Perhaps most encouraging of all – and let’s give credit to local councillors with foresight and vision allowing themselves to see the bigger picture – was the council stating it is also looking at a new music strategy for the city.

They stated they are working with Sound Diplomacy – the world-leading authority on developing music city strategies – to create a new plan for growing the live music scene in Cardiff.

This has to happen. Only with a concerted effort in all quarters with everybody working together can we then take the great leap forward.

Only then will The Land Of Song sing once more.