The music I’m crazy about. Part 4: Joik

Today I would like to present a very unusual kind of music. It is probably one of the most amazing types of songs I’ve ever heard. This is joik (or yoik) a traditional Sámi music. I came across that way of singing about a year ago in Cracow during the meeting with the authors of the book Vaggi Varri. W tundrze Samów which is dedicated to the culture of Sámi people. Their stories and demonstrations made me fell in love with Lapland and thereby with joik. It isn’t ordinary way of singing. Joik is usually dedicated to a human being, an animal or a landscape. It is very often improvised. In the 1950s it was forbidden and considered sinful because of its association with Sámi shamanism. Joiking has a long tradition which lasts until now. I like to listen to joik because of its magical and peaceful sound which makes me feel nearer to the nature and of course because of the language!

Ulla Pirttijärvi is one of my favorite joik singers. She is from Finnish Lapland.

Adjágas is a group of Norwegian Sámi joikers. The name of the band in Sámi language mean the state between waking and sleeping.

Sofia Jannok is a joik singer from Swedish Lapland.

Vajas is another Sámi-Norwegian band. The name Vajas means echo in North Sámi language.

Other joiking artists and bands are: Mari Boine, Máddji, Orbina, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Wimme Saari.

The music I’m crazy about. Part 3: Swedish music

Sweden is one of the countries that I like very much. I’ve been three times in Sweden, precisely in Malmö. I have some Swedish friends and I would like to learn their national language. In my opinion Swedish sounds beautiful but it is very difficult language to learn, especially the pronunciation. For now I know only few Swedish words and expressions and in most cases I learned them from music :)

I listen to a lot of Swedish bands and musicians whose music can be assigned to many different genres. Below I present some of my favourite Swedish musicians who sing in their national language:

Veronica Maggio is a Swedish pop singer and songwriter. She was born in 1981 in Uppsala. She has Italian origins. Her discography includes four albums and several singles. Her music is known and appreciated not only in Sweden but also in other Scandinavian countries as Norway, Denmark and Finland. 

Säkert! is a band name of Swedish indiepop singer and songwriter Annika Norlin. The same singer makes also music in English under the name Hello Saferide. She was born in 1977 in Östersund. As Säkert! she released three albums (two in Swedish and one in English).

Laleh is a Swedish pop singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist and actress with Iranian origins. She was born in 1982 in Iran. She released five albums in which she sings in Swedish, English and also Persian. Recently I heard her songs in polish radio stations. That fact surprised me positively :)

Kent is one of the most known Swedish rock bands founded in 1990. The members of the band are from Eskilstuna. They make music in Swedish and English. They are known not only in Sweden but also in other European countries and in USA. Their discography includes more than ten albums.

Movits! is a Swedish band founded in 2007 in Luleå. Their music is an interesting mix of swing, jazz and hip-hop. They have two albums and some singles. Their album Äppelknyckarjazz is released also in the USA by Comedy Central Records.

Board and card games – that’s the fun!

We are already in 2015. I hope this year will be successful for all of us!

I would like to tell you how I spent the New Year’s Eve because this time it was different than others. This year me and my friends decided not to go or organize a typical party with noisy music, dance and big amounts of alcohol. We met in a group of 7 people in my friend’s house and we brought a lot of board and card games on various topics. These games are our common passion. We spent half the night and half the next day checking our knowledge about the world, exercising the reflex, creativity in inventing stories, language skills, developing strategies and also exercising abdominal muscles by laughter ;)

I really love to play games. It is a good way to spend your free time with your friends, family and also to get to know new people (for example during events dedicated to board games). There are a lot of genres of board games I usually play: educational games, logic games, party games, strategy games, economic games, games of physical skill etc. I’ve never played any RPG (role-playing game) but I would like to try.

It is hard to say which game is my favourite but one of the best games I recently knew is called Dixit.

In this game each player gets some cards with different abstract pictures on them. The first player, called the storyteller, chooses one of his cards and invents a title of the picture. It can be a phrase, a simple word or even a gesture. Then he puts his card on the table face down and tells the title. Other players choose one of their cards which match the cited title the most and put it on the table face down next to the first card. Then all the cards on the table are shuffled and turned face up.

All the players (except the storyteller) guess which card belongs to the storyteller. Who guesses well gets some points. Points are given also to the storyteller if someone but not everyone guessed which card belongs to him and as well to the player whose card was betted. Dixit is very joyful game. It requires a lot of creativity. How about you? Do you like to play board and card games?

The music I’m crazy about. Part 2: Slovenian rock

I love foreign languages. The music which I listen to is connected with that passion. I like listen to many kinds of music in many different languages. Sometimes the lyrics of the song aren’t so important to me. I like to listen to music in foreign language even if I don’t understand what the song is about. It is sufficient that I like the sound of the language and how it fits the music.

One of my favourite rock bands is Siddharta. It is one of the most known Slovenian rock bands. It was founded by four friends: Tomi Meglič, Primož Benko, Primož Majerič and Boštjan Meglič in 1995. In the course of time the members of the band has changed a little bit. Today the band consists of five members: Tomi Meglič (vocals and guitar), Primož Benko (guitar and back vocals), Boštjan Meglič (drums), Jani Hace (bass guitar) and Tomaž O. Rous (keyboard).

The name Siddharta comes from the title of a book written by a German writer Herman Hesse. They play songs in Slovene and English. Here is one of my favourite songs of Siddharta, Napoj:

At the beginning of 2014 the band gave a big surprise to their Polish fans. They recorded the Polish version of one of their biggest hits 'Samo edini' ('Samo jedyny'):

I feel very lucky because I had a chance to know the members of Siddharta in person after one of their concerts in Poland in 2013. Until now I’ve been only at three concerts of Siddharta. I can’t wait to another one and I hope that in the future I will have a possibility to go to their concert in Slovenia. I also would like to learn Slovene. Here is a photo of me and Siddharta’s vocalist Tomi:

The music I'm crazy about. Part 1: Ambient music

I decided to put aside my dreams for some time and dedicate a few posts to music. Recently, during our English classes I presented a podcast which was an interview with Brian Eno. He is an English musician, composer and music producer born in 1948 in Woodbridge.

He is a pioneer of one of my favourite music genres called ambient music. It is an experimental electronic music which as distinct from classic electronic music doesn’t contain linearly developed melodic line and tracks are composed of dispersed composition of sounds. Eno came up by accident with the idea of making music which isn’t a focal event but the surrounding or the background of our everyday activities. One day he had an accident, he was hit by a taxi and he was immobile for some days. He was lying in bed and listening to music but one of his speakers had failed and he couldn’t move from the bed to change up the volume. It was raining outside and the only thing that he heard was a sound of raindrops beating against the window and from time to time some notes of a harp coming from the player. This way he discovered a new way of listening to music.

Why do I love ambient music? I came across this genre for the first time about three years ago. I found it very strange but beautiful music. It is usually very peaceful and relaxing. It helps me to relax and calm down after a stressful day. It also helps me to concentrate during learning and is very inspiring during working on something. Listening to it is like a trip to another place on the world. If you have never had to deal with ambient and want to listen to it for the first time I recommend you to sit comfortably and close your eyes so you could derive more pleasure from that. Here is the first piece of ambient music that I heard and also my favourite one: An Ending (Ascent) from Brian Eno’s album Apollo:

Another ambient music I listen to: Biosphere, Boards of Canada, Tim Hecker, Ous Mal, Clubroot, Amiina.

A dose of creations of my imagination

It’s high time to present some examples of my unusual dreams. As I wrote in my first post I have a notebook, or rather two notebooks in which I write down my dreams. I started to do this almost four years ago and I have already gathered more than 100 dreams. Unfortunately, a lot of my dreams disappeared from my mind before I could save them. I chose three dreams that I think are weird, funny and contain some elements and situations that could never happen in real life. Here they are:

“Pre-Easter shopping”

It was a sunny morning of Easter Saturday. My mother just prepared a basket with food to take it to church but she suddenly noticed that she forgot to buy bacon. She said that it was very important ingredient of the Easter breakfast and she asked me to go to the shopping center to buy a piece of bacon. When I went there the stalls with food were almost empty because people bought everything. I asked each seller if he had a little bit of bacon. Unfortunately I heard only negative answers so I decided to buy a piece of cheesecake instead. I thought that for my mum there was no difference between bacon and cheesecake. When the seller was packing the cake I reached for my wallet. Suddenly I saw a man dressed in black with a balaclava on his face running at me. He quickly approached me and started tickling me. I couldn’t stand it, I was laughing and I fell to the floor dropping the wallet. The robber grabbed my wallet and run away from the shopping center. Nobody even reacted to that situation…

“Walking in the forest”

Me and my boyfriend went for a walk to the forest. I was afraid of wild animals. He wanted to calm me and told me how to behave in case of attack of a dangerous animal: ‘When you see a wild animal you can’t go away! You should jump in the bushes, walk on all fours and growl as a dog. All the forest creatures are afraid of dogs and wolves. If you pretend to be one of these two other animals won’t do anything bad to you.’ We were continuing our walk when suddenly I heard the snap of branches and purr of an animal. We started going on all fours and growling in the bushes. The animal was running in our direction so I growled louder and more threatening. When the animal approached us I noticed that it was a huge bear. I thought that the method of growling didn’t work but when the bear was very close to me it fell to the ground and died. My boyfriend looked at me with a big surprise on his face and said: ‘I was just kidding with that growl!’

“Good always wins”

I was on a private, fenced territory and I couldn’t find the exit. I saw a barn and I entered it. There was my friend and an old woman. My friend told me not to listen to the woman because she was a witch and she could cast a spell on me if I listened to her words. I realized that we were prisoners of that witch. Then the husband of the witch called her and when she went out of the barn I started to mull over a plan of escape. My friend wasn’t optimistic of that idea. She didn’t believe in our success. Unexpectedly I noticed that the woman was far away with her husband and they didn’t see us. I caught my friend’s hand and I started to run towards the fence. The witch saw us and began to chase us waving the wand. Fortunately, at the last minute we managed to jump over the fence. We hid behind two trees which suddenly quaked and their roots emerged over the ground. The trees flew away with me and my friend embracing the trunks and they took roots in the lawn next to the house of an old couple who were good people. They were very happy to see us. The woman showed us the destroyed house of the witch in the far distance and said ‘You defeated the witch! It’s true that good always wins!’

The only remaining flash of creativity

In reference to my previous post I would like to write about how my creativity and imagination have changed in the course of time.

When I finished elementary school, my mind was still full of ideas. I found a new way to realise them and I started to write poems, stories and lyrics for songs. Initially I didn't want anyone to read them, but one day I showed some of my compositions to my ex-best friend. Unexpectedly, she also began to write. Then I noticed that her poems were very similar to mine. Probably for that reason I lost the inspiration. Even if I had time and wanted to write something I lacked ideas.

In upper secondary school I wrote only a few short poems. Anyway, in the drawer in my desk there were a lot of sheets of paper with some incomplete lines written on them.

Besides poems I was using my imagination also to create some handmade gifts, decorations and jewellery. I used to spend all my free time making bracelets, earrings and other trinkets for my family, friends and for myself. I’ve never used any model, I have always invented my own designs for jewellery. However, as time goes by, the number of my projects has decreased. Fortunately in this case the inspiration didn’t disappear at all. It still happens that I create some handicrafts but only occasionally.

I would like to tell you something more about this hobby. If it comes to jewelry I like the most to make earrings and bracelets with colourful beads. I like floral patterns and vivid, warm colours, not pastel (and I hate pink!).

A lot of my friends think I’m crazy that I have the patience to create something with such tiny components. Nevertheless I love it and what’s more my patience is almost unlimited. For example when I drop one bead I don’t take immediately another one but firstly I have to look for that first bead everywhere. 

Except jewellery I like to make also gift boxes, greeting cards and other useful decorations.

Now I have problem when I have to come up with an idea to do something. It refers not only to artistic activity but also to other areas of my life. I wonder where is my imagination now? And I guess it hid somewhere in my dreams, given that they are so unusual, intriguing and complex.

At this point it would be good to quote one of my weirdest dreams but unfortunately I can’t trust my memory and the notebook with my dreams isn’t in my reach now. Therefore I will continue this subject in my next posts.