Norway for beginners
Dear Kari Bremnes,
the first time I saw you in Berlin in the mid-90s. There you were 40 years old and played at a festival for which you seemed as suitable as Marianne and Michael as opening act for Metallica. The music that was on the stages of the city at that time, thundered and roared, the singers roared, even the charts were dominated by dark rumbling bands like Rammstein. It was the soundtrack to German unity. After a combo whose name I forgot, you, the singer from Norway, have entered the stage. They wore high boots, a black dress, and huge rings on their fingers that flashed in the light of the headlights. A beautiful woman with long, dark hair, a face with a prominent nose, high cheekbones and a pronounced chin, which you held up slightly. That was intellectual and a bit snooty. And very sexy.
For a moment, the room became quiet until soft folk and jazz sounds filled the room, woven by the musicians who accompanied you. And then your voice. Clear and bright, she told of the migrant workers who built the famous railway line between Oslo and Bergen, of Edvard Munch's mail ships that bring life to the Nordic solitude. From her mouth, even Norwegian sounded graceful.
Not all were ready for the melancholy of Kari Bremnes
Kari Bremnes at the fashion shoot for ChroniquesDuVasteMonde-WOMAN
And the English you used to present your songs was music in my ears. Not many were like me. After the second song dissatisfaction became widespread in the audience. The filaments were too filigree, the web of music hovered too softly, your voice shone too clearly.
It was too early for this fine Scandinavian melancholy. In Germany was "heartbreak" - time, that was the first successful bumm-thunder-cracking record by Rammstein. My music world has changed that day. I bought your CDs, accompanied your musical transformation? from the folk siren to the storyteller, who delivers her laconic stories to precise, almost cool songs. Especially your new songs have done to me. They revolve around small observations, describe couples, tell about aging, everyday life, being silly. And almost always from the first-person perspective of a woman: in? A little happiness can not hurt? (Litt Happiness can ikkje skade) Wanted from the man who wants to cheer her up to her friends, with whom you can be in a bad mood. Or those in? Are you sleeping ?? (Sov du eller) looks at her apartment, walls, ceiling, and wonders if the one she shares her bed with does not want to wake up.
For Kari Bremner, people become stalkers
While novelists are reluctant to be identified as their main heroes, you've never made a secret of telling yourself in your songs. From your youth in Lofoten, from the dark winters, where only the Hurtigruten ships provide a change, from the people you met. And from Oslo, where you live for about 30 years.
Manmachal I imagine, you sing of me.
Fans are also stalkers of their idols. When I first arrived in Svolvær, the Lofoten capital of 4000 inhabitants, I was excitedly walking across the street like a teenager you lived in. And I admit, there are moments when I imagine you sing of me when you sing in. Once I had a Lover in Berlin ?. In the meantime, I have seen and heard some of your concerts. I know that you are married and have two children, 16 and 20 years old, who only accompany you when you're in "cool cities"? (Prague or Berlin) occur.
The mood at Bremnes concerts is marked by yearning
You have received several awards for your music, your records are sold well, and the small halls in which you perform are often sold out. There is a special atmosphere here, marked by a yearning for the North, of respect for the modern Norway that you stand for. And of the sincerity known only from the performances of great old gentlemen? Neil Young or Leonard Cohen maybe. The audience listens, does not talk on the phone (which is often the case), hardly talks. They stand in the spotlight, in a black dress, their beautiful face slightly raised. And sing of life as it is. A woman of 51 years? at the height of their time,
Your Dirk Lehmann
