Thanks to everyone who came to Clandestino Festival 7 December! Here’s a little souvenir in video format, an interview and concert film featuring Hailu Mergia, made by filmer Damien Priest. We hope to see you all again next year, information about Clandestino Fetival 2014 will be published here.
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Clandestino Festival Winter Edition 7 December
Ethiopian lofi jazz, Dadaist dance punk and loop-based ice sculptures in audio format: Welcome to Clandestino Festival’s winter edition, which is also our official housewarming at the arts center Oceanen!
Clandestino Festival Winter Edition
Ocean, Stigbergstorget 8, Gothenburg | Opens 19:00 | Tickets sold at entrance
HAILU MERGIA (WITH TONY BUCK AND MIKE MAJKOWSKI)
He belonged to Addis Ababa’s musical elite and played with legends such as Mulatu Astatke. A regime shift changed everything, and in the eighties Hailu Mergia found himself in Washington DC, where he took a job as a taxi driver. Music was the link to his homeland Ethiopia, Mergia recorded lots of cassettes with accordion, synth and drum machine – basically jazz as known from the “Ethiopiques” compilations, but this strangely futuristic and taken out of context, which aired it out from a single satellite in the universe. Current Album at Awesome Tapes From Africa. | Read more
ORCHESTRA OF SPHERES
Orchestra of Spheres – Channeling ancient future funk from the IS! Warping spatioelastoplasticity with sound! Born out of Wellington’s Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society in 2009, the Spheres have developed a cult-like following in New Zealand. Playing house parties, dance parties, DIY shows and opera houses, the Spheres have built a reputation for musically and visually ecstatic live shows. | Read more
LAU NAU
Lau Nau is the pseudonym of Laura Naukkarinen. She is a Finnish musician and artist who gained international acclaim for her original and minimalist compositions produced on everything from electric guitar and loop pedal to wine glasses and megaphone. The style is sometimes reffered to as Psych Folk, but it is impossible to determine the genre Lau Nau works in, a music that is as playfully simple as it is original. | Read more
BLACK DOUGH
Black Dough mixes Peter Brötzman-like skronky jazz with voodoo rock and punk. Deep down in the engine room, upright bass and drums are blaring out cymbal attacks and tritone chords. Malin Wättring’s baritone sax is many nautic miles away from the smooth jazz sailors: screaming along with Miranda Bjerking Raeder’s vocals. | Read more
ELENA WOLAY
A dj who organizes Jazz Är Farligt, a club, management, fanzine and record label. She also works with clubs and live venues like Fredagar på Marie Laveau, Mother and Elena Presenterar, Tantklubben, Cosmic Hysteria, Pådrag and others. She prepares herself for Clandestino Festival Winter Edition by digging deep into their sound archives for East African groove, rituals and bebop. | Read more
LES GLANEUSES
Insects, jellyfish, video loops of dance steps … just to name a few of the things the artist group Les Glaneuses presented during this year’s Clandestino Festivals. Materials are available everywhere. Les Glaneuses borrow them and put them into another world – and then again let them plunge into freedom. | Read more
Punk jazz bomb: Black Dough @ Clandestino 7 December
Clandestino Festival Winter Edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Öppnar 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Our program for the 7 of December was sort of full already, but when we heard Gothenburg band Black Dough, we just had to rethink and squeeze them in to schedule. Finally, the fuse to Gothenburg’s first punk jazz bomb is lit!
Black Dough mixes Peter Brötzman-like skronky jazz with voodoo rock and punk. Deep down in the engine room, upright bass and drums are blaring out cymbal attacks and tritone chords. Malin Wättring’s baritone sax is many nautic miles away from the smooth jazz sailors: screaming along with Miranda Bjerking Raeder’s vocals. | Read more | Tickets
PROGRAM CLANDESTINO WINTER FESTIVAL 7/12 OCEAN LANE MOUNTAIN SQUARE GOTHENBURG
19:00 Opens
20:30 Lau Nau
21:30 Black Dough
22:30 Hailu Mergia
00:00 Orchestra of Spheres
01:00 Elena Wolay
Hailu Mergia with Tony Buck & Mike Majkowski
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Hailu Mergia spends six days a week driving a cab to and from Dulles Airport in the US’ capitol Washington DC. He’s been driving a taxi for more than 10 years. Few of his customers are probably aware of the fact that the cabbie once was Ethiopia’s most popular keyboard player and band leader of the legendary Walias Band (which featured Mulatu Astatke, among pillars of the Addis scene). The Walias Band’s much sougth-after LP Tche Belew goes for thousands of dollars on internet auction sites (if it can be found there at all) and features the original version of the monstrous Muziqawi Silt – arguably the best known Ethiopian tune worldwide. The song has been covered by numberless acts including The Daktaris and The Ex and featured in the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers.
In the early 1980’s, most members of the Walias Band used an US-tour to escape the dictatorial Mengistu regime; Mergia has been living in the DC area ever since then. Awesome Tapes From Africa has just re-issued a lesser known solo album, Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument The 1985 recording is a fantastic effort featuring a host of old school synths, ghostly accordions and a lovely bit of cheap drum computers. To celebrate the release of this outstanding album, Hailu Mergia will come to Clandestino Festival’s winter edition, as part of a series of hand-picked shows thaty make up his first European tour ever!
On the road, the maestro will be backed by an excellent Berlin-based all-Aussie rhythm section consisting of Mike Majkowski on double bass and drummer extraordinaire Tony Buck from The Necks.
Orchestra of Spheres
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Orchestra of Spheres – Channeling ancient future funk from the IS! Warping spatioelastoplasticity with sound! Born out of Wellington’s Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society in 2009, the Spheres have developed a cult-like following in New Zealand. Playing house parties, dance parties, DIY shows and opera houses, the Spheres have built a reputation for musically and visually ecstatic live shows.
Like celestial sponges the Spheres’ clonga sound draws on influences far and wide:
kuduro, psychedelic primary school disco, fire music, kwaito, free improv, south pacific demolition, shangaan electro, zeuhl, mbalax, kosmische quiche, tarraxo, witch doctor haus, orgasmo brain rave, juke/footwork, polynesian no wave prog, quarr, costume rock, inner brain clap, funk puppetré…
The Spheres use homemade instruments like the biscuit tin guitar, electric bass carillon and sexomouse marimba to create their cosmic dancing sound.
Orchestra of Spheres are:
Baba Rossa – biscuit tin guitar, sexomouse marimba
E=M303 – electric carillon
Jemi Hemi Mandala – drumkit
Mos Iocos – keyboard, gamelan
Lau Nau
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Lau Nau is the pseudonym of Laura Naukkarinen. She is a Finnish musician and artist who gained international acclaim for her original and minimalist compositions produced on everything from electric guitar and loop pedal to wine glasses and megaphone. The style is sometimes reffered to as Psych Folk, but it is impossible to determine the genre Lau Nau works in, a music that is as playfully simple as it is original. She sings mostly in Finnish but the language is subordinate to another kind of poetic quality that can be found in how she uses loops to build layer upon layer of her whispering soprano voice. Meridith Monk meets Neu!, one might say, while Lau Nau’s music is characterized by a calm that seems linked to the life of a creaking cottage somewhere in the Finnish countryside. A number of years ago, she left life in Helsinki’s artistic circles to find peace and quiet with her family in the countryside, and Lau Nau is now focusing her energy on writing new music (including scores for silent films and theater) and make sound installations. Instead of extensive tours she now plays a few carefully selected gigs.
Black Dough
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Black Dough mixes Peter Brötzman-like skronky jazz with voodoo rock and punk. Deep down in the engine room, upright bass and drums are blaring out cymbal attacks and tritone chords. This machine has the same kind of explosive energy as found on late albums of John Coltrane’s Quartet. Malin Wättring’s baritone sax is many nautic miles away from the smooth jazz sailors: screaming along with Miranda Bjerking Raeder’s vocals. This Gothenburg quartet’s debut EP was released last spring to great critical acclaim in various magazines and at Clandestino Headquarters. Finally! The fuse is lit, Gothenburg’s first real punk jazz bomb is about to go off!
Elena Wolay
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Elena Wolay is a dj who organizes Jazz Är Farligt, a club, management, fanzine and record label. She also works with clubs and live venues like Fredagar på Marie Laveau, Mother and Elena Presenterar, Tantklubben, Cosmic Hysteria, Pådrag and others. She prepares herself for Clandestino Festival Winter Edition by digging deep into their sound archives for East African groove, rituals and bebop.
Les Glaneuses
Clandestino Festival winter edition 7 December
Oceanen, Stigbergstorget 8, Göteborg | Starts 19.00 | Full program | Tickets
Insects, jellyfish, video loops of dance steps … just to name a few of the things the artist group Les Glaneuses presented during this year’s Clandestino Festivals. [Glaner] = pick up what someone else has left behind. Les Glaneuses pick up the city. Materials are available everywhere.Les Glaneuses borrow them and put them into another world – and then again let them plunge into freedom.
Talks: Almou Ansar
FESTIVAL AU DESERT IN EXILE on November 7
Musikens Hus, Djurgårdsg. 13, Gothenburg. Opens 18:30. | Full program | Tickets available at the door
Almou Ansar is one of the founders of the desert festival. In the Gothenburg edition of the Festival au Desert in exile he will interviewed on stage by Lars Lovén, freelance journalist and music critic specialized on contemporary African music.
Le Festival au Desert has its origins in an annual celebration (Takoubelt) for the nomadic Tuareg people, who used to take gather just in the areas around Timbuktu on the outskirts of the Sahara desert, to celebrate and play music. A music that is not only a social glue for a scattered desert people, but also said to be the origin of the American blues – and thus also jazz and all sorts of other African-American musical genres. Yet, it was more of a Homecoming party than a musical event of global significance until Manny Ansar and his cousin Almou Ansar decided to start a regular music festival out among the dunes in 2001. Le Festival au Desert has since grown and become something of a renaissance of Tuareg culture: Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré and Bassekou Kouyate are all world famous artists associated with the festival and proof of Mali’s impressive musical tradition. The music has reached far beyond the country’s borders and attracted superstars like Bono and Damon Albarn to the Festival au Desert .
As a consequence of the conflict in northern Mali in 2012, it was decided not to arrange the next festival. Islamists in the region aimed to prohibit all musical expression and the festival was directly threatened by violent groups. The organizers decided to arrange a ” Caravan for Peace” with Malian musicians during the summer of 2013 touring the U.S. and Canada, and here in the Scandinavia we at Clandestino Festival have the opportunity to arrange Festival au Désert in exile in collaboration with a number of organizations. We would like to note that the freedom to express oneself musically, artistically or at all, is not something we can or should take for granted. In Mali, longstanding musical traditions are at the risk of disappearing if they are no longer allowed to be performed.
In February 2013, Festival au Désert was awarded the festival Freemuse award. Freemuse is an organization working for freedom of expression in music and supports the musicians and composers who are threatened by censorship. It was the first time a festival received the award .
The Gothenburg edition of Festival au Désert in exile is presented by Clandestino Festival in collaboration with the Association More Jazz in Sweden and the Swedish Postcode Lottery . Information about the Stockholm edition here .