Maja Ratkje and POING
Via improvisations and highly original arrangements, revolutionary music from various places and eras becomes fiery, present pieces that comment on and celebrate the people's struggle for freedom throughout all ages.
Maja Ratkje and POING Wach auf!
The collaboration between Ratkje and POING started in 1999, when she wrote the piece "essential extensions" for the trio, their first work. A year later, they stood together on a stage in Saunabar in Helsinki and performed songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht to everyone's great surprise. Since then, they have repeated the success with an annual night-to-May 1 concert in brown pubs such as Tranen and Valka in Oslo for a festive audience. The repertoire has been expanded to include everything from national anthems from defunct socialist states to pop songs from the 80s, folk music and workers' songs from around the world. The concerts have lasted several hours, with guests - professionals and amateurs, with poetry readings and with appeals. An apparently unreasonable mixture has eventually crystallized as a new, socialist interpretation tradition with a concept that was perceived as rude because it was beyond ironic, anarchistic because it was full of contradictions, and nostalgic beyond sentimentality and correct interpretation tradition.
For more information about Ratkje and POING, see the websites and Facebook:
http://ratkje.no/current-projects/with-poing/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Poing/176186432396007
