DAY 1
WELCOME TO THE ALBUM EXPERIENCE OF 'SONGS OF A SAD SAILOR'
MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE SAD SAILOR
Photo by Kjell Söderlund, from the book PONAPE - ett äreminne.
Today I want to tell you about the background of this project, how it all started. There are a few things I need to tell you about myself before we get started. The first is that I have always been extremely fascinated by miniatures. I feel pure happiness when I see well-made models and beautiful tiny hand-crafted things, especially if they look JUST like the real things and even more if they are WORKING. My dollhouse was my favourite toy and I loved making little things for it myself.
The other thing is that I come from an island, and when you do - somehow, somewhere deep inside - you always long for the sea. Six years ago my husband and I bought a sailing boat, and we love using it, we spend most of the summer at sea, if we can.
And this whole Album thing started (without me realizing it back then) a couple of years ago when we sailed across the Baltic Sea to the Finnish islands Åland, where we had never been before. It took us about a day on the open sea to get there, which made our bodies tired and our minds really relaxed.
The little city Mariehamn is a real pearl, and one of the best things with it is their Maritime Museum, just by the guest harbor. We spent several hours there, and my husband went back to our boat to rest, but I wanted to stay a little longer. I found their film room, that was all empty, but a film was just about to start, so I snuck into the darkness and sank down in one of the soft, cozy red chairs.
“One of the world’s most amazing ship models - a perfect copy of the early 1900’s sailing ship Ponape, with all details working - was made by a WWII war camp prisoner without access to neither drawings, nor tools or proper building materials!”
What!? How could that be!? I sat up in my chair - this was obviously something for me! I totally enjoyed this film. Amazing pictures, amazing story, and on the top of that the story was amazingly well told. So much passion, creativity and drama went into it. I told my husband - “We’ve got to go there tomorrow again, you totally have to see this film!” We did, and he loved it just as much as I did.
When we got home to Stockholm the film happened to be sent on Swedish Television, and was also on their streaming service for a month, and we both saw it three of four times more! That’s never happened to us with another film!
Almost a year later, when I started to work on my first solo piano album - I was thinking about how nice it would be to have some kind of a red thread that could tie the album together. And after a while I got the idea to use the story of the sailor from the film. At the same time the title was born - ‘Songs of a Sad Sailor’. Alliterations are nice in titles, aren’t they?
BEAUTIFUL ALAND
Here are some photos from that first sailing trip we made to Åland, where I saw the film about Runar Husell and his love for the sailing ship Ponape.
It made a great impact on me, and later it inspired my first solo album.
Another hobby I love to spend time on is photographing. Here I am taking a picture of…
… Kobba Klintar, that is just in the harbor entrance of Mariehamn, the main town of Aland.
Rödhamn has the cutest little guest harbor, where you can get freshly baked bread delivered on your foredeck every morning.
Bluebells, gracefully bowing in the salty winds.
A mast on Pommern, a museum ship that belongs to the beautiful Maritime Museum of Mariehamn…
… which is where I first encountered the intriguing life story of Runar Husell.
RUNAR HUSELL
The hero of our story is named Runar Husell, born in 1916 on the small island Vardo in the Alandian archipelago, situated between Sweden and Finland. His mother was unmarried and couldn’t take care of him, so he spent his first four years with relatives, before becoming a foster child in a kind but poor home. At a young age he had to start working at the neighboring farm and despite having an exceptionally good head for studies he could only go to school for four years.
Besides emigrating, the only options for a boy without means on Aland in the beginning of the 1900’s was to become either a farmhand or a sailor. As a thirteen-year-old Runar took to sea.Image
TODAY'S SONG: UNDER THE ASPEN TREES
ABOUT THE SONG
Under the Aspen Trees is one of the pieces I had finished long before I encountered the story of Runar Husell.
When it first came to me, I thought it sounded like a song we sang at school when I was a kid “Det går en vind över vindens ängar” - “A wind is moving over the meadow of winds”, The second verse starts with “A girl walks under the Aspen Trees, I have a withered photography”. I started to play around with those words, singing about a girl walking under the Aspen Trees, taking photos for her Instagram… but soon I felt it was going to be an instrumental.
Several Swedish friends who have heard this say it reminds them of Swedish pianist Jan Johansson, who made records in the 1960’s with Swedish folk tunes played in jazz style. And yes - I love his records, so I guess that influence is in there, but also the Scandinavian folk tunes I grew up with.
I thought the folk tone of this piece fitted with the beginning of this story, about the little boy growing up under harsh circumstances on Aland.
WOULD YOU TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?
Well, now you know some things about me. It’s only fair I get to know a little bit about you, don’t you think? 😊
What's your name, and where do you come from?
Since you're here, you're obviously a music lover! Tell me more about that! What role does music have in your life?
Press the button to open a pop-up, where you can write a little something about yourself! I will see it, and I will answer!
Would love to meet you!
- Maria 🌷