Category: Musik / Music

Toner och rytm / Notes and rhythm

Här kommer Bambu Fem

During my military service I started playing mahjong with a small group of people. We realised that one of the tiles, 5 Bamboo (Bambu Fem in Swedish), really sounded like a name of a rock band. Thus, after the service was over the Gävle-based people in the group (Anders, Mikael, Thomas) formed that band, while adding an additional performer (Johan). We decided that we should play music styles that we were not comfortable with, which meant that after some months we had composed a rather eclectic set of songs. We were lucky to find that anouther friend (Christian) needed to record a demo as an exam project in his sound engineering course. That is why recordings of Bambu Fem exists. “Här kommer Bambu 5” was meant to function as an overture for the band.

Mikael Andersson: Guitar
Thomas Ågren: Bass
Johan Alpmar: Drums
Anders Tjulin: Keyboard

Kung i stan

One day in 1989 or 1990 my friend Ulf said that he had written a song that he wanted to enter into some kind of competition for young music talents, and that he needed some help to record it. Thus, he, Christian and myself went to a church in central Gävle, borrowed some instruments and a tape recorder, and took the first steps of our careers. We did not receive any kind of response to our effort, but we were happy anyway. Recently I found the tape that I thought was lost forever, and now, maybe, the world is finally ready for our sound…

Ulf Lindström : Vocals, drums
Anders Tjulin: Keyboard
Christian Johnson: Bass

Ingeborg Holm

Det är en mäktig upplevelse att se stumfilm ackompanjerad av orgelmusik i Kiruna kyrka. Filmen var Ingeborg Holm av Victor Sjöström från 1913, och musiken framfördes av Alexandra Pilakouris som normalt sett är kantor i Linköpings domkyrka.

Filmen är en tragedi i fyra akter om Ingeborg Holm som lever ett fint familjeliv med sin make och tre barn. Maken får ett lån beviljat så att han kan öppna speceriaffär, men han dör senare i sjukdom, affären går bankrutt, Ingeborg tvingas söka sig till fattighuset och barnen utackorderas. Eländet tar tyvärr inte slut där, utan Ingeborgs mentala hälsa börjar ta stryk av alla motgångar för att slutligen rasa fullkomligt samman.

Filmen var säkert riktigt rörande, men jag vet inte säkert eftersom jag satt med tårar i ögonen mest hela tiden. Det är egentligen fantastiskt att en film som skapades för så länge sedan, då man verkligen precis börjat utforska mediets möjligheter, lyckas fånga mig så pass mycket. Detta trots att jag bara har ganska vaga begrepp om hur samhället fungerade då. Filmen verkar i alla fall ha skapat stor debatt om fattigvårdens metoder då det begav sig. Musiken satt fint och vältajmat rakt genom filmen, och förstärkte känslorna på ett bra sätt. Så här ska stumfilm visas!

Filmen sågs på Arctic Light Filmfestival, Kiruna.

Nina – a story about me and Nina Simone

Idag skulle pappa ha fyllt åttio år. Därför känns det extra bra just idag att ha gått på en föreställning som inspirerats av en av hans favoritartister: Nina Simone. Det känns också bra att det var en lyckad föreställning.

Nina – a story about me and Nina Simone är en enmansföreställning (plus mycket kompetent musikertrio) där Josette Bushell-Mingo berättar historier från Simones liv uppblandade med egna reflektioner och tankar från sitt eget liv. Det blir en hel del funderingar om det egentligen har hänt något med de svartas villkor de senaste 50 åren, om revolutionen som Simone sjöng om 1969 har blivit av, eller om det, som själva ordets betydelse, har gått runt ett varv och är tillbaka där det började. Skotten i Alabama 1963 och de 16 skott som polisen i Chicago avlossade 2014 kopplas exempelvis samman.

Första halvan av föreställningen är mest en lång, politisk, och rätt obehaglig monolog som är lätt uppblandad med musik, medan den andra halvan är mer av en hyllningskonsert med mellanprat. Det blir sammantaget en mäktig föreställning där det tunga budskapet blandas med ljuv musik och, inte minst, Bushell-Mingos mäktiga röst. Nu känner jag mig inspirerad till att göra musik, och redo att förändra världen. Det sistnämnda måste ju göras.

Föreställningen kom till Kiruna genom Riksteatern.

Global dancefloor


Interrailing is a great experience.
In the summer of 1996, me and a friend were exploring the central areas of Europe by railway. After a minor misunderstanding of the time-tables, and the location of the coach station, we found ourselves stuck in Brno in Moravia (Czech Republic) for a day. Our guide-book exclaimed extend your stay and delve deeper, so that is what we had to do in Brno. In the centre of the city we found a poster that advertised a strange party containing a global dancefloor. These two concepts inspired the creation of two interesting songs.
A strange party sounds like a party that you enjoy when arriving, but after some time you notice that something about the party is slightly off and you start feeling bad about it. I made a song trying to mimic that experience, but it ended up too horrible to be put on the internet.
A global dancefloor is a dance floor encompassing the whole planet, in contrast to the normal, local, variety. You cannot leave and wherever you go, the people around you continue to dance whether they like the music or not. This tune expresses an example of how I believe the non-local dance music should sound.

Boop-eh-doop


I have enjoyed folk music for a very long time but there have been some issues that have bothered me.
Since folk music often is defined as traditional music, I could never understand how it was ever possible to compose new folk songs since there is a time element needed inorder to develop a tradition. There also seems to be a requirement that a performer has to identify himself/herself with a certain folk, or to be identified as part of the relevant group of people, but I was never sure how to decide which group I should belong to, or if I would be allowed to play music from other traditions if I start in one.
I really wanted to create folk music, but the buit-in restrictions mentioned above for this kind of music forced me to define that the folk it was connected to would be just me. Furthermore, I had to play my song repeatedly every time I got access to a musical instrument so that it would become a tradition, at least in some sense. It took a year or so until I felt that I could claim my song to be a folk song.
Only after this long process, I squeezed the song into my Amiga and compressed it to become the little tune presented here.