I stemt jordby Vilde Sandve Alnæs

No music is made in a vacuum. It is created in time and space, and what defines this time and space influences what we create. I stemt jord consists of my own instrumental music for solo violin, and the album was created between 2023 and 2026. A time when we witnessed many crises around the world and extreme violence against children. During these years I also became a mother of two.

Some of the titles are inspired by the Palestinian people and their land. I taught music at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine in 2013, and it was a life-changing experience for me. It made a huge impact on me to see up close the extreme injustice and violation of international law, and to meet Palestinian people, who, under oppression, still manage to be the most lovable and hospitable people I’ve ever met. In a way, they give me hope.

I am inspired by people who continue to tell the truth and speak up when they see injustice. For me, resistance today also means continuing to create, to tell your own truth through music and art while actually listening to each other and trying to understand. It means to continue doing what is important, even if you do it “walking with my soul in my hand every day”.

While editing the album and coming up with the track titles, it suddenly became clear to me how much the state of the world and becoming a mother had affected me in the creative process. Not directly while improvising and composing the music, just by living and creating in this time.

Being pregnant and becoming a mother has been a vulnerable and transformative period in my life. I had to accept my body’s new boundaries. More sensitive than usual, I didn’t have the capacity to take in what was happening in the world around me or to actually do anything about it. When I couldn’t engage, or find an outlet for all my anger and sorrow, I started to feel numb.

Then, these small humans entered the world, and they changed everything in my life. I experienced just how much you can love your little one, but the sorrow and anger didn’t get any less intense.

When I finally had the capacity to create on my own again, something in me changed. The energy shifted from numbness to action. It can feel hopeless and useless to spend your time alone creating music or art in a world where so much feels broken. Still, “hope is what you do”, as Marthe Valle and Hanne Lossius write.

When I play the violin I often dive into the physical resistance that arises between the body and the instrument. When you keep resisting and insisting, something happens. We have to dare to speak up against the oppressor, for all our children. When we don’t manage to protect the smallest and most vulnerable among us — who are we then? How will the world be in 20 years if we choose, every day, to just wait and not see? / Vente og ikke se.

Eviggrønn, refers to the olive trees, always green. They are a symbol of resistance and hope. The trees have been witnesses of human behavior, some of them for thousands of years. They are holders of time. Olive trees in Palestine are violently ripped up by settlers illegally occupying the land. Thousands of years of living organisms gone — just like that.

There will be a time when we don’t exist / I en tid hvor vi ikke finnes.

We are here now. Can we tune the earth together?

Ta meg inn i blikket ditt. / Take me into your gaze.

Listen! Create.