Storsalen
Doors: 19:00
Concert starts: 20:00
Age limit: 18 or accompanied by a guardian
nyMusikk Stavanger: POING! + Maja Ratkje + SJOKK – Socialist Choir
The trio POING, with vocalist Maja S.K. Ratkje, has been described as some of the boldest, most innovative figures in Norwegian music. For 20 years, they have interpreted and performed songs related to the labour movement and socialism. Extending the workers’ song themes from their critically acclaimed album “Wach auf!” (2011), the project “Kapital & Moral” emerged. Its conception was marked by the release of the album “Kapital & Moral” on Grappa Music Publishing in spring 2016. The album was recorded at Propeller in Oslo in collaboration with top producer Kåre Chr. Vestrheim.
On “Kapital & Moral”, POING and Maja S.K. Ratkje perform songs from the past hundred years addressing themes around the impact of capital on each of us. Together, they explore the anger in John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”, the vulnerability of asylum children in Åge Aleksandersen’s ever-relevant “Fremmed fugl”, and Rudolf Nilsen’s depiction of children making clothes for Western consumers in “En vise om Kinabarna”. Music and lyrics by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, Alf Prøysen, and Tom Waits are also central to this project.
Ratkje and POING first collaborated in 1999 when she composed the piece “Essential Extensions” for the trio, their first work together. A year later, they shared a stage at Saunabar in Helsinki, performing songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht to everyone’s surprise. Since then, they have repeated this success with an annual night-before-May-1st concert in Oslo pubs for an enthusiastic audience.
The repertoire has expanded to include everything from national anthems of extinct socialist states to 1980s pop songs, folk music, and workers’ songs from around the world. Concerts have lasted many hours, featuring both professionals and amateurs, poetry readings, and speeches. What seems like an unlikely mix has crystallised into a new socialist interpretation tradition – bold because it defies irony, anarchic because it is contradictory, and nostalgic beyond mere sentimentality or conventional interpretation.
Performers:
Rolf-Erik Nystrøm – saxophone
Frode Haltli – accordion
Håkon Thelin – bass
Maja S.K. Ratkje – vocals
With: SJOKK – Socialist Choir, a mixed choir based in Sandnes. They are a cheerful group singing about the environment, solidarity, human dignity, and equality. Conductor – Ruth Trepekuniene.