Yes, it´s beautiful to be here.
Here, under steep mountains, on winding roads 1600 kilometers from Trondheim, the beggars paradise, I have found a real festival !
An important festival !
pictures from rock mot ras 2004-2008
It is the Rock Mot Ras-festival !
The title so playfully funny to translate, in both my second languages, English and Swedish ! But I have already told you, earlier in the ongoing chronicle of mine, so you have to read it to find our, haven´t you !
The scenery is stunning, with the mountains, the creek and the perfect surroundings for a small festival stage.
In this little place, with only 15 regular all year round inhabitants and some 50 in summer, is now being ” invaded” by a 1000 souls.
The spirit is good, the weather nice enough for outdoor pleasures and the mix of music is brave and the mojo working ! Next year, I bet you, there will be far more and the challenge much bigger !
I think of two other festivals in Sweden that is also concentrating on music and atmosphere, bravely started as this one.
One is Urkult, which has been going on for years and kept it´s small profile in folk and world music. The same stunning scenery. Almost…
The other is just starting up, Baluns, Östersund, with excellent local musicians, which Östersund is famous for and their profile is reggae in all kinds of ways, dj`s, bands, in English, Swedish and the local dialect. Also in beautiful surroundings just outside the little town.
So why is this so important ? Are`nt there hundreds of little festivals all over Scandinavia started by idealistic people..?
No, not with those kind of people who is behind these festivals. People with some insight of more than music, with a eye for the heart and soul and with a far away look, dreamy, but with a sharp look ahead. Inside and outside themselves.
Not political obsessed as me, who must turn everything into politics and weave every thread of life into a complicated pattern of coming future.
Luckily, I must say, we don`t have to uniform ourselves for festivals anymore and have to know quotes from the right -ism to enjoy music. No, I never liked that, politics have never been narrow to me as an anarchist since youth.
This small festival is a flag of futures, a broader non-consuming kind of protest, where everyone, especially in Norway, can join in.
I see it also like a new chance of opening up the mid-Norway belt, going from the coast of Norway to the coast of Sweden. Once upon a time border-less and with good communications.
Now the lying Norwegian government is playing big time on it´s wealth, and have been doing so for years. Claiming to be special and outside of Europe, putting up high walls on the border to Sweden, harassing people of darker skin who want to cross the border.
But most of all, again my analyse here, it is a protest against the consuming of this planet, the ridiculous growth politicians use like a mantra, in the lack of any ideology or -ism.
The big festival is over, if you ask me. It is gone.
Maybe Roskilde, like the big, but smooth machine it is will survive some more years and keep it´s message of peace, music, dope and love. It is still the biggest and most important festival of the massive proportions in Scandinavia. But people are getting bored.
And admit it, people; It has become far to expensive.
Why should poor people pay million dollar musicians to cover their loss of record sales, desperately hunting for bigger stages and better pay.
Take a break, step down, get real. It´s not music anymore, it´s just a machine.
Just like the middle age politicians, blocking every view to new horizons, those multimillion dollar musicians should pull back. Play for less or do something that matters for the future ! Leave the decadence and the big stage, encourage and tutor young people with your once so burning engagement ! Which is just as needed now as way back then.
I pitty Neil Young, not longer able to play the small festivals.
This is my thoughts while lying in a grass field in the middle of some wonderful nowhere with a new, hungry Neil Youngish kind of band playing on the stage.
They are called El Cuero and they are brilliant. But too screamy in this early night, I guess they are just as much baffled and bewildered over this festival and don`t dare to slow down. But they are good.
The more I enjoy the magic whisper of the next band, Adjagas, a Samish group singing in their beautiful native language. They are so just in tune with the place and the environment of this festival, it sends chills down my spine.
I want to hug them, I want to praise them.
I want to run over to the sound engineers and scream; turn, it up, turn it up !
But I am paralyzed with their whisper and it would be wrong.
There where only a hundred when me and Miro played around three o`clock, my young brave bass player. More and more people are arriving now, as the night thickens, no one seems to know yet, what big thing is developing here.
We leave after Adjagas for other appointments. I wish my new soul friend from London, the french angel alien in England, could see this. She really would have loved this place. She couldn´t come this year, but time is not always ready when you think it is.
Even on my way back to Trondheim, I am still stunned and chocked over this festival. The bravery of all the local people, from young to old, who is heartly engaged in it.
Do they really know how big it must not become…because it will grow fast from now and what will they do…?
I travel back on winding roads again and think back.
Some months ago I met the crazy founders of that festival, the young burning idealists, arranging a literature festival i Trondheim, where I came to play.
They are students in Trondheim and probably sick of having to fuck everyone in the ass to start anything incoherent to the mainstream flow.
So they start up a magazine called PJUSK and a small literature festival around it !
As anyone cares in that snobbish, semi cultural town, where the main newspaper Adressa lays like a drunken whore on the centerstage, babbling something about nothing.
Word about art sounds like adds and culture running like old mascara down her face.
This is how I meet them, very, very off stage from the cultural scene in Trondheim.
There are no people around, but the sound is marvelous and their eyes glittering.
Totally ignored by the press.Yes, I recognize the feeling and I laugh !
When they invite me to a festival in the middle of nowhere, I say yes immediately !
This must be good and as you can see, it is !
They got a band as well, these guys, called Ella Guru, opening the festival. So nice !
Can you now understand why I said No, thank you, to the biggest festival in Trondheim, Storåsfestivalen ?
Can you now understand why I can`t support festivals trying desperately to be bigger and bigger, like some copy of Roskilde or maybe they are aiming at Woodstock, what do I know..?
There must be more to it than big. (Even the girls in Sex in the City know that:))
There must be more to it than having young bands to play for free and sell the concept with half naked burlesque artist and decadence.
There must be more to it than coked up cultural freaks, who gives the shit about artists in the marginal, stepping over bodies to get to the highest top.
My feelings again, don`t worry, I am just a whisper.
I am just a beggar, as street musician to late for my times.
And who cares anyhow, about anything, these days…
Imagine you are trying to convince yourself, everything is gonna be all right….and believing in the odds…
Next year, you will there !
P.S:….and yes, I still think that Russia won the UEFA football cup….:)
July 19, 2008 at 10:36 pm
just a big hug from me