Listen to This (20 page)
Authors: Alex Ross
On the day I was to leave Iceland, Björk decided that I should see something of Reykjavik’s art scene. Jóga, one of her oldest friends, is married to the actor and artist Jón Gnarr, who was having an opening that afternoon. We drove in another taxi—if Iceland has limousines, Björk does not use them—to an old Lutheran church in the center of town. The
show was titled
INRI,
and it consisted of a series of photographs of G.I. Joe and Ken dolls acting out the Stations of the Cross. The resulting evocation of Christ’s last days was unconventional—only four of the attendees of the Last Supper wear clothes, and the best-dressed one, in khakis and a sweater-vest, is Satan—but if any conservative Christians were scandalized they did not make themselves known. The mood of the piece was whimsical rather than provocative. “Judas looks like a rave kid,” Björk said, giggling approvingly.
show was titled
INRI,
and it consisted of a series of photographs of G.I. Joe and Ken dolls acting out the Stations of the Cross. The resulting evocation of Christ’s last days was unconventional—only four of the attendees of the Last Supper wear clothes, and the best-dressed one, in khakis and a sweater-vest, is Satan—but if any conservative Christians were scandalized they did not make themselves known. The mood of the piece was whimsical rather than provocative. “Judas looks like a rave kid,” Björk said, giggling approvingly.
In the church, everyone seemed to know Björk, but no one made a fuss over her. I had a hard time telling whether the people who greeted her were relatives, old friends, fans, or simply extroverted strangers. At one point, a blond boy walked up to Björk and said “Hi, Björk!” Björk said “Hi!” in return, whereupon the kid casually sauntered away. Two older teens were dressed in tattered, oddly festooned military-style greatcoats; they looked like stylish deserters from the final Army of the Tsar. Outside the church, a television reporter was interviewing Gnarr. On a nearby lake, swans made a noise that sounded like an anarchist brass band, or so it seemed in this context. The snow and ice melted in the weak glare of the sun. I said goodbye to Björk and took a cab to the airport.
My incoming flight had landed after dark, and I had seen nothing of the landscape around the city. Now I stared in wonder at the miles of blackish lava, at the volcanic boulders that had dropped from the sky, at the conical peak of Mount Keilir, in the distance. I had gone from a fashionable modern place into a charcoal sketch of an unfinished world.
For a long time, there was nothing where Iceland now is. The volcanoes of the island began rising from the Atlantic twenty million years ago—a geological pause for breath. The island was undisturbed by what the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness called “the tyranny of mankind” until about A.D. 870, when Norse and Celtic farmers began to settle it. They brought with them the lore of the Germanic tribes, which became the basis of an oral and written tradition that changed little in the following nine centuries. The stories of gods, heroes, Vikings, and ordinary Icelanders were expounded in
rímur,
or extended chanted tales. When they are read today, they are uncannily familiar, for they have burrowed their way into modern mythologies of Western culture; Wagner used them as the
principal source of the
Ring
cycle, and J.R.R. Tolkien put them at the core of
The Lord of the Rings.
Wagner’s Ring of Fire and Tolkien’s Mount Doom come straight out of the Icelandic landscape. No wonder I felt a chill when I saw Mount Keilir looming over the plain.
rímur,
or extended chanted tales. When they are read today, they are uncannily familiar, for they have burrowed their way into modern mythologies of Western culture; Wagner used them as the
principal source of the
Ring
cycle, and J.R.R. Tolkien put them at the core of
The Lord of the Rings.
Wagner’s Ring of Fire and Tolkien’s Mount Doom come straight out of the Icelandic landscape. No wonder I felt a chill when I saw Mount Keilir looming over the plain.
Until the early twentieth century, the Icelanders lived out of sight and mind, more a rumor than a fact. Laxness changed this by winning the Nobel Prize, in 1955, for his novel
Independent People,
which tells of a sheepherder named Bjartur, who holds on to his parcel of land in the face of mounting natural and supernatural obstacles. The book is notable for, among other things, its ambivalent relationship with the Nordic idea; it paints an epic portrait of a hardy, solitary soul, yet it undercuts that mythology with slow-burning deadpan humor and blindsiding blasts of emotion. If Bjartur suffers in isolation, the novel suggests, it is because he chose to. Laxness’s mixture of dignity and irony seems central to the national character.
Independent People,
which tells of a sheepherder named Bjartur, who holds on to his parcel of land in the face of mounting natural and supernatural obstacles. The book is notable for, among other things, its ambivalent relationship with the Nordic idea; it paints an epic portrait of a hardy, solitary soul, yet it undercuts that mythology with slow-burning deadpan humor and blindsiding blasts of emotion. If Bjartur suffers in isolation, the novel suggests, it is because he chose to. Laxness’s mixture of dignity and irony seems central to the national character.
Modern Icelandic music begins with Jón Leifs, who lived from 1899 to 1968, and whose 1961 work
Hekla
helped bring Björk and her chorus together. While in Reykjavik, I had lunch with Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, a young Harvard-educated musicologist who is writing a biography of Leifs. “He was a tremendously complex personality,” Árni told me. “To some, he was witty, charming, and sophisticated; to others a paranoid megalomaniac.” Despite his drastic individuality, Leifs based his music on a close study of Icelandic folk music: his lurching rhythms follow the patterns of the
rímur
chant, and his craggy, medieval-sounding melodies imitate a song style called
tvisöngur.
The composer spent much of his early career studying in Germany, and remained there throughout the Third Reich. Unfortunately, his messianic belief in Icelandic tradition blended all too well with Nazi philosophy, which prized Iceland as the locus of an uncontaminated Aryan culture. Yet his roiling dissonances and percussive effects caused some to label him a “degenerate.” The fact that he had married a Jewish German pianist did not help his position. He and his wife escaped to Sweden in 1944.
Hekla
helped bring Björk and her chorus together. While in Reykjavik, I had lunch with Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, a young Harvard-educated musicologist who is writing a biography of Leifs. “He was a tremendously complex personality,” Árni told me. “To some, he was witty, charming, and sophisticated; to others a paranoid megalomaniac.” Despite his drastic individuality, Leifs based his music on a close study of Icelandic folk music: his lurching rhythms follow the patterns of the
rímur
chant, and his craggy, medieval-sounding melodies imitate a song style called
tvisöngur.
The composer spent much of his early career studying in Germany, and remained there throughout the Third Reich. Unfortunately, his messianic belief in Icelandic tradition blended all too well with Nazi philosophy, which prized Iceland as the locus of an uncontaminated Aryan culture. Yet his roiling dissonances and percussive effects caused some to label him a “degenerate.” The fact that he had married a Jewish German pianist did not help his position. He and his wife escaped to Sweden in 1944.
Hekla,
which is named after Iceland’s largest active volcano, has been described as the loudest piece of music ever written. It requires nineteen percussionists, who play a fantastic battery of instruments, including anvils, stones, sirens, bells, ships’ chains, a sort of tree-hammer, shotguns, and cannons. During a break in Björk’s choral recording sessions, I asked
one of the Schola Cantorum singers about their recording of
Hekla,
on the BIS label. “That was totally crazy,” he told me. “Leifs knew that a lot of what he wrote couldn’t really be sung, but he wrote it down anyway. Björk is very easy to work with by comparison, although the music is surprisingly similar sometimes.” Björk herself loves Leifs’s music. “I think he almost animated eruptions and lava in sound,” she said. Yet this composer lived out the tragedy of Laxness’s “independent man,” who fails to see that his pride is the source of his suffering. It seemed to me that Björk has been working her entire career to correct this mythology—still to maintain independence, to seek the new and the strange, but also to make compromises when necessary, to live in reality, to accept imperfection.
which is named after Iceland’s largest active volcano, has been described as the loudest piece of music ever written. It requires nineteen percussionists, who play a fantastic battery of instruments, including anvils, stones, sirens, bells, ships’ chains, a sort of tree-hammer, shotguns, and cannons. During a break in Björk’s choral recording sessions, I asked
one of the Schola Cantorum singers about their recording of
Hekla,
on the BIS label. “That was totally crazy,” he told me. “Leifs knew that a lot of what he wrote couldn’t really be sung, but he wrote it down anyway. Björk is very easy to work with by comparison, although the music is surprisingly similar sometimes.” Björk herself loves Leifs’s music. “I think he almost animated eruptions and lava in sound,” she said. Yet this composer lived out the tragedy of Laxness’s “independent man,” who fails to see that his pride is the source of his suffering. It seemed to me that Björk has been working her entire career to correct this mythology—still to maintain independence, to seek the new and the strange, but also to make compromises when necessary, to live in reality, to accept imperfection.
Björk listens avidly to choral music, which plays a dominant role in Iceland’s music culture. If one in ten inhabitants seems to play in a rock band, one in five sings in a choir. While working on
Medúlla,
Björk was listening to several CDs of choral songs by Reykjavik’s Hamrahlid Choir, which she herself once sang in. It is somberly beautiful music that sets you on the edge of paralyzing sadness, or, perhaps, pulls you back gently from the brink. Later on, she reconvened the entire Schola Cantorum to record a choral arrangement of Jórunn Viðar’s song “Vökuró” (“Vigil”), a simple, elegiac setting of a poem by Jakobína Sigurðardóttir:
Medúlla,
Björk was listening to several CDs of choral songs by Reykjavik’s Hamrahlid Choir, which she herself once sang in. It is somberly beautiful music that sets you on the edge of paralyzing sadness, or, perhaps, pulls you back gently from the brink. Later on, she reconvened the entire Schola Cantorum to record a choral arrangement of Jórunn Viðar’s song “Vökuró” (“Vigil”), a simple, elegiac setting of a poem by Jakobína Sigurðardóttir:
Far away wakes the great world,
mad with grim enchantment,
disquieted,
fearful of night and day.
Your eyes,
fearless and serene,
smile bright at me.
mad with grim enchantment,
disquieted,
fearful of night and day.
Your eyes,
fearless and serene,
smile bright at me.
For decades, Viðar was the only female member of the Icelandic Composers’ Society. She was eighty-six when
Medúlla
was made, and her song became the still center of the album. It is one of the most purely entrancing recordings that Björk has made.
Medúlla
was made, and her song became the still center of the album. It is one of the most purely entrancing recordings that Björk has made.
Björk, like a lot of her countrymen, had a complicated family background; the idea of the nuclear family has never really taken root in Iceland. Her
parents divorced when she was two, and she grew up in several households at once. Her mother, whose second marriage was to a rock musician, cultivated a hippie, communelike atmosphere. Her father, who went on to become the head of the Icelandic electricians’ union, kept a more orderly, conservative household. Björk’s working method, a mixture of elaborate preparation and last-minute improvisation, perhaps reflects this divided upbringing. Her most substantial family inheritance may have been from her grandmothers, who could remember the timeless rural world of Laxness’s novels and preserved the romance of the landscape. From them Björk heard Icelandic folk songs, which she calls “old-woman melodies.”
parents divorced when she was two, and she grew up in several households at once. Her mother, whose second marriage was to a rock musician, cultivated a hippie, communelike atmosphere. Her father, who went on to become the head of the Icelandic electricians’ union, kept a more orderly, conservative household. Björk’s working method, a mixture of elaborate preparation and last-minute improvisation, perhaps reflects this divided upbringing. Her most substantial family inheritance may have been from her grandmothers, who could remember the timeless rural world of Laxness’s novels and preserved the romance of the landscape. From them Björk heard Icelandic folk songs, which she calls “old-woman melodies.”
Starting at the age of five, Björk attended the Tónmenntaskóli, a music school in Reykjavik. She took theory and history classes, sang in school choirs, and mastered the flute well enough to play an atonal Finnish concerto whose name she has now forgotten. In 1980, at the age of fifteen, she wrote a piece called
Glora,
which is the only extant recording of her as a flutist (Björk included the track on her 2002 boxed set,
Family Tree);
the playing is pristine, the music a bit like the beginning of the second part of
The Rite of Spring.
Under the guidance of a teacher named Stefan Edelstein, she explored the more radical corners of the classical repertory, gravitating toward Stockhausen, Messiaen, and John Cage. Stockhausen remains one of Björk’s heroes; she interviewed the composer in 1996 for the magazine
Dazed & Confused,
defining him as a man “obsessed with the marriage between mystery and science.” Early on, she made her own attempts at avant-garde experimentation. She made beats from a tape of her grandfather snoring and played drums to the sound of a popcorn machine.
Glora,
which is the only extant recording of her as a flutist (Björk included the track on her 2002 boxed set,
Family Tree);
the playing is pristine, the music a bit like the beginning of the second part of
The Rite of Spring.
Under the guidance of a teacher named Stefan Edelstein, she explored the more radical corners of the classical repertory, gravitating toward Stockhausen, Messiaen, and John Cage. Stockhausen remains one of Björk’s heroes; she interviewed the composer in 1996 for the magazine
Dazed & Confused,
defining him as a man “obsessed with the marriage between mystery and science.” Early on, she made her own attempts at avant-garde experimentation. She made beats from a tape of her grandfather snoring and played drums to the sound of a popcorn machine.
As she headed toward her teenage years, Björk had shaken off her classical upbringing. She was frustrated by its obsession with the past—“all this retro, constant Beethoven and Bach bollocks,” as she later said in her Stockhausen interview. With her stepfather’s encouragement, she started singing pop songs, and in 1977 she recorded an album of covers that sold respectably well as a novelty item. She formed a self-consciously “difficult” band with other conservatory alums, then appeared with a succession of riotous punk outfits, the most famous of which was Kukl. (There was a Kukl side project with the enticing name Elgar Sisters.) Kukl signed with Crass Records, the English anarchist label, which preached an anti-bourgeois,
anticommercial code. But Björk was skeptical of punk’s purist ideology: she immediately rebelled against the rebellion.
anticommercial code. But Björk was skeptical of punk’s purist ideology: she immediately rebelled against the rebellion.
Björk found fame abruptly, almost accidentally. In 1986, shortly before Reagan and Gorbachev arrived in Reykjavik for their nuclear summit, Björk and her comrades formed a collective organization called Bad Taste, whose manifesto announced, “Bad Taste will use every imaginable and unimaginable method, e.g. inoculation, extermination, tasteless advertisements and announcements, distribution and sale of common junk and excrement.” Principally, this assault took the form of a Bad Taste band, called the Sugarcubes, who aimed to send up the kind of bouncy cliches that passed for Icelandic pop. A song called “Birthday” became a surprise hit in Britain, and within a few months the band was an international phenomenon. The alternately charming and irritating synthetic jangle of the Sugarcubes was really an expression of the sensibility of Einar Orn, a poetic prankster who later released one of the freakiest rap albums in history. Björk, however, inevitably stepped forward as the band’s most conspicuous personality. The band ran its course after three albums.
By 1990, Björk was striking out on her own. That summer, she went on a long bicycle tour of remote parts of Iceland, stopping in tiny village churches and playing for an hour or two on the organ or harmonium. From this adventure emerged “Anchor Song,” which has a meandering melodic purity that is very Björkian. Around this time, she made a record of jazz standards,
Gling-Gló,
which suggests that she could have had a major career as a jazz singer. Most important, she delved into electronic pop, which traced its technique, if not its content, to Stockhausen’s pioneering synthesizer compositions of the early 1950s. She started out listening to Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, then moved on to dance music and rap. She used to take her boom box out into the Icelandic countryside to listen to Public Enemy’s
Fear of a Black Planet
at proper volume. It remains one of her favorite records; the voluptuous menace of tracks like “Welcome to the Terrordome”—beats and samples stacked up in a droning roar, like Stockhausen stuck on A-B repeat—echoes through all her work.
Gling-Gló,
which suggests that she could have had a major career as a jazz singer. Most important, she delved into electronic pop, which traced its technique, if not its content, to Stockhausen’s pioneering synthesizer compositions of the early 1950s. She started out listening to Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, then moved on to dance music and rap. She used to take her boom box out into the Icelandic countryside to listen to Public Enemy’s
Fear of a Black Planet
at proper volume. It remains one of her favorite records; the voluptuous menace of tracks like “Welcome to the Terrordome”—beats and samples stacked up in a droning roar, like Stockhausen stuck on A-B repeat—echoes through all her work.
In 1992, Björk moved to England, where she could experience electronic music at its most creatively intense. The whomping beats of techno dominated the London and Manchester dance floors, while ambient bleeps and clicks wafted through sweaty rooms in Sheffield. With new digital technologies, electronic artists could cover up the fuzz of synthesizers
and manufacture hyperreal, crystalline soundscapes. Björk was especially attracted to Massive Attack, which fused the languid pacing of reggae with the sonic depth of hip-hop. Like disco in the seventies, the new digital music often became a backdrop for strong female voices like Björk’s, which could burn like candles in a dark room. At this stage, Björk left much of the work to her producers, who included, to name the most significant among dozens, Graham Massey, Nellee Hooper, Tricky, and Mark Bell.
and manufacture hyperreal, crystalline soundscapes. Björk was especially attracted to Massive Attack, which fused the languid pacing of reggae with the sonic depth of hip-hop. Like disco in the seventies, the new digital music often became a backdrop for strong female voices like Björk’s, which could burn like candles in a dark room. At this stage, Björk left much of the work to her producers, who included, to name the most significant among dozens, Graham Massey, Nellee Hooper, Tricky, and Mark Bell.
In 1993, Björk made a phenomenal solo entrance, singing “Human Behavior” on the album
Debut.
Over a cheesy, funky timpani riff, which was sampled from the Antônio Carlos Jobim—Quincy Jones soundtrack album
The Adventurers,
she sang gleefully from an alien point of view, assessing the risk of getting close to the human species. It was a career-defining move: Björk positioned herself as a figure outside convention—as a member of another species, even—while implicating the listener in the conspiracy. The songs on
Debut
and its follow-up,
Post,
show Björk at large in the world, falling in and out of love with Venus-like boys, dancing at druggy parties, circulating through the neon glamour of nineties London. Behind the travelogue of the Icelander abroad was a sneakily imposing thesis about technology and music. She had delivered her manifesto in 1992, when she met up with Massey to record the track “Modern Things.” Machines, she sang over a gently burbling electronic stream, have always existed, waiting for their time in the sun. Technology, in other words, need not be a sleek, soulless force; it can embrace nature, teem with life.
Debut.
Over a cheesy, funky timpani riff, which was sampled from the Antônio Carlos Jobim—Quincy Jones soundtrack album
The Adventurers,
she sang gleefully from an alien point of view, assessing the risk of getting close to the human species. It was a career-defining move: Björk positioned herself as a figure outside convention—as a member of another species, even—while implicating the listener in the conspiracy. The songs on
Debut
and its follow-up,
Post,
show Björk at large in the world, falling in and out of love with Venus-like boys, dancing at druggy parties, circulating through the neon glamour of nineties London. Behind the travelogue of the Icelander abroad was a sneakily imposing thesis about technology and music. She had delivered her manifesto in 1992, when she met up with Massey to record the track “Modern Things.” Machines, she sang over a gently burbling electronic stream, have always existed, waiting for their time in the sun. Technology, in other words, need not be a sleek, soulless force; it can embrace nature, teem with life.
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