Ursula K. Le Guin on vinyl! "Music and Poetry of the Kesh"

For Music and Poetry of the Kesh, the words and lyrics are attributed to Le Guin as composed by Barton, an Oregon-based musician, composer and Buchla synthesist (the two worked together previously on public radio projects). But the cassette notes credit the sounds and voices to the world of the Kesh, making origins ambiguous. For instance, The River Song description reads, The prominent rhythm instrument is the doubure binga, a set of nine brass bowls struck with cloth-covered wooden mallets, here played by Ready...

The songs of Kesh are joyful, soothing and meditative, while the instrumental works drift far past the imaginary lands. Heron Dance is an uplifting first track, featuring a Wosai Medoud Teyahi (made from a deer or lamb thigh bone with a cattail reed) and the great Houmbta (used for theatre and ceremony). A Music of the Eighth House sends gossamer waves of the faintest sounds to float on the wind. Like the languages invented in the vocal work of Anna Homler, Meredith Monk, and Elizabeth Fraser, the Kesh songs and poems play with the shape of voice.

The Music and Poetry of the Kesh cassette was meant to accompany and enhance the experience of reading Always Coming Home. Presented in this edition as a long-playing album, where only traces of the book linger (the jacket offers some of Le Guins illustration, and a letterpressed bookmark featuring the the narrative modes of western civilization and the Kesh valley is included), the music alone breaking the silence of what might be. It can transportoffering a landscape for imagining a future homecoming. One in which we are balanced, peaceful, and tend to the earth and its creatures.

A line from Sun Dance Poem reminds us, We are nothing much without one another.

"Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton Music and Poetry of the Kesh" (Freedom to Spend)

And if you're in Portland on April 6, don't miss the live celebration of this release featuring Elisabeth Le Guin, Todd Barton, Visible Cloaks, Moe Bowstern, Caroline Le Guin, and Vanessa Renwick. Details at the bottom of this post!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp5CTVJCrUE