Background
He attributes his first exposure to Welsh folk songs to his mother who sang to him when he was a child.
He attributes his first exposure to Welsh folk songs to his mother who sang to him when he was a child.
Princeton University.
His award-winning recordings of his own unaccompanied vocal performances and his published editions in collaboration with his American-born wife Phyllis Kinney have helped to preserve Welsh musical legacy and promote it world-wide. Born in Llanegryn in Merionethshire, Evans was brought up in Tanygrisiau. His interest in Welsh music developed at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, under the influence of Mistress
Enid Parry.
At Bangor, he was a frequent performer, often with Cledwyn Jones and Robin Williams and they later notably starred in Noson Lawen (he was the cwac cwac of Triawd y Buarth)
Evans was given an unconditional discharge on religious grounds. Evans met Phyllis Kinney, an American singer whilst she was working in the United Kingdom. The couple married and moved to her home country. In 1954 he recorded an important selection of songs for Folkways Records in New York while a Doctor of Philosophy Candidate in philosophy at Princeton University.
Evans was a senior figure in Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) and a lifelong advocate of non-violent revolutionary means to promote the interests of Welsh speakers.
In 1979, Evans along with two fellow academics, Ned Thomas and Pennar Davies, was sentenced by the Carmarthen assizes for breaking into the Pencarreg television transmitter in the campaign which would lead to the establishment of a Welsh language broadcasting service. In 1999 Evans was again in court after refusing to pay his television licence, stating there had been a decrease in the amount of Welsh broadcasting over the proceeding decade.
In March 2014 Meredydd was quoted as backing further peaceful demonstrations by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg following protests in Aberystwyth. In April, 2007, the University of Wales published a Festschrift volume for Evans and Kinney, "a fully bilingual collection of critical essays on various aspects of Welsh song and traditional music by Wales’ leading experts and musicologists" to celebrate their contribution "not only to Welsh traditional music but to the very culture and language of Wales."
In 2012, Merêd appeared on Gai Toms" album, Bethel, on which he sang Cânew york Dewis
In 2013 he was awarded "Tywysydd" ("Guide") in the first ever Parêd Gwyl Dewi Aberystwyth (Street David"s Day Parade) for his services to Wales and the Welsh language.
Evans died at the age of 95 on 21 February 2015.
A lifelong advocate of non violence, Evans faced a military tribunal to defend his conscientious objector status during World World War World War II