Hvor En Var Baen – Places of Childhood
This paper presents a multi-component research project that explores artistic settings of the work of Danish poet, Martin N Hansen (1893 – 1976). What started as an exercise in musical reinterpretation through the recording of the album Hvor En Var Baen (Medbøe/Halle/Malling, Copperfly Records, 2019) evolved into the making of a short film (Places of Childhood, 2019) shot on location in the south of Denmark. The meanings and processes behind these outputs subsequently formed the basis for a forthcoming book chapter for Routledge edited by Antonia Lima that brings together perspectives on music and literature from diverse academic authors.
At the heart of the overarching cross-media research is playing with ideas of memory and nostalgia through intertextual approaches. Hansen’s poetry describes life on the small Danish island of Als on the Baltic coast. Although written during the 20th Century, his characterization of local people and places hark back to the pre-industrial era – an unspoiled, bucolic idyll. His verse was originally set to music by a number of local composers which, together with collaborating musicians, I reimagined in a contemporary Nordic jazz style. Here again, we chose to attempt a nostalgic approach in terms of minimal use of technological artifice to represent the aims of the original material. The film that was subsequently made around the album tracks includes the voices of older-generation islanders reading aloud Hansen’s original poems in the dialect of the region. Again a conscious decision was taken around the age of participants in order to highlight the language as it was spoken in earlier times – as is common to dialects of language, they change with the times and, indeed, many are at risk of disappearing entirely.
The paper will present excerpts from the album and film and the dominant themes of discussion emerging from the related book chapter. Through an intertextual approach, my presentation will play with ideas of nostalgia, memory construction and meaning making through sound, picture and spoken/written language. Both local geography, culture and the poems of Hansen played an integral part in my own childhood and consequently a parallel strand of personal identity and memory making is at play throughout.
Keywords: music, literature, moving image, intertextuality
Biography
Haftor Medbøe is Professor of Jazz & Improvised Music at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland where he leads Post Graduate Research in the School of Arts & Creative Industries. He is Co-editor in Chief at Jazz Research Journal, Equinox Publishing, founding Chair of the Scottish Jazz Archive and holds a position on the Board of Directors, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival. As practitioner, he has to date released 16 albums of original music and presented his work extensively on the international stage. His academic research focusses on aspects of his own artistic practice and on understandings of the creative communities of artistic production.
Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom – h.medboe@napier.ac.uk