Sune:

Nå, Andreo. Seismograf er kommet på festival, sådan rigtig festival: den store i Roskilde, den med alle drømmene og det tunge åg af forventninger. Er der ikke noget kultisk og selvgodt autoritativt over sådan en størrelse? Engang stod Roskilde for noget, det var en rigtig rockfestival, der satte tidens overfladepop skakmat. Selvtilliden fejlede ikke noget, man stillede sig op på sin kollektivistiske trone og bestemte, hvad der var god og substantiel musik herhjemme, ja i hele verden. Bag facaden af kærligt fællesskab bankede et voldsomt elitært hjerte. Har Roskilde stadig en identitet, synes du?

My pregnant body changed things. The nausea that was best alleviated by the fact that I ate all the time, and the abdominal muscles that moved on, and being short of breath. I was in the process of recording my debut album for my alto saxophone and preparing for my graduation concert at the Conservatory of Music, and I was busy rehearsing and playing concerts with various bands. 

At first, only my boyfriend knew I was pregnant. A little later, my loved ones heard about it. But I would not tell it to my surroundings until I was well into my pregnancy. When my mother gave birth to my little brother, it was after her fifth pregnancy, two of whom had not succeeded. Four days later it was May 1st and we were having breakfast at. 6 in the voters' association’ s premises with my little brother in  a pram. I was a 6 year old girl and learned that working class women did not let themselves be defined and hindered by pregnancy and childbirth. 

Det var meningen, at Mortenson skulle bo på landet i seks måneder, da hun for mere end 10 år siden trak sig fra livet i Berlin, koncerter verden over og et universitetsstudie på DIEM i Aarhus.

Idyllen blev et vendepunkt, der både ændrede musikken og kunstneren.

Derfor mødes vi til et interview på en vindblæst strand i Østjylland. 

Jeg undrede mig over, at der i pressematerialet blev understreget, at det var et non-binært kunstnernavn, men at Heidi Mortensens pronomen var hun?

»Jeg har i 20 år udgivet musik som Heidi Mortenson, hvor mine pronouns er she/her, og hvor jeg i pressemeddelelser omtales med mit efternavn Mortenson. Og det står jeg ved. Med Phtalo er jeg non-binær, og det føles godt. Det er spændende og en måde for mig at gå lidt på opdagelse, og jeg overvejer, om det er noget, jeg skal tage videre.

Med store privilegier følger stort ansvar. Derfor er det vel på sin plads, at den berømmede musikjournalist Kelefa Sanneh nu har udgivet sin første bog, Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. Den 45-årige amerikaner hører til blandt verdens allermest privilegerede lyttere og har i mere end to årtier haft ubegrænset adgang til koncerter i verdens lydlige navle – først som musikkritiker ved The New York Times, siden som fast kulturskribent for The New Yorker. Han har set og hørt det hele.

Måske er det derfor, han er gået så frygtløst til værks i sin debut som bogforfatter. Et historisk overblik over syv vidtforgrenede genrer er meget at gabe over, også selvom Sanneh klogeligt sætter bagstopperen ved 1970 – tresserne er allerede udlagt til hudløshed – og fokuserer på USA med enkelte afstikkere til Storbritannien. Det går måske nok ud over fordybelsen, men som overordnet projekt står udgivelsen stærkt.

Chicago Reader-skribenten er netop trådt ind i Hal 6 i Bremen messecenter og støtter sig forvirret til sin hipstermulepose. Rundt om hjørnet, ved den new zealandske stand, sidder to mænd i 40’erne med business-miner (eller også drøfter de forrige aftens fede bassolo) om munden og sipper siciliansk rødvin. Klokken er lidt over middag, og de første gratis cd’er rammer en i nakken som free lilletrommeslag. Musikere, bookere, journalister og labelfolk fra hele verden er landet i den nordtyske by til verdens største jazzmesse, Jazzahead.

Nogle stande er ikke Weltklasse, æstetikken er tilfældig, brochurer ligger på én lang række, og det er dét! ECM’s stand er som ECM lyder, clean og slick. Og pladerne koster penge. Som i den virkelige verden. 

Abstract

In September 2020 pop-artist Kh Marie (one of the authors) performed the sensory concert intet er nok (nothing is enough) in Aarhus, Denmark. The concert invited the audience into a concert experience of sound, scent and movements, creating a space for disorientation of the dominant refrains of the pop-stage. This article explores how the physical pop-stage has traditionally been a gendered object in Western culture that orients itself towards certain bodies; and certain bodies towards it, hereby leaving some bodies feeling out of place. The article thus argues that the traditional pop-stage is an example of how gendering of spaces is not only as a discursive orientation, but how it is also a material and affective issue that extends itself out into the subjects and objects that inhabit them. Through repetition of the gendered refrains, they become internalized, like the chorus of a good pop-song stuck in our heads. We analyse the sensory concert as one example of how to challenge the gendered stage that, through an attuning approach, creates tactics of disorientation that allow bodies and stage to resurface as a non-gendered space.

'Solastalgia' is the feeling of emotional or existential distress, experienced as we witness negatively perceived environmental change unfold in places dear to us. Since coined by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003, the neologism has supported suffering people in need of a term to describe their increasingly outspread eco-anxiety in time of ecological breakdown. Through the lens of collaborative composition and the use of audio technology, this audio paper explores what happens when composer Carola Bauckholt and violinist Karin Hellqvist collectively seek to address their solastalgia. The process of composing the violin-electronics-video work Solastalgia (2022), aims at the outset to address environmental change, but with the space of trust that develops between the collaborators, a process of role expansion is additionally catalyzed, challenging the field’s traditional roles of composer and performer. The repetitive act of mapping sonorities of fading ice resources, therefore not only offer the collaborators a space to stay with, and accept, their painful feelings of solastalgia, but further leads them into new collaborative artistic terrain.

»You look like 50% of the world's population, but are professionalised as a minority«

There are plenty of numbers today that show that composers, musicians and sound artists who identify as women are in the minority when it comes to representation on stages, festivals, museums, in academic research and music education as composer Juliana Hodkinson's so adequately condense in the quote above, which is an excerpt from her essay to the Seismograf Focus titled Sounding Women’s Work that was published in March 2022.

The audio paper Intervals invites listeners to dwell into the story of women working and weaving hemp burial garment sambe in South Korea. The myth in sambe that is orally conveyed until now-time – like the author’s grandmother believed – is regarded that if you have the burial garment sambe when you are alive, you have a long life and die in peace. 

The author asked Sunhee, one of the women producing sambe, what it means to have and wear sambe and why it is important for them. Sunhee said: 

»We come to the earth, we are born into this world. 

We will, one day, go back to where we come from which we call it death. 

When we die, we should not leave anything behind, 

our body has to completely decompose. 

This burial garment, the grave cloth sambe is made out of organic hemp plants and natural materials, without containing any kind of chemicals. 

So this grave cloth is like wearing nature, 

it is to go back to nature, to the ground, to the soil, leaving nothing behind. 

And then we make a complete return to where we come from.«