Just got back from playing with Hotel Desperado in Vestre Fængsel (The Western Prison) in Copenhagen. The concert was in the prison chapel where about 50-60 inmates (both male and female) were present. We were kind of nervous before the gig (we had no idea what the audience would be like and what kind of music they wanted to hear) so we started carefully, not playing our most upbeat songs. After the first songs, however, we picked up the pace and were positively surprised at how well the concert went and that the audience appreciated it. The only sour looking people were the prison guards…
Our next concert on May 23 is open to the general public - we are playing at the 25th anniversary of Støberiet (Blågårdsplads).
I am back in Vienna, this time for a month visiting the Institute for Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology (Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie) which is part of the University of Music and Performing Arts (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien). During my visit I will both be doing research as well as presenting part of my research to the students and faculty, e.g. tomorrow I will present some Norwegian vocal folk music (just spent two hours transcribing “Kjeringji med staven” sung by Talleiv Røysland). I will also follow courses here - actually yesterday I participated in an excursion to the indonesian embassy where we got an introduction to and a course in gamelan playing.
a good introduction to off-camera flash can be found here: strobist preliminaries
explaining the basics and giving good examples it can be used as a tutorial before starting the lighting 101 at the strobist.
Eating fish is not necessarily better for than the environment than meat, especially through the risk of overfishing. Greenpeace Denmark has a new campaign called “Sea the future” which focuses on the dangers of overfishing. See also the article “For få sælger bæredygtige fisk” in today’s Politiken - especially for a list of supermarkets which do nothing to avoid overfishing when buying fish.
In my master’s thesis Signifyin’ Vigdal: Aspects of the Ragnar Vigdal tradition and the revival of Norwegian vocal folk music which I finished in 2003 my main point of focus was the Ragnar Vigdal tradition and how vocalists today interpret him (his style is known for it’s nasal timbre, ornamentals and special tonality). As a part of my field work I visited Klaus Vigdal, Ragnar Vigdal’s son, in Luster 2002 and interviewed him. I also met his two sons, Erling and Ragnar Jr. The visit was a minor culture shock - a small town up in the fjords (at least seen from Bergen, where I’m from), but very interesting and the Vigdal family were very open and friendly. Klaus worked (and probably still works) with concrete (the first thing he said in the interview was “Jeg jobber med betong” - implying he is not a singer), but also sings - continuing his father’s tradition of religious tunes in the Haugianer tradition (the family is also religious). After the interview with Klaus, Erling who had just purchased a 12 string guitar and drove a huge SUV with “In God We Trust” (in English) written on the side took me over to his brother’s house. There they jammed over their grandfather’s (religious) tunes - using a country/blues idiom. Everything seemed informal and they were having fun. The next day I returned to Bergen and during the rest of the thesis writing project I did not have any direct contact with them (and then I left Norway and lost all contact).
So when Anne, a good friend and colleague from Norway, came to visit last October she brought a very cool surprise - a CD called “ Tonereise - arven“: The jam had matured into a project using Ragnar Vigdal’s songs sung mainly by his son Klaus in Ragnar’s style accompanied by Erling, Ragnar Jr. and other musicians. The instrumentation draws on country/blues using i.a. dobro, mandolin and (slide) guitar which produces an interesting mix between Norwegian religious vocal folk music and country/blues. Here is one example:
As a reference, listen to Ragnar Vigdal’s interpretation on the album “Tonereise Til En Gamal Samtid“, released 1979 by Kirkelig Kulturverksted.
The CD is a pleasant surprise since it is a good example on how to pass on the tradition by both keeping the main traits of the tradition alive while at the same time creating something new.
My cactus decided to blossom which was a good opportunity to try different kinds of flash photography. All pictures are taken with a Nikon D70s, a Nikkor AF-S 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 G ED DX lens and a Vivitar 285hv off-camera flash.
The first picture is taken with a diffuser (sto-fen omni-bounce):
The second picture is taken without the diffuser (see how the shadows are sharper):
My next gig with Hotel Desperado is on Saturday, January 26th sometime after 18:00. We are playing at Ferie for Fattigrøve (which starts at 14:00) which is located in the Støberiet (Medborgerhuset på Blågårdsplads). Other bands playing are Raggarpack, Mission One, The Good - The Bad, Daniel og Dollars and Pandemonium Steelband.
But if you can´t wait until next week, here are two clips from our gig on may 1st last year:
I’m back in Piter for the year-end-vacation after a break of a year and a half and places, as always, change. Some changes are induced by collective destruction - the lack of snow in St. Petersburg now is probably to some extent due to global warming. However, other changes have direct causes. What really knocked me off my feet right after we landed was that it is now mandatory to wear a seat belt in a car - something almost unthinkable when I was living here two years ago. Really unthinkable! Good that the law was changed - but I do have to ask myself if the deeper motivation is the demographic crisis Russia is facing - the law could be an attempt to raise the average life expectancy ;-)).
Another interesting change - at least for visiting foreigners - is that the registration procedure for private invitations has changed. The registration no longer has to be done at the OVIR, your invitees can simply go to the next post office. The process still entails filling out a lot of paper work (and you end up with more paper in your passport), but beats the lines and soft briberies (e.g. box of chocolates) at OVIR. However, visitors apparently also have to carry a copy of their return ticket with them now…
Inflation has always been present in Russia (the current government’s goal is to keep it under 10% p.a. but I don’t think they were very successful during the last year) - and this was something both my partner and I remarked separately. Everything has gotten noticeably more expensive. While the metro still is relatively cheep (14 rubles for a token) a half liter of Nevskoe at Orlandina now costs 70 rubles. And concert tickets have risen. Local bands normally cost no more than 200 rubles while I was living here (2004-2006), however now 300 rubles and more are frequently taken for known locals bands.
While Russia is not known for being baby friendly (baby carriage in the metro anyone?), we actually managed to go shopping with a baby carriage. And the new trams here even have a special door for baby carriages without stairs to climb. So slowly but surely…
Somethings also don’t change - smoking still remains the norm in clubs as well as drinking beer (and those horrible alco-energy drinks) on the street while it is freezing cold outside… Something I do miss in Copenhagen!
The popular music scholar Philip Tagg has compiled information on how to file a counter claim if one of your movies is removed by youtube due to copyright complaints which are unwarranted. It can be found here: YouTube Counter Claims, etc.. The page also has a link to the article “Copyright versus the democratic right to know” which discusses the problems copyright creates for academic research and publishing.
A highly recommendable book for more information on music and copyright is
Frith, Simon; Marshall, Lee (eds.): “Music and Copyright”, 2nd edition, Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press) 2004
Also check out www.musicandcopyright.org.
two reviews i wrote this year were just published in the journal popular music (volume 27:1, 2008). the books i reviewed were:
García, David F.: “Arsenio Rodríguez and the Transnational Flows of Latin Popular Music”, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2006
Biddle, Ian; Knights, Vanessa (eds.): “Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location – Between the Global and the Local”, Hampshire, Burlington: Ashgate 2007
Prison concert
