Stemmer i Voks
Forgotten songs from the Danish heath - Captured on wax rolls in the early 1900. Basis for New Music by Martin Ottosen and Ulla Bendixen (2/3 of the folktronica band Sorten Muld)
A hundred years from now
on the brink of a new era
you would still find fragments
of the old world’s legends and songs
in desolate regions on the Danish heath.
As dusk came
and afterthoughts crept
from the darkness
into the simple houses
scattered across the heather landscape
the humble residents
would gather in the scant light
wool-knitting
while quietly singing the tales
of evil fate and tender love
they themselves had heard
sung in the same twilight
by the generations before
From his simple clerk house in Gjellerup
folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen
went on solitary journeys on foot
along wet ruts through the heather
hunting ballads
in sparse light
he collected what he heard
in the humble homes
hoping that songs and tales
could be kept alive on paper
before the last voices faded
now accompanied by young enthusiasts
dragging on the finest
technology of the time
hoping to keep the
weathered faces and raw voices
alive on glass plates
and wax rolls
sang fragments of their songs
into the soft wax
on the valuable rolls
of Edison’s Phonograph
At the Royal Library in Copenhagen
songs and faces is now safely stored
in dark archives
And the rolls with voices in wax
cloned to the latest technology
of changing times
are waiting for that day
they are brought
into the light of a new era
We have now selected a handful of
songs where text or melody stand out
and resonate in us.
We let the forgotten voices
from the heath sing again
in duets with our singer, Ulla
as small vignettes
and as lead singers
We rephrase and compose new mate-
rial around the old recordings,
gently towards the simultaneously
present and distant in the voices of
wax
