From Field to Festival: New Potatoes and Finland-Swedish Song Traditions in Nauvo
Text, pictures & lyric translations: Kaj Ahlsved (Cover picture: Gittan Holmberg performing as Evita Päron singing unaccompanied “potato songs”. The traditional Finnish horn septet “Sointu-seitsikko” performed separately. ) The archipelago community of Nagu has a rich cultural life—among other things, several music festivals and events that enrich the everyday life and cultural experience of the permanent […]
Chasing sounds in Dollar (on an empty stomach)
Text & pictures: Kaj Ahlsved We have now arrived in Dollar, and our ears are slowly but surely starting to get tuned in to Dollar’s sonic environment. When meeting people, we usually point out that its they – the locals – who are the real experts on their sonic environment. We, the researchers, don’t have […]
Songs out of season: Climate change and the changing rhythms of wine production
Text & photo: Kaj Ahlsved The first thing that struck me when we drove up by bus from Trento to Cembra was that the slopes were filled with structures for cultivating various types of grapes for wine production. For winegrowers, climate change is a reality and brings new challenges — for example, drought, heat, heavy […]
“You hear more dogs than children”: Workshop on sound and change in Cembra
Text: Kaj Ahlsved, Heikki Uimonen, Meri Kytö As a method of eliciting information from the expert listeners of the villages – the villagers themselves – SOMECO team organises public workshops during our fieldwork. Apart from that, we are aiming to present our project to those interested and to bring back the earlier research results to […]
Listening to the Memory on the Street
Text: Carolin Müller Walking may be just as important to scholars of sonic environments as the sounds encountered in motion. Central to this is the relationship between the human body and the ground it touches while moving through space. Frauke Berendt (2018, 251) notes that soundwalks represent a specific form of human mobility, characterized by […]
50 years is a long time
Text: Meri Kytö & Kaj Ahlsved Rhythmanalysis in soundscape studies has dominantly meant looking into circadian, daily rhythms. This project opens up a much longer span of time, practically of two generations. Last Sunday happened to be “Goldene Konfirmation”, that is, the 50th anniversary of the confirmation of the Spring 1975. The mass started with […]
Silence, Expectations, and the Seasonal Rhythms of Skruv’s Outdoor Life
Text: Kaj Ahlsved Eduardo Galeano’s book Soccer in Sun and Shadow contains a famous passage about silence and places for sporting activities: “Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than […]