Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2017, Qupperneq 34

Music
Icelandic pop singer
Glowie, who was one
of the nine emerging
artists on the cover
of our special Iceland
Airwaves magazine
last year, has signed a
major label deal with
Columbia Records/
RCA. Glowie said, on
Facebook: “Everything is possible if
you just believe. My dad stamped this
in my head when I was ten years old,
when I told him I was going to become
a professional singer and dancer when
I grew up. Many obstacles have arisen
along the way, but I’ve signed my first
record deal with Columbia Records in
London, and RCA in the USA. The feeling
is indescribable. Now begins a new
adventure.” Góða ferð, Glowie!
The annual national battle-of-the-
bands competition Músíktilraunir
(“Music Experiments,” in English)
recently came to its climax with a
concert held at Harpa. The winners
were Between Mountains, a duo from
the the Westfjords. Second came the
charmingly named Phlegm, and third
were Omotrack. Previous winners and
runners-up have gone on to garner a
lot of attention in Iceland and beyond,
with Músíktilraunir’s notable alums in-
cluding Samaris, Mammút, Of Monsters
and Men, Agent Fresco and Vök.
The Extreme Chill festival have an-
nounced the first names from their
2017 lineup. The headliners, both from
the UK, will be The Orb and Mixmaster
Morris. The homegrown acts an-
nounced so far include Gyða Valtys-
dóttir, Jónas Sen, Stereo Hypnosis,
Jón Ólafsson & Futuregrapher, Tonik
Ensemble and SiGRÚN, with more to
be announced. The 2017 edition will
happen in Reykjavík for the first time,
between July 7-9. Tickets are on sale
now at midi.is, priced at 7,900 ISK—
previous editions have sold out.
Icelandic musicians old and new have
been getting busy in the Americas.
At the Reykjavík Festival, to be held in
the LA Disney Hall, attendees will be
treated to a lineup that includes múm,
JFDR, DJ flugvél og geimskip, Jóhann
Jóhannsson, the Bedroom Community
collective, and Sigur rós, amongst oth-
ers. The shows happen April 4-17, after
which 'Björk Digital' will be on display
from May 19-June 4. Just across the
border in Mexico, Björk also played to a
rapturous crowd at the Ceremonia Fes-
tival, appearing a day late after it was
almost cancelled due to a windstorm
that damaged the stage, leading a lo-
cal newspaper to declare “Björk Saves
Ceremonia!” Finally, Low Roar are also
midway through a long tour of the US
in support of their forthcoming album,
entitled ‘Once In A Long, Long While’. JR
MUSIC
NEWS
English Folk Hits
Reykjavík

Words: Gabriel Dunsmith Photo: Gisli Egill Hrafnsson
Chris Foster’s ‘Hadelin’
release concert
Sat., April 8, Mengi, 21:00, 2,000 ISK
English folk ballads don’t get much
attention these days on a musi-
cal stage saturated with grunge-
hip-techno-disco-pop. But here to
give them the attention they de-
serve is Chris Foster, a Somerset
native who has lived in Reykjavík
since 2004. Chris’s work preserv-
ing and promoting traditional
Icelandic music—and reviving
old Icelandic instruments such as
the langspil and fiðla—is worthy
of praise in its own right, but for
his upcoming album release con-
cert at Mengi, Chris returns to his
roots. At the artsy venue just off
Skólavörðustígur, Chris will debut
‘Hadelin’, his first solo album in
nine years and a tour-de-force of
heart-tugging, story-laden song.
Though pop culture’s obsession
with all that is glitzy, ostentatious
and cacophonous threatens to rel-
egate the ballad as a form to dusty
Oxford archives, Chris insists on
his website that these songs “are
not museum pieces.” Instead,
“they refer to the natural world,
the rhythm of the seasons, birth,
life, death, love, betrayal, the ebb
and flow of the struggle for justice
and human rights.” In digging up
old songs and painting them in
a new light, Chris effectively re-
claims the ballad and insists they
are worthy of singing.
What is a ballad, you ask? Sim-
ply put, it is a song that tells a story
in narrative form. It often lacks a
chorus, instead relying on a se-
ries of verses that carry the same
melody. Ballads have their origins
in medieval Europe, where they
were initially accompanied by
dancing. They were often passed
down orally, leading their style, in-
strumentation and lyrics to change
frequently across the centuries—a
fluidity which Chris embraces in
his album. In adapting such an-
cient songs for the 21st century,
Chris argues that ballads infuse
our lives with something vital.
In a world beset by wars and op-
pression, the ballads open a win-
dow into how we might mourn.
Take this verse, for example, from
“The Trees They Grow So High,”
the seventh track on Chris’s album:

She made for him a shroud of the
hadelin so fine
and every stitch she put in it, her
tears came trickling down,
crying, “Once I had a bonny boy, but
now I have got never a one,
so fare you well my bonny boy
forever.”

The song tells of an arranged mar-
riage between a woman of twenty-
one and a man of sixteen, whose
sudden death leaves his widow
stricken. Though the lyrics may
appear antiquated at first glance,
the song’s power lies in the raw-
ness of its emotions and its capac-
ity to bring grief to the surface of
life. Ballads force us to confront
our own darkness as well as the
darkness of the world, and in that
way can function as instruments
of healing.
Chris sings with such deftness
that you can hear in his voice his
sense of home, his drive for jus-
tice and his deep love of life. He
is an artist in the truest sense:
one who is dedicated to his craft,
who desires to tell a story rather
than entertain. His show at Mengi
promises to be—like his album
title—a thread of sorts, infusing
the current generation with the
gems of the past.
LISTEN &SHARE: gpv.is/dun05
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