Oslo World at Hærverk!
Concerts and club nights at one of Oslo's most active venues.
Kafé Hærverk is a cultural crossroads Oslo (and the World, for that matter) didn’t know it was missing until the intimate bar and concert scene appeared in Hausmanns gate a couple of years ago. Ever since it opened in 2017, the place has been brimming with activity. It has become a scene where music and people meet - improv and jazz in one moment, all kinds of folk music in the next, stepdance, punk, psychedelia, indian ragas, prog and not least techno on saturdays. A typical Hærverk-night can start of with an acoustic concert with jews harp and harding fiddles, and evolve into a full dance floor, almost without you noticing. You can meet all kinds of people there, across cultural divides and age. It feels good to finally feature it as a venue thes year - especially since we’ve chosen rebels as our theme.
The name of the place is borrowed from the danish author Tom Kristensens cult novel Hærverk (Havoc, or Vandalism) from 1930. It’s about a literary critic who choses to turn his back to a noisy, polarized present and start drinking himself to death at a dimly lit bar instead. It’s not all that bleak at Kafé Hærverk, but the urge to create a bohemia, safe for all, but where the art and the conversation follows different paths than elsewhere, has shaped the place. It is one of the few, precious examples we have of true counter culture in Oslos night life today.
This year, Oslo World and Hærverk has collaborated on four nights, from thursday till sunday, which we feel are great representations of both the venue and the festival at its best: Experimental Norwegian folk music, ethiopian and gambian cult musicians, danish-kurdish and lebanese-syrian fusion, everything followed by fantastic dj’s.
21.30: Sofanyama
The gambian guitar virtuoso Sankung Jobarteh grew up in the west african griot tradition. Since the eighties, he has been a leading performer of the modern gambian music style Afro-Manding. His search for new music led him to Oslo where he has worked as an artist, band leader, arranger and producer since the eighties. These years, he has toured with several versions of Sofanyama, his life’s work, where he writes music somewhere between west african traditions and modern western pop and rock. In 2021, Sofanyama features Adrian du Monceau on bass, Audun Kjeldahl on organ, Simen Nystumo Stensland on rhodes and Espen Fladmoe Wolmer on drums.
22.30 - DJ Nefertiti
As DJ Nefertiti, Idil Husseindottir has brought afro house, kwaito, highlife and kizomba to dance floors during Oslo World and at Hærverk several times before. It is a pleasure to invite the DJ, who has had her own club nights at places such as The Villa, Internationalen, Turkish Delight and Jæger, back during this week.
BEDOUIN BURGER (SYRIA / LEBANON)
The duo Bedouin Burger is made out of Zeid Hamdan, a mainstay on the Lebanese indie scene and the fantastic Syrian singer Lynn Adib. Their first singles, which were released last year, revealed a striking mixture of arab pop and poetry, bedouine music, vintage synths and drum machines as well as acoustic recordings. Hamdan paints a vast sonic universe around the centrepoint, Adibs effortless, atmospheric singing.
KL. 00.00: DJ RAMY
Ramy Gharem is one of Hærverks bookers, and has played a part in the programming during Oslo World this year. He is also a great DJ, which will start off and finish this Friday.
20:00: AySay (Kurdistan/Danmark)
Luna Ersahin, the front figure of the young and critically lauded danish trio AySay, plays saz and sings in danish, kurdish and turkish. She has a danish mother and a kurdish father from Turkey, and the band follows in these footprints. They mix electronic and acoustic percussion, and draws on inspirations ranging from the danish folktronica band Sorten Muld to Altin Gün, which they will also support with a brief set at Cosmopolite during this festival.
22:00: REOLÔ
Reolô is made out of Anders Røine, Hans Kjorstad, Rasmus Kjorstad and Hans Hulbækmo. All four are central figures in the busy musical border region between jazz, folk music and just about anything else. Reolô started as a piece commissioned by Riksscenen, which aimed to show the connections between norwegian slåttemusikk and west african grooves. Between these two points of reference, alot happens - their debut album, Andre Sida, contained free improv, punk, psychedelic folk rock and alot more. We think the same is going to happen when the band performs at Hærverk, a scene these musicians have made their mark on the last five years.
23:30: KLUBB: HELENE RICHARD & RUNE LINDBÆK
Helene Richard is an eclectic DJ and record collector from Oslo. She has played all over town, and in later years, she has been featured on international festivals such as Camp Cosmic, Zone Disco Autonome and the Swedish Skogsfesten.
Rune Lindbæk is an Oslo legend, well known as a resident at legendary Klubb Kebabb (Headon) and Undertonar (Nomaden). He has had gigs from Tromsø to Ibiza, from New York to Moscow, and he has released music with Idjut Boys, Lindstrøm, Röyksopp and Bjørn Torske.
Mitmitta creates one-of-a-kind sets ranging from sophisticated jazz to thumping sounds of mystical and up-tempo music from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania & Somalia. Deeply hypnotized by East African sounds from vinyl and audiotapes, Vemund Brune Hareide —Mitmitta or ‘Kidus’ in Ethiopia— is originally from Norway but has been based in Ethiopia for the last 11 years. Fluent in the local Amharic language, Mitmitta has run a cassette shop in Addis Abeba, known as Mitmitta Muzika, while also creating hundreds of parties in the capital and around Europe and the USA. Mitmitta is well recognized as a resource and connoisseur of Ethiopian, Eritrean & Sudanese Jazz, Soul, Funk & Traditional music. He has re-issued music from the region under the label Mitmitta Muzika along with archiving his extensive cassette collection, soon to be launched as an Ethio-Eritrean audiotape discography webpage. He travels with a selection of records and tapes largely unknown to the world to accommodate various listening settings: otherworldly, hot basement, sunny terrace, festival stage or any dance floor.
Free of charge!
