MARTHA REDBONE

ABAGOND

Sun 23 Nov 2014

This is from Martha Redbone’s 2012 album “The Garden of Love” where she sings the poetry of William Blake. She is from Appalachia, part Black, White and Native American (Cherokee, Choctaw), as is her music. She also sings retro-ish R&B (like “Boyfriend” and “Children of Love”). In 2002 she won a Nammy (Native American Music Award) for Debut Artist. As maybe you can imagine, she has been on NPR.Lyrics:

I laid me down upon a bank
Where love lay sleeping
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping Weeping

Then I went to the heath & the wild,
To the thistles & thorns of the waste
And they told me how they were beguild
Driven out & compelled to be chaste

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

>via: https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/11/23/martha-redbone-roots-project-the-garden-of-love/

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