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Dafydd Iwan

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Dafydd Iwan (born 24 August 1943), is a Welsh folk singer and politician. He is the president of Plaid Cymru, The Party of Wales.

Dafydd Iwan Jones was born in Brynaman in Carmarthenshire, Wales, he spent most of his youth in Bala in Merioneth before attending the University of Wales, Cardiff. He rose to fame as a singer-songwriter, writing and playing folk music in the Welsh language

Dafydd Iwan’s earliest material was Welsh translations of tunes by American folk / protest singers: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan. Soon enough, Dafydd Iwan commanded the initiative to write his first ballads. The most prominent of these were political. His most famous satirical song, Carlo (“Charlie”), was written on the occasion of the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969.

By the late 1960s he was receiving television coverage both for his music and for his political activities, including being imprisoned in 1970 as part of the fight for Welsh language rights, an event commemorated in his song Pam fod eira’n wyn? (“Why is snow white?”)

During the 1970s, Dafydd Iwan’s political interests (and songs) took in such themes as Pinochet’s Chile; Welsh Devolution; the Vietnam War and the Northern Ireland troubles. His inherent internationalism continued in following decades, as his songs mention events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989), the Gulf War (1990) and opencast mining in the south Wales valleys (1995).