A landscape beyond words

Yesterday, in Galleri Åkern's lovely garden, right before Hilde Marie Holsen's concert, it was not so easy for me to put into words what was to be played. I asked a person who was also waiting to enter if Holsen's music is what is called "free jazz", but he shook his head. When I talked about "experimental music" he stretched out a yes as if to say "not really". Finally, he explained that you never really know where genres, subgenres, labels and booths begin and end. In the festival's programme, I read that Holsen's music lies at "an intersection between jazz, drone and contemporary music", but I don't know what drone and contemporary music is, and I would find it difficult if someone asked me to define jazz. Hopefully, Holsen, whom I was going to interview after the concert, would be able to give me an insight into what her work is about.

I imagined that her music might be like these abstract paintings that you don't understand when you first see them and that you understand even less after reading what the artist himself wrote about them. But I was wrong.

Holsen told me that you have to "put words to the music" when you "address the public and the press and festivals and organizers." But when I pointed out that many people had come to the concert and that she therefore achieves some success despite the fact that her music may be out of the ordinary, she said that the presentation can often "be more alienating than the music itself." She talks about "letting the music speak for itself" and seems only happy that the audience takes the liberty of giving her music meaning through free associations. She says that she wants to convey something, and that it is up to the listener to decide what she has conveyed.  

Holsen himself used the expression "improvised soundscapes" to describe his music. When I asked her what she thought of the term "weird" that the festival uses to denote those who have a taste for, among other things, the type of music she plays, she said that she understood the meaning. She distinguished between a type of music that is "more accessible", immediately understandable "because it sounds like things you've heard before", and another type of music like hers, which is perhaps "more incomprehensible", and requires you to be open to hear sounds that do not belong to "the classic pop song or jazz song schema."

I asked her if she wanted to be misunderstood, and she replied "No, I don't want to be misunderstood" and laughed. So she continued:

- "That's what's really nice when you notice that the audience has had an experience, right? So that they are shocked or surprised that: "Hi, this was a nice experience." I think that is absolutely fantastic. Then you have given them something that they didn't know what it was, perhaps. They also get a good experience out of it. And then they understand it. So that music becomes comprehensible music again. But they had to be open to it.”

Pulling people out of the comfort of recognition can be precisely that of confronting them with forms they cannot yet name. "Intersection" or "unclear boundaries" are words that can be used to hide the fact that one actually lacks words. You should perhaps be content with using proper names to talk about the unusual, as you do when you call a storm Hilde, for example. Because proper nouns are often more elastic and multifaceted than adjectives. Holsen connected three names to her music when I asked her who plays the same type of music as her: Nils Petter Molvær, Arve Henriksen and Ikue Mori.

Text: Nadji Aïssa Khéfif / Photo: Magnus Stivi