Opening speech, Oslo Jazz Festival

Check against delivery

Translated from Norwegian

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

Whether you are wandering around inside the Opera house or clambering about on its roof – like yesterday, when the whole building was swarming with people – it is an interesting thought that, for many hundreds of years, it was right here at Bjørvika that all new ideas and impressions from abroad entered Norway.

Goods, cultures, languages, sounds, smells – not all of them pleasant, it must be said – all that was new came into Norway here, on ships sailing up the fjord and into Bjørvika, which literally means city bay. They came into this city, which had scarcely 9000 inhabitants just 200 years ago, but which could reach the one million mark before too long.

Everything new from abroad came into the country by sea.

So it is appropriate that the Oslo Jazz Festival opens right here at the edge of the water, in Snøhetta’s fantastic iceberg of a building, which is as spell-binding as jazz itself.

I wanted to start by talking about the sea, about ships and oceans and ports, because jazz has always been on the move – between musicians, between audiences, from one town to the next, from one country to another, and between continents. From its very beginnings, in the 19th century.

Port cities soak up a wide range of impressions – including music – and make them their own. They add their own rhythms, sounds and interpretations. New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Havana, San Francisco, Chicago, Barcelona, Oslo.

The life of jazz began between 100 and 150 years ago, developing from negro spirituals and gospel via blues, and on into our modern era. It is an extraordinary story. There are few other music genres that have had, and continue to have, so many forms of expression. I like jazz, and so do my sons, who are aged 10, 16 and 19, but it doesn’t always sound like we are listening to the same kind of music. Jazz encompasses so much – as the 24th Oslo Jazz Festival programme clearly shows.

Jazz has travelled and developed; it has challenged and explored traditions.

It has become a narrative voice in its own right. It has improvised, travelled onwards, and crossed boundaries into other musical genres.

Nowadays, music tends to use other forms of communication than ships and ports. Having said that, the language and metaphors of the sea are kept alive by new forms of piracy and the Pirate Bay website. 

We no longer say “My ship is loaded with...”, but rather “What have you downloaded...?” And the new sounds reach us through iPods, iTunes, mp3 files, YouTube, Spotify and mobile phones.

There is so much noise these days that it can be natural to long for silence – but with all due respect, that has to be something we seek in the mountains, not at a jazz festival.

Talking of noise, I recently discovered that one of the world’s most frequently-heard melodies today – the “Nokia tune” – is by no means new. The four bars of the tune are taken directly from the Spanish composer Francisco Tárregas’ composition for solo guitar, Gran Vals, from 1902. You can hear the whole piece on YouTube – it’s a beautiful little work. Little did Tárregas know that these few bars in waltz time would chime metallically from millions of little mobile devices all over the world a hundred years later.

*****

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to open the Oslo Jazz Festival. But I feel somewhat handicapped standing here with only the spoken word at my disposal, when the festival is about some of the best that music has to offer. And it is with great deference that I use my voice to introduce an event in honour of a Norwegian voice that has touched and moved so many – Radka Toneff’s poignant voice, which has stayed with us and continues to affect us – many years after she passed away far too early.

Anyone using words to open a jazz event should remember that jazz needs no words. Jazz encompasses everything we can’t express with words, so ideally a jazz festival should be spared any introductory remarks.

Jazz performers and jazz composers have sound at their fingertips and rhythm in their bones. The rest of us should really just lean back in our seats – as we will in a few minutes’ time. It is a good sign that today more and more of us are doing just that – going to festivals, taking part, leaning back or swinging along.

The huge increase in the number of festivals in Norway – to well over five hundred, half of which are during the summer – is a sign that we are changing.  

What is this all about? I think there are four main points:

Firstly, social contact.

A festival is like a market square, or more precisely the well in its centre, the watering hole, where people came to fetch fresh water, to wash, to pick up the news, and to meet other villagers or townspeople.

Oslo Jazz Festival reflects the same desire for social contact, but now centred around music – music that is not listened to alone, but together with others. It reflects the need for something fresh and new, straight from a living source.

Secondly, a sense of belonging.

A music festival, like this one in Oslo – or the ones in Molde, Kongsberg, Bergen, Notodden, Risør, Elverum, Harstad and many other towns and cities – creates a symbol for the town, gives the place a stronger identity.

Other festivals may be good, but this one is ours; and we want to support it, work as volunteers, go to the concerts. It is a happening here on our home territory.

It bears witness to the diversity and energy of this city, of which I am very proud. During these days, Oslo is united – fused together by jazz.

Thirdly, accessibility.

Festivals don’t just help people to relax, they also lower the threshold for visiting concert halls, for entering the world of music. They throw the doors wide open with a warm welcome for everyone. We throng together, just like people used to in city squares and market places. We hear things we’ve never heard before. New musical experiences are made accessible.  

And fourthly, new stimuli.

Jazz has long been a diverse and multicultural genre – even before such concepts existed. Jazz would never have come into existence without a continuous mixing of people and music. 

This reminds us that it is vital for a fairly homogenous country like Norway to receive new cultural stimuli from outside.

Exclusive cultivation of a “national culture” leads nowhere and can even be dangerous, as history has shown. Music is and will continue to be international. It speaks a universal language, and it builds bridges – bridges that we sorely need.

At a time when we are busy focusing on the election, our society and visions, I would like to bring to mind an observation by Karin Krog in an interview last year. She said that what is so special about music and about being a musician is your complete dependence on the people you are performing with.

I like this point. It expresses a fundamental truth: our dependence on each other. We come more fully to life in interaction with others. On our own we don’t amount to much, but together we can move mountains, see far beyond our individual limitations and create something extraordinary – like music, like jazz.

That is precisely why culture – and cultural policy – is so important when we are drawing the outlines of tomorrow’s society. To use an expression that is in vogue, it is “in our interests” to foster a vibrant cultural life in an era when people are not just thinking about what they live on, but also what they live for, when we are trying to find out how to live with each other.

This means that should see culture as a common good – not just a commodity. And because this sector is so important, we must be prepared to support the various arts with our common resources. We need to use the resources we have put aside together to play together, to listen together.

For me, this is a matter of principle.

That was tonight’s reminder that there’s an election coming up.

Now we have reached the moment when we can move from the limitations of the spoken word to what we came here for. We have reached the threshold to the world of music, the world of jazz – here at the entry point to the city, gathered at this meeting place, this centre point of our city, a place where bridges can be built.

It is a great pleasure for me to open the Oslo Jazz Festival 2009.