Oct 28, 2018

A very good day of my life

I am passing on the hateful dramas in US this week. Speechless. I don’t have anything to add.

I am passing on the Swedish PM Stefan Löfven tomorrow most certainly informing the Speaker he has failed on his assignment forming a new government. I have nothing to add there either.

Instead I will give you a good day of my life. Ending with watching my son as a musician on an international scene.

This weekend the Umeå Jazz Festival has been celebrating it’s 50th anniversay. It’s an international festival, and through the years everyone has been here. I’m saying everyone. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davies, Chick Corea, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, you name them. And that’s just the real old heroes. I’m saying everyone!

Umeå Jazz Festival is accordingly a big event, lighting up the late October darkness. When I was young we used to spend all the extended weekend listening to as much as we could afford. Some years we even were a part of the festival as musicians, either with the choir Sångkraft or our vocal group Oktetten Moritz. Those times were special of course, also because we got to carry an Artist Pass around our necks, giving us access to every single concert in the program. Gosh, the week after was a hang over from sleep depravation and overwhelming experiences!

I don’t know when I last visited the festival. It might have been ten years ago. And for the last six years it’s been out of the question. My body just can’t do it.

This year though there was an act I really wished to see. Gidge.

Gidge is Trouble 2 and his high school friend Jonatan. An electronica duo nowadays touring places like Berlin, Amsterdam, Budapest, London, Bucharest and even Georgien and Mexico. They have created their own nisch, forest-techno. The two of them growing up on the countryside they are rooted in the woods and making music inspired by it. Sampling the sounds of a branch breaking, the wind, walking on sticks and a trumpeting crane, transitioning them into rhythms and sound clouds. 

What’s really fascinating is how Gidge's music is received in big cities far away from the northern Swedish forests. You would think the feel of a misty greenery on the 64th latitude would be too foreign to catch inner city souls, but it seems like the opposite. Their shows also include big screen projections with video images featuring the nature from where Gidge was born and grew up. Their neck of the woods. As well as mine.



It’s really rare for Gidge to have s show in Umeå. And of course, to me very special they were picked to be an act at the Umeå Jazz Festival 50th celebration. Oh how I wanted to be a part of that. And I actually was!

Audrey’s mom, yet another Maria, picked me up in the afternoon. She carried my bar stool and and my foldable textile garden chair, the tools I need for enjoying a concert. The festival takes place at a great downtown facility offering venues of all sizes. We saw three very different acts, a perfect mix. And just like back in the days I bumped in to old friends and colleagues cause everyone is there, so much fun! The mother-in-law-friends also had a delicious three course dinner until the restaurant was invaded by ambitious Halloween costumes and turned into a night club. 

Gidge was on at 11.15 PM, an unusually early slot for the Europe travellers. I climbed my bar stool and plugged my ears. And dived into a forest bath. That’s how Gidge music was described in the festival program. “Their music is like morning fog above the swamp, spider web in juniper, the majestic pine trees humming and the scent of moist moss. There is mysticism and contemplation”. 

I am so glad I was there. So grateful. It is such a gift watching my son and his long-time friend expressing themselves in music and photo. We are going to be nr.1 in the world, that’s what they said to each other when they playfully started out their giggling experimenting in the high school sound lab. I don’t know if that’s still there goal, but it’s wonderful seeing them realising themselves, still with that boyish playfulness at the core. 

It was well passed midnight when Maria drove me and my chairs back to the village. Roads icy from the snow falling the night before. We had spent twelve hours together and Saving Time had change to Normal before we said good night. My day had been perfect. Hard on my body of course. But I had the joy of a total Umeå Jazz Festival experience again. A full day of fun with my friend Maria. And I got to see Trouble 2 as an act at the Festival 50th anniversary. A very good day of my life.

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