The ancient Egyptians understood the wisdom of sound. They used tone, chanting and vibration to navigate through life, in a way that is hard for us modern humans to understand. Spelling a word out loud, using your voice to make a ‘spell’ - they honoured sound as a powerful, expressive tool. Over thousands of years, they evolved a society and culture that thrived. In comparison to that timeline, our society, and our understanding of wisdom still has a very long way to go. Even if our arrogance wants to believe that we are the most evolved colony of cells that ever walked this planet and nobody has ever understood as much as we do right now, let’s not mistake this for a fact.
I often think about how melodies travel the Earth from one corner to the next, throughout time, shape shifting and adapting to different languages and cultures. Folk songs passed down generations as an oral history. Sounds that travel across borders and over mountain passes, linking societies and cultures across vast oceans. Nobody knows where they originated, nobody claims them as their own. The appreciation of sound and oral histories is also the appreciation of the primal need to connect with others and preserve profound human experiences.
Music brings hearts together. Music opens hearts. Music is the language of the heart. It can make the most painful event into a thing of beauty. Few things in this world have the power to do that. A language that runs deeper than words alone. The healing powers of certain tones or vibrations. The healing effects it has on our bodies. But this is not just true for humans.
When I’m in my village in rural Norway, and I walk by a bunch of cows in afield, I start singing a Norwegian lullaby that my grandmother used to sing tome before bed. As I sing this beautiful mysterious melody, as loud as I can with all my heart, the cows come closer and closer and gather around me.Cows love music too, it is known to even relax them when they are getting milked. My great grandmother would always play music for her cows. I catch myself wondering if she ever sang this song that I am singing for her cows back in the day.
Or take the melody of a whale, for example: every whale has their own unique melody. You could even go as far to say that their melody is their ‘name’. When they meet other whales, they will sing their melody to each other and it is a fascinating study how those complex, beautiful melodies travel across the oceans and influence other whales. Maybe it tells their story like a unique biological expression.
I have been an artist for as long as I can remember, always creating, thinking, singing, writing, making. What attracted me to music as an art form is the feeling of limitlessness. The endless potential and possibility of it all. The lawlessness endlessly intrigues me. Sometimes it feels like you can touch the untouchable. I love giving myself up so the moment of pure music ecstasy can take over my body. I welcome that vulnerability to come in as often as possible. But for that to happen I need to give up the part of me that wishes to exert control. I can never control what song comes out of me tomorrow, I can just humbly accept it and try and honor it as best as I can. I don’t try to force it to become a specific genre, I feel like it’s up to the listener to classify what this song means to them.
This idea of genre is very linear, and very typically human, somehow. As always we seek to classify things that make us feel like we understand everything in a logical pattern. It makes us feel safe, I guess. But I love the idea that music is the limitless language that travels the world in no need for a passport. It just needs to be felt. So this is why I struggle to stick with one genre. I’ve decided to just welcome the melodies as they are, and leave the ‘genre’ up to the listeners.
I’m celebrating this revelation by releasing my first ever MIXTAPE in April -this mixtape is called ‘Ginunngagap’ which according to Norse mythology is ‘the void in which the world was created’ the potential of everything and nothing all at once. The meeting of fire and ice. Feels very fitting for an artist that can’t seem to fit into one genre, don’t you think?
London artist Steinsdotter makes ethereal electronic pop with a refined edge. True to her Nordic heritage as a descendant of a fearless Viking warrior witch whose remains can be found in the British Museum today. Mixing refined and Avant guard production that showcases her meditative voice, her music has an incantation-like quality. Her whispers Ingrained with the brutality of Norse sagas. Find her on Instagram and Soundcloud.
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