Code-switching and Chord Changes: Language, Music, and Identity in Welsh Rock

In addition to the linguistic work which goes into identity-building in any one language, code-switching is an important way in which many multilingual speakers perform identity. So too is music, with its semiotic richness and prominence in social life. Language and music are independently important sites of identity creation, but are particularly powerful when they function in concert in semiotic bundles to create social meaning. In this article, this combination is explored through the multilingual music of three Welsh rock artists: Super Furry Animals, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, and MC Mabon. Using a multimodal, musicolinguistic approach which treats musical and linguistic signs as part of a unified whole, it examines how co-temporal musical and linguistic shifts – shifts between different semiotic bundlings of music and language – help enact the distinctive global and local Welsh identities of each artist: a Welsh-language band succeeding in the English-language mainstream while resisting globalization; a bilingual, bi-stylistic band adopting ironic Englishness to accentuate and define their Welshness; and a global-citizen MC with links to Wales, Patagonia, and beyond.