Why Rebekka made mother of all albums
‘I want to say to those who voted for Trump – the world isn’t as simple as you want us to think’
Rebekka Karijord
Norwegian-born, Stockholm-based musician Rebekka Karijord has been a composer of soundtracks that have quietly enhanced more than 30 films, as well as art installations and dance performances in parts of Scandinavia for the best part of a decade.
When she released We Become Ourselves in 2012, the album was fêted as one of that year’s best and she found herself showered with plaudits.
Music For Film And Theatre, out in 2014, compiled some of those earlier commissioned pieces, and her just-released album Mother Tongue is another exquisite body of work that at first seems esoteric, then compelling, and ultimately becomes an aural companion for all moods at any time.
It is an album that is incredibly personal to the 30-year-old. She began writing it when she was pregnant with her first child and she says: ‘The whole process was fascinating to me.
‘It is the biggest loss of control I have ever had but in an enjoyable way too. I realised that there weren’t many records about this topic that weren’t sweet and bit twee but rather looking at the multifaceted aspect of it. I wanted to write about it because it’s almost a taboo.’
However Rebekka had to put the artistic exploration of her pregnancy on hold when her baby girl arrived three months prematurely. ‘When she arrived, it stopped being about the music, it was all about surviving,’ she says.
‘Myself and my husband ended up living in the hospital for two months. In hospitals in Sweden they have a practice called “skin to skin”. They encourage mothers to hold their premature babies skin to skin for as long and as often as possible. It has been proven to help them to thrive.’
Rebekka says all she had to give to her new daughter was music and she sang to her constantly which had a calming effect on both mother and baby. She also found that new melodies were seeping into what she sang to her daughter.
‘I wrote them down and forgot about them and disappeared into my “mommy bubble”,’ she says.
‘I came upon them about eight months later and thought there is the record right there. All is good with her now, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk about her. Her name is Liv which means Life. I wanted to create something more truthful than those sweet lullabies that some artists put on the end of their records for their daughters.’
Rebekka herself started making music as a child, encouraged by her mother and grandmother. Even at eight years of age, she was making demos of herself. She rediscovered them years later and says: ‘They are very weird and cute. I had eclectic musical tastes. Patti Smith, Madonna, the English singer Sheila Chandra were my favourites.’
The songs on Mother Tongue are at times startling in their openness. One track, I Will Follow You Into The Wild, is an almost otherworldly chant. Another number, The Orbit, works as a slightly outthere pop song. Mother Tongue as a whole juxtaposes the invasiveness of pregnancy with the ferocity parents feel for the life they’ve created. The experience has, unsurprisingly, had a profound effect on Rebekka.
‘I find that because I have brought a life into being at this exact point in time I am at times sleepless with fear over the state of the world,’ she says. ‘I go over and back to America quite a lot. Many people are super afraid of what could happen since Trump was elected and yet just don’t talk about it. I want to say to these people who voted for Trump – go and travel; the world isn’t as simple as you want us to think. I also feel an urge to make political art in a way that I had never wanted to before.’
Rebekka will shortly be on her travels again, on a tour promoting the new album. She will announce Irish shows shortly.
‘I have found something special going on with Ireland. I noticed it when I played there promoting my last record,’ she says. ‘There were shows in Dublin I will never forget. Maybe it’s because we are ocean peoples. I’m from northern Norway and there is the big wild Atlantic Ocean and there is a rowdiness, realness and rawness about our peoples that makes us relate to each other particularly.
‘I’m married to an Irish-American man so I feel I have a connection to Ireland. He has red hair, freckles and he’s stubborn; very definitely Irish.’