http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/Default.aspx The Elsie Dee Project is proud to present it's third installment of original Canadian World Beat Music. The Elsie Dee Project is dedicated not only to the diffusion of poetry, but also to the exploration of the musical formulas which one could call the 'lowest common denominator'. Copyright 2008 - 2009 Pierre Voyer and Boyd Williams SOCAN http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/images/Arthur_Michault.jpg http://www.elsiedeeproject.com/Default.aspx Elsie Dee Project The Elsie Dee Project is proud to present it's third installment of original Canadian World Beat Music. The Elsie Dee Project is dedicated not only to the diffusion of poetry, but also to the exploration of the musical formulas which one could call the 'lowest common denominator'. Elsie Dee Project Pierre Voyer and Boyd Williams info@elsiedeeproject.com en Song 21 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Jules Supervielle. Jules Supervielle (1889-1957) was born in Uruguay. Even though he moved back to Pau (France) and lived all his life in Paris, the mostly sweet memories of his South-American childhood kept nourishing his poetry as it evolved into a kind of everyday mysticism, a highly sophisticated vision shyly cocooned in a thoroughly "simple" and conventional poetic form. About his numerous publications he said something very dear to Elsie Dee?s own work: "I barely have known fear of commonplace (...) but most certainly fear of incomprehension". Elsie Dee Project, Jules Supervielle, Le signe Song 22 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Emperor Yuraku. This first Japanese song by the Elsie Dee Project is made of six tankas (short poems of five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables) related by a common theme: the mono no aware or "feeling of things". They are sometimes attributed to the legendary emperor Yuraku, but as we know more about them since the German scholar H.J. Klaproth has translated them and made them available to the western world, we realize they originate from the ancient Japanese oral tradition kept in the Manyoshu. Elsie Dee Project, Emperor Yuraku, Manyoshu Song 23 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Rafael Alberti. Rafael Alberti, born in Cadiz in 1902, belongs to the generation of 1927 and is identified with the Spanish Renaissance literature and played an important role in their access to modernity. Elsie Dee Project, Rafael Alberti, Invitación al aire Song 24 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Henri Michaux. Elsie Dee here uses only the beginning of one of the most famous and most beautiful poems of this misfit of French speaking literature. Familiar with the morbidity and the suffocating lack of differentiation, Henri Michaux sometimes bursts into frenzies of abundant details and minute descriptions. Elsie Dee Project, Henri Michaux, La Ralentie Song 25 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Gabriela Mistral. Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) preceded Neruda in Chile poetic adventure. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, she has also worked in the field of education. Elsie Dee has a kind of crush for this strong woman who was called at birth Lucila Godoy y Aclayaga. Her pseudonym reminds Elsie of one of her four grandmothers and the street where she lives. As one of our grandmothers was named Gabriela and we live on Mistral street here in Canada. Elsie Dee Project, Gabriela Mistral, Lucila Godoy y Aclayaga, Palabras Serenas Song 26 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman is another lover of simplicity, but of a fiercer kind of robust simplicity. No lace making, but sophisticated nakedness. People who prefer daylight to romantic moonshine, the early risers of happiness, will easily identify with this violent optimist and soon forgive him his naive narcissism. Moving awhile is a patchwork Elsie Dee made out of bits of much longer poems. Elsie Dee Project, Walt Whitman, Moving Awhile Song 27 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare is too notorious to add anything new about him, but his sonnets and poems in general are certainly the least known part of his work. The single theme of the sonnets is the passage of time and its harm on the love that, as we have learned through experience, never doth runs smooth. A sentence from Marcel Proust illustrates, in concentrated, the two-mile fifty-six towards one hundred fifty-four sonnets trying to express: "And what would be the wrinkles and circles under the eyes if it wasn?t for the sufferings of the heart". Elsie Dee Project, William Shakespeare, Sonnet #2 Song 28 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Baudelaire. Elsie Dee insisted that this About "album" had to include a poem by Baudelaire, the master of French symbolism, for he is, among all the dead poets we pray on, one of the most faithful visitors. And she also wanted to bring out the "happy" side of a poet mostly known for his frequent displays of «spleen» and morbidity. Elsie Dee Project, Baudelaire, L'Étranger Song 29 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Taliesin. The Song of Taliesin is to Welsh culture what the Kalevala is the Finnish culture or what Deuteronomy is to the Judeo-Christian culture: an alphabet which is also a calendar where each line is a step (moon) whose name is that of a tree. Elsie has added a few repetitions so to give this poem an air of sacred jingle. Elsie Dee Project, Taliesin, The Calendar Song 30 - Music by the Elsie Dee Project. Lyrics by Luis de Góngora. Luis de Góngora y Agorte (1561-1627), born in Cordoba, is the artist of the Spanish Golden Age, whose name became forever attached to Baroque art, the stylistic convolutions of his verses are of equal to that gilded ornamental Byzantine art and draped lush Italian mannerist. In his two "Solitudes", he staged a pilgrim, cynical cruelty of the court and shipwrecked among simple peasants, who sings the beauty of rustic life. Elsie Dee Project, Luis de Góngora, Soledad Segunda