A PLAY WITH TRADITIONS // PART I // I LISTEN: ...SHORT BREATH IN
I am searching in the sound archives for recordings of polser with my grandfather playing the fiddle, instead I find the voice of my grandmother singing. My father has made the recording. I picture the two of them; my father, his mother, by the kitchen table at Glåmos, light blue pillows on the chairs. I listen...
Short breath in. ‘A tune I will perform and sing as well as I can’. Singing forthrightly, a little fast, almost speaking, ‘it is terrible to hear, but you should believe it is true’.
Slides somewhat between intervals, the flow broken by small breaths. Broken again from clearing of the voice.
The kitchen table slams between the verses.
She leans into some of the notes,
some phrase endings receive vibrato and length.
In some notes she is farther away. Hoarse or fast, without weight. Light notes have lower intonation.
They are softer, weaker, faster gone.
After some verses the timbre of the voice has changed.
She is turned elsewhere.
A verse about the gun, Lars Hille who shot his poor friend
in the neck, Jokkum's dead body in a mine shack, the dark prison. The song drives easily and simply away, some
words disappear. In the last phrase she begins to laugh,
the last note vibrates chucklingly.