Pendyrus Male Choir enjoys the 97th Anniversary of continuous Music Making.

Today marks the 97th Anniversary of the day when Pendyrus was formed on 24th May 1924.

The early 1920’s were overshadowed by poverty and mass unemployment, and nowhere more so than in the South Wales coalfield. One evening two young out-of-work miners, Ben Jones and Emlyn Drew, who lived in Tylorstown, a village in the Rhondda Fach (the smaller of the two world-famous Rhondda valleys), decided to take advantage of their enforced leisure.

Other valleys had choirs, so why not Rhondda Fach? They contacted friends and former work-mates, and, within weeks, enough men had shown interest to make the idea a reality. They approached a local baker, who was an amateur musician with conducting experience, and he accepted their invitation to conduct a new ‘male voice’ choir, which was formally inaugurated on 24th May 1924 in the local Miners’ Federation hut.