Karin Höghielm

Background

I have a varied background and have definitely not followed traditional paths. For example, it was a conscious decision on my part not to attend Stockholm’s College of Music. I’ve always been interested in so much more than music alone and see myself as more artist than musician.

My compositions had perhaps sounded rather different if I’d been “institutionally” educated and trained.

As a child in the countryside of Gotland I began with classical piano, combined with church choir singing. Music is part of our family tradition. My father is an amateur jazz guitarist; my mother sings in a choir; guitar and bass are my brother’s instruments; my aunt plays the piano, and grandfather played dancing and folk music on his violin.
Tired of school I started a hairdressing apprenticeship at 16.

After qualifying, my musical yearning took over and I moved to Stockholm in order to study. I’ve had many different jobs alongside my studies in musicology, classical song, piano, composition and cello. Furthermore, I have studied dance and motion, theatre, painting and sculpture, and completed a course in vocal/movement studies at the Centre for creativity and theatre in Copenhagen.

I played synthesizer in a rock band and “illustrated” scrap iron by vocals and cello at Finnboda Varv in Stockholm. Later – influenced by my new place of residence in Malmö’s multicultural Möllevången – I created, amongst other projects, Drumvoices, a female percussion group, and the solo dance performance Sensomoto. Both in the past and present, my expressive work has alternated between underground and what may be termed “high culture”.

Karin

The Music

Reviewers, record shops, music arrangers and not least listeners are never agreed about which genre I belong to. This can vary between folk music, world music, avant-garde, minimalism, ambient and contemporary music. Characterising my own music, I’d say it is contemporary with certain influences from folk music.

A lot sounds like folk music, but I don’t believe I’m “maintaining” any special tradition. The music follows written notation apart from certain exceptions, such as percussion and some of my own vocals.

The compositions contain a certain two-sidedness: that of folk music – often extrovert and dynamic – and a more classical, introverted and sacred expressiveness. I feel perhaps closest to minimalism, which I’ve listened a lot to.

The voice equilibrist, composer, choreographer and film-maker Meredith Monk from New York should be mentioned. She has meant a lot to me and been a major female role model. Over many years I have tried to use different singing methods from various parts of the world, combined with my western expressive possibilities [and opportunities], mainly in my solo performances.

Pictures or dreams inspire me. Nature is also constantly present in my compositions and performances. My upbringing on Gotland has also contributed to an interest in early music which expresses itself in my compositions.
The fact that I’ve also built reconstructions of viking-age bone flutes, bull-roar, etc., and I am interested in a kind of music archaeology, is certainly connected with the culture-maintaining tradition on Gotland.

The songs are often wordless. An absence of lyrics gives greater vocal freedom. It also allows broader interpretative possibilities for the listener, who, not infrequently, “hears” different languages in the very absence of words – something that in itself gives quite a kick.

Photo: Martin larson

Over the past few years I’ve begun to set other texts to music. In order to still maintain a kind of mystery, and also focus on language-specific qualities, I have chosen rather more unusual languages. Examples of this are Gutasagan, a filmed short opera in Gutniska (early Gotlandic); musical settings of Gustaf Larsson’s poetry in gutamål; and the poet George Stiernhielm’s 17th-century Swedish and Latin.

I have also taken part in projects with other artists that have led to invigorating meetings betweeen different art forms.

Sounds and Instruments

I’ve had an unexplainable fascination for sounds since a young age. I never use sampling. Something quite special can occur, however, when you’re standing in a bone-chilling wind while making a live recording of this copper mine’s bell. You not only get the bell, but also the wind, a moped engine in the distance and a crow. A kind of sound research has taken place quite naturally, by collecting and playing non-traditional instruments such as mouth- organ, scrap iron, glass, dulcimer, vacuum-cleaner pipes, water and stones.

The fact that I compose almost exclusively for acoustic instruments and voices, and prefer acoustic performances, could be interpreted as anti-technological. This is most definitely not so – I’d hardly be able to make studio recordings in that case. I even belong to the few who still write music by hand, as I enjoy crafting with pen and paper, even though it’s enormously time-consuming.

Few people are now interested in acoustic music, as so much can be digitally created today. All instruments generate sound waves and harmonics, which I believe influence the listener – hopefully in a deep and positive way. I’m convinced that sound and music can have a healing effect, in the same manner that the opposite can occur.
Acoustic sounds feel more pleasant to work with than electrified. I’ve felt during recent years that a kind of urban acoustic environmental destruction has taken place. This obviously has a psychological effect upon ourselves; the fact that we’re constantly bombarded by a cacophony of sound, in all its different forms, without any chance of escape. It’s one reason I’ve chosen to spend several months of every year in the countryside of Sweden, where silence reigns.

Despite being non-Christian, I have set to music one Kyrie and Laus Trinitati, by Hildegard von Bingen, and Saint Bridget’s Ave Maris Stella. In rural Gotland there exists a more natural, day-to-day contact with the Church: my grandmother was a churchwarden, a position my mother has now inherited from her.

I have even composed music to Native American words of wisdom, the result of which is the choral piece, Earth-Call.

I’d like my music to inspire, empower and give hope to the listener, wherever he or she might be on this earth. The idea that we are a collective appeals to me; religion or country is merely a veneer.

Translation: Mark Davies

_______________________________________________________________________________________