NASA has made it possible for Earth’s musical culture to be evaluated by aliens. The Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, contained a golden record that, alongside multilingual greetings and an attempt to establish a common basis for communication, included a mixtape for off-world audiences. European classical music is heavily represented: the selection opens with a recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 by the Munich Bach Orchestra and is followed by selections from musical cultures from around the world. The American contributions include Chuck Berry’s »Johnny B. Goode«, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven’s »Melancholy Blues«, and Blind Willie Johnson’s »Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground«. The mixtape has always been a format with which to swagger and seduce, meant to project both front and vulnerability. How, though, might we interpret a sampler from another star system; what might its effect on us be?

Garlanded with copies of the Parthenon frieze, the Sculpture Hall of Lund Pufendorf IAS welcomes a dense crowd softly illuminated with pink and warm lights. Everyone sits quietly, while the pleasantness of the atmosphere merges with an oneiric sound fading in. Soon, the dreamy soundscape becomes sinister, commencing a concert of strongly engaged political music pieces.

Curated by Sanne Krogh Groth and Katja Heldt in occasion of the Night of Culture 2022, Antifascism - Electronic music from worlds on fire greets us with a quote from Rosa Luxemburg: »The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening«. The quadrophonic loudspeaker system surrounding us indeed plays four compositions that could not speak up more powerfully and clearly. Whether in the tradition of the ‘70s or recently commissioned for the event, strong voices emerge through the works of predominantly female composers

James Black owes me an article. Except I’m no longer the one it’s owed to, it’s my successor as editor here at Seismograf, Andreo. Also, it wasn’t one article, but several. Long, elaborate articles requiring many hours of work. The conversation went somewhat like this over phone some two years ago: So, I want to speak to some other colleagues about religion, says Black. That might sound a little dry, I think, and isn’t it a bit much to sign up for, a single Seismograf article can be difficult enough to finish, so an entire series? I hesitate politely, but on the phone, I hear James insisting. A yes leaves my mouth because James sounds oddly motivated, and when James writes, it is usually like a raging fire of indignation and damned clarity: pure critic gold. Three or four articles on music and religion? Yes, please, James, you do that.

When I meet with the Danish Composer Neils Rønsholdt on a scorching summer afternoon in Copenhagen, he has a kind of crackle of excitement about him. He’s just come from a rehearsal for another piece but he’s in town to prepare for the premiere and subsequent two-day run of his new opera, The Last Rites, at the Copenhagen Opera Festival. Normally, Rønsholdt resides in Aarhus where he is an associate professor in composition at the Royal Academy of Music. It is very clear that Rønsholdt is eager to share this work with his audience but until he can he has to make do with me and the question I could generate on the basis of the programme description.

On the twenty-second of June,
At exactly four o’clock,
Bombs were dropped on Kyiv, they announced to us
That the war had begun.

In the Soviet Union everyone knew these lines. One of the few sincere, and at the same time unceremonious songs was created in the first days of the so-called »Great Patriotic War« by the poet Boris Kovyniev. In fact, he wrote lyrics set to the melody of a new waltz, Blue Scarf. In the USSR it was somehow inconvenient to remember that Siniy platochek was the work of two Poles – Jerzy Petersburski (music) and Stanisław Laudan (lyrics). Both versions – Siniy platochek and On the Twenty-Second of June – were sung to us by our grandmothers instead of lullabies, which is why from childhood we knew the exact date of the Nazi air invasion of the USSR. 

Kateryna Zavoloka: »I will never be a political or social artist«

Zavoloka: »When Russia invaded in 2014 [annexation of Crimea], I thought I had to somehow say no, and used the samples I collected to make an album with the sounds of the revolution. It was a kind of answer to what's going on in my life. I will never be a political or social artist.«

»Vilna« from the album Volya was recorded during the Maidam Revolution in 2014 and consists of recordings of burning police cars, sounds from street fights and exploding grenades and Molotov cocktails. »Volya« means freedom.

Mit køn er ikke. Min krop er ikke. Mit køn betyder. Min krop betyder. Mit køn betyder ikke. Min krop betyder ikke. Mit køn er. Min krop er. Min krop er en kvindelig komponist, musiker, sangskriver og tekstforfatters. 2021. Jeg er 47 år gammel og med alderen konstateret, vandrer tankerne videre ind i sindet og de personlige omgivelser, selv samme sind smyger sig rundt i derinde. Jeg stopper op og ved ikke, om jeg skal beskrive dette. Om det har relevans for denne  tekst om mit ståsted i musikken. Om mit køn. Krop. De fysiske arbejdsforhold. Må jeg tale om  børnene? Om alt det der væltede ud af mig. Musik, blod, sæd, børn. Det skabte. Det der skaber.  Hvorfor skriver jeg nu om dette? Hvorfor siger jeg det højt med skriften og kigger afventende på  reaktionen? Jeg gør det her. Hvad sker der så? Jeg tager tøjet af og viser kvindekroppen. Igen og igen. Jeg bestemmer, hvornår den skal vises frem. Jeg bestemmer i hvilken sammenhæng. Jeg bestemmer over min krop. Min krop er. I trods. Ligesom barnets sind går i trods, tager det hele ud i ekstremer, og den utæmmede fantasi står lige bag mig og hvisker i mit øre. Det er sætninger, der ikke giver nogen som helst form for mening. Faktisk er det afgørende, at jeg ikke forstår dem. Man lægger et løg i hånden til en koncert med et Big Band. Bagefter. Man gør det først bagefter. Når alt  står på rækker, fortolker jeg på mig selv og mine omgivelser.

Gender balance in the music and dance scene, respectively, is still very skewed. With a predominance of male musicians and female dancers, we as drummers and dancers therefore have very different experiences in terms of perception of gender and bodies. In our constellation, however, we have a feeling that we have escaped the typical notions and expectations of gender, and we, as Meshes, have therefore not yet dealt directly with questions about this. A blind spot in our practice? Or something we are generally exhausted from dealing with? The invitation to the publication here has thus set some thoughts in motion, and with the gender glasses on, we will again relate to the relationship between our two media, dance and drums, and to how our social relationships affect our artistic practice.

Over the past year, I have thought a lot about what the physical space means for my work. My boyfriend usually leaves for work Monday through Friday, and then I have the whole apartment to myself. 

Sometimes I sit in the study at my desk with the electric piano to my left. In front of me hangs a bulletin board with detached notes I have written on small notes and hung up between postcards and other small items. To the right is the filing cabinet with paper, sheet music and old notes.

Other times, it seems like the workplace is full of expectations I can not live up to: here I have to be a diligent, focused person who does what she sets out to do. So I sit down in the living room instead. Sitting at the dining table or in the armchair and looking out the window. If not I'm just doing something completely different – there's always something practical you can fix instead. Laundry, dishes, shopping. Later I go back to the study again.

Since 2017, we have been living in an apartment in Copenhagen's Nordvest Quarter. Before that, we had spent several years travelling, as we had been doing different residencies and studies abroad. From this travel experience, it has been necessary for us to work in very different rooms and spaces, collapsing an artist studio into the space of a suitcase. This has impacted our work in various ways, for example, during a performance tour in Japan, Ragnhild worked with the suitcase format, as she designed an instrument that precisely fit into the weight and measurements of international air travel. 

She has to listen to man-splaining on a daily basis when buying materials in the local hardware store