TikTok exploring Wales’ links with Trinidad goes viral

A video about a Nation Cymru feature on links between Trinidad and Wales dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, links that are the basis of a new opera An Act of Piracy created in Wales, has attracted over 100,000 viewers on TikTok.

Posted at the end of last week, the video explores names in Trinidad and Tobago like Pembroke, Glamorgan, Bethel, Mount Harris and Mount Thomas and explains that people from Wales in the 18th and 19th century directly took part in the economic development of Trinidad based upon a brutal slave economy.

The Nation Cymru article, written by the opera’s creator Richard Parry, appeared on Nation Cymru last Friday and on the same day the Welsh social media freelancer Wyn Williams who works as @dailingual called to see Richard at his home just outside Cardiff to learn more about the An Act of Piracy opera and the story of Wales and Trinidad.

Richard shared: “I told the story and Wyn suggested we make a short video. It’s lovely that so many people have seen it.

“I’ve never been on a TikTok video before so it’s a bit of a surreal experience to find tens of thousands of people around listening to the story. Plenty of people in Trinidad have been watching it and sharing it.”

@dailingual♬ original sound – Dai Lingual

The opera tells the story of a man from west Wales who gets kidnapped by pirates and taken to Trinidad in the 1790s, a time when Britain seized the island of Trinidad and installed the Pembrokeshire born Thomas Picton as first brutal governor.

The opera stars Trinidadian born singer Mary-Anne Roberts who lives in Wales and has worked with Richard to build the opera for audiences to learn more about the story of Trinidad.

Following the growth in views of Dailingual’s TikTok, he shared: “I didn’t say in the TikTok video that Thomas Picton, although found guilty, was never sentenced. Picton’s story is such a disgrace.

“And these important things are just the tip of a truly, truly terrible vile iceberg. I also wish I’d said the Wales is shaped like Trinidad, not Trinidad like Wales! But anyway I hope it’s sending people to their maps and their history blogs!”

 

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People watching the video on TikTok have been asking about possible connections between Welsh and Trinidadian accents, so Richard grabbed a phone during a rehearsal for the opera last Friday afternoon and recorded a short Instagram video of Mary-Anne talking about her first experience of arriving in London from Trinidad, and how the accents of Wales and Trinidad may be related.