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Kubla Khan

from Esteesee by Ange Hardy

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about

I knew I wanted to do something with Kubla Khan, but I didn’t feel it was right to do it as anything other than a spoken poem; so I asked Tamsin if she would mind reading it aloud whilst I arranged the music of the damsel with the dulcimer to accompany the words.

Sometimes art and music are guided by the small coincidences and nudges in life that make you smile and let you know you’re on the right path:

When I first met Tamsin Rosewell I was performing a concert in a bookshop, and recording an interview for her folk show. This was the day I’d decided to announce that I was going to write this album, but before I had discussed it with anyone. Tamsin had, before I got to the venue, placed a single book, taken from the choice of an entire bookshop, to dress the shelf behind me. It was:

“Coleridge: Poetry and Prose.”

As our friendship grew I discovered that Tamsin had memorised Kubla Khan by the time she was eleven; I was delighted when she agreed to join me in the studio for this recording.

The Treehouse Bookshop in Kenilworth will also feel like the place where this project became a reality.

lyrics

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

credits

from Esteesee, released September 24, 2015
On the album: Tamsin Rosewell (poetry reading), Ange Hardy (guitar & whistle) and Kate Rouse (hammered dulcimer).

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about

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Ange Hardy England, UK

Nominated for the Horizon Award for best emerging talent at the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Ange Hardy is a folk singer, songwriter and recording artist from West Somerset, England. Ange performs original contemporary songs written in a traditional style with an emphasis on vocal harmony. ... more

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