The concert is presented by the Welsh Society of the Carolinas, the Masters in Liberal Studies Program at UNC Charlotte and The Departments of English and History at UNC Charlotte. It is funded in part by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council.
Admission is free and open to the public.
Trade Winds is a program of stories and songs about 18th century sailors who led dangerous lives at sea, long before radios, navigation satellites and rescue helicopters. It is presented by Calennig , which consists of noted Welsh folklorists and performers, Mick Tems and Pati Smith . The story of the preservation of these works is as fascinating as their content. Harvard-trained American Folklorist, James Madison Carpenter , originally collected them in the 1920s. Using an early dictaphone that recorded on wax cylinders and a portable typewriter, Carpenter spent many months in South Wales, recording and transcribing dozens of stories and songs from this final generation of professional wind sailors, many of whom were in their 80s by that time.