English Folk Song - Mandalay

Mandalay is an English folk song adapted from Rudyard Kipling's 1890 poem of the same title. Peter Bellamy set the poem to music as part of his project to imagine how Kipling's ballads would have been sung, though the poem had earlier been performed in a musical setting, most notably by Frank Sinatra. The song centres around a Cockney soldier pining for a Burmese woman he fell in love with while stationed in British India.

Recording credit: Peter Bellamy, The Barrack Room Ballads of Rudyard Kipling

This channel is dedicated to preserving the neglected culture of English folk songs in the form of short lyrical videos. The folk songs of the English have been overlooked compared to those of the other British peoples, something that this channel hopes to fix.