 |
| Photo Geir Anders Hætta Berg. |
About a year ago I met Terje at a concert in Oslo. I had not seen him for many many years. I only knew him because he is the ex-boyfriend of a girl I used to live with in Bergen.
I told him I was an artist, and he told me had started working as a music-producer, so we just figuered why not try and do something together. We kept in touch, and I told him that I had wanted to do a christmas song for may years, but never got around to it, and he was immidiately into the idea of making a christmas song together, and so we did!
The reason why I wanted to make a christmas song is that when I was a child I remember christmas as a very positive time of the year. I used to cuddle up with my duvet in a chair in front of the telly and watch Disney - cartoons, and other programs. It was dark season, so it was constantly dark outside, so we lit candles and spent alot of time togehter with my family inside playing games, making christmas decorations, bakery and toys and gifts of course.
As an adult the christmas celebration has changed alot for me. Shops start earlier and earlier to sell christmas items and here in Norway its almost like a contest who gets most presents and who gets the most exphensive gifts. It has generally just became a matralistic, stressful month full of pressure. And year after year I asked myself "do even people know why we do this? Do they even know why we have this holiday? The reason for christmas, what it is about? But if they don´t know.... do I know?"
I was longing for my childhood christmas experience.
I noticed that there were so sami christmas songs. all christmas we would just hear the same songs on sami radio. Norwegian christian songs translated to sami, or one of the few Norwegian and sami christmas songs. And 3 years ago I started thinking about what kind of songs I would sing if I was to sing christmas songs. And I felt like this was something I wanted to do - I wanted to record a christmas song!
I started looking into what my christmas son would be about, what the sami way of celebrating christmas was. How did sami people celebrate christmas, what are the sami christmas traditions? How did we celebrate before we learned from the christians how to celebrate it.
This is what I wanted to write about, if I was to write any sami christmas song. I wanted it to be about mythology and old wisdom.
Unsurprisingly I found that the sami people did not celebrate christmas before christianity took over. The only thing we would celebrate is the vinter-solstice. December is in the middle of dark season, and this is the season where the sami myhtological creature "Stállu" is out on a journey. Therefore it was natural for me to write about Stállu. More about Stállu on this post!
But I have only scratched the surface! I want to find out more!
Buy it on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/no/album/stalu-fapmu-single/id1058099792?l=nb
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar