The Road to Uummannaq

Arctic Ballet. Dance on Thin Ice.

2010-04-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

After we posted the link for Angel of Uummannaq. The Arctic Ballet, we received many e-mails from our readers with questions about it. People asked us about specific movements – some translation is obviously required here - and also about the meaning of the story behind the dance. That’s why I decided to return to this theme and explain in detail exactly what was going on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KQiOeLBFE0

The idea to stage a little Eskimo dance on the ever shifting and melting Greenlandic ice evolved from the regular activities of Uummannaq Music. As I watched our students leave the Music Room at Uummannaq Children’s Home after their daily rendezvous with Tchaikovsky and Bach, put on their polar bear pants and seal parkas, then run out and play in the snow, I could clearly see that they moved with remarkable levity, as though floating on air, almost weightless above the ground. They move very differently than European and American children when they play and run in parks and playgrounds on both sides of the Atlantic

Whether they were catching up with the dogsled or playing hide and seek in the icy rocks, Eskimo children were not simply jumping and landing on the hard surface but rather flying in slow motion while gently touching the surface of the ground below.

Since they were dressed in skins – polar bear pants and seal jackets - it looked quite surreal. Those who ever wore them know that they are heavy and restrict one's free movement - just like medieval armor.

Yet, even in these seemingly uncomfortable outfits, Eskimo children can run on thin ice without fear of falling through. For some reason, even the freshest and therefore thinnest ice holds their weight up. If you’ve ever seen a video of a polar bear – the world’s largest land carnivore weighing 1,000 lb on average – running on the rocking surface of a frozen ocean, you would know what I am talking about. Eskimo children are just like that. They glide above the sea ice.

It was only when I looked at their feet with precision that it occurred to me that the foot is the root of the Eskimo walk on thin ice. Dressed in a light and flat-bottomed Kamik made out of polar bear skin, the foot slides above the surface almost without friction and makes the body seem to be weightless. The kamik itself looks like a ballet pointe.

Like a pointe, a kamik also has no right or left, it can be terribly uncomfortable when new and requires one to use the entire body for support, including the legs, back, and abdominal muscles.

To make them soft, hunters’ wives chew on them every morning.

The foot in a kamik is the root of the Eskimo walk and it is also the root of the dance. Except in Greenland , the dance like nipi, comes not out of leisure, but out of harsh necessity. Dancing on ice is not an entertainment nor a theatrical happening. Eskimo people dance in order to stay alive. They dance on ice to kill a seal, to catch a halibut, to drive the dogs, and to stay warm in a deadly frost. While the stage for their dance is a frozen ocean.

That’s how the idea of a dance on ice emerged.

Our young musicians from Uummannaq Children’s Home were strongly enthusiastic about it: on sea ice they were totally in their element. Villagers were very supportive too. They showed sincere pride for the dancers and immediately upgraded the humble name of the show to The Arctic Ballet. By the way, the first one in the history of Uummannaq.

In the old Eskimo world, before European civilization arrived, words, music and dance were intimately connected. They were connected like ice, land and sky are on a foggy day when they abruptly lose their identities and boundaries as they become blurred into one grand white entity.

A massive fog suddenly descended on Uummannaq island when the Arctic Ballet was about to start. The milky clouds merged taking down at first the distant shores, then the frozen icebergs with cool(E)motion’s sculptures mounted on them, and finally they hid the top of the majestic heart-shaped Uummannaq Mountain.

It was the middle of the day, and it was getting darker and darker, the light was fading and the white fog mounded up until the entire mountain was gone.

The disappearance of Mt. Uummannaq was especially painful since it was to be our main stage decoration and it was chosen with great precision. We had no other, and did not wish a replacement.

As we stood fully dressed for the dance, the white mist swallowed little boats in the Bay area and finally consumed the entire horizon.

As if somebody took an eraser on Photoshop CS and carefully deleted all the unnecessary things. All the boundaries had disappeared. We stood tête-à-tête with the great whiteness, which does not know either past or future, only the seemingly endless moment of the present.

Sky, Ice and Land were one thing now.It felt like the End of the World.

And this was the stage for our Arctic Ballet.

However, our cameraman, the French cinematographer Bertrand Lozay did not see it exactly this way – like the End of the World , or the end of our perfectly designed Pilersaarut (“plan” in Kalaallisut). Instead he saw it as an opportunity.

We made a quick decision to climb up the mountain and shoot from above. You will see the dance the very same way as we saw it from the icy rocks on that foggy Sunday afternoon: as a white canvas waiting for a metaphor. Everything is this world was frozen in place except for the dancers. They were the only beings moving.

As the clip starts, you will see Ole Jorgen Hammeken, a brave Eskimo hunter silently emerging from the Great Whiteness, the circle of the girls in the middle and a straight line of the boys standing still behind them.

The boys, of course, are the treacherous tupilaqs: they see everything and possess unusual powers but do not intervene until the moment arrives.

With the first sounds of the music the girls start moving in a circle imitating the flight of the Great Northern Diver – a local Arctic bird that according Eskimoic beliefs also possesses great magical powers and grants protection in case of imminent danger and even death.

Pipaluk Hammeken, a serene and humble beauty in white skins and grey kamiks, is “the beak” of the Great Northern Diver. The girls behind her, on both sides, are the wings. The Great Northern Diver circles above the sea ice looking for its prey, flies straight ahead like an arrow and finally plunges down into the sea as it catches it. The moment of a kill is extremely important: the excitement of catching a prey instantly transforms into the serenity of the prayer to the Mother of the Sea. The girls kneel down on the ice and ask her for humility and forgiveness while the boys – the unpredictable tupilaqs – agitate and echo them in their prayer.

The Great Northern Diver is another word for a duck, but in the Eskimo world it is also a word for hope. Hope is important in Greenland, because on the ice cap you can’t survive without it.

“Sassuma Arnaa

Isumakkeerfigisigut Ilisimaassutsitsinnik…”

As the girls kneel down, they whisper these words along with our female and male voices, Pipaluk and Ole Jorgen Hammeken, the dog sled drivers.

“Sassuma Arnaa” means “Mother of the Sea”. “Mother of the Sea, please forgive us for our ignorance…”

In the olden days Eskimo hunters would walk far into the frozen sea and gather in a “dance hut” around the hole in the ice that resembled a seal’s breathing polynia. Then they would circle around it and chant, get on their knees, peer into the polynia and ask the Mother of the Sea for forgiveness.

The Eskimo believed and still believe that Sassuma Arnaa sometimes gets mad at humans for their stupid behavior and hides all the sea creatures from them under her sleeping platform at the bottom of the sea.

“Sassuma Arnaa

Isumakkeerfigisigut Ilisimaassutsitsinnik…”

They don’t ask to forgive their sins. There is no notion of a sin in the Eskimo culture. Only qanuallit – white people - know and have sins. The Eskimo ask to forgive them for their ignorance…

As you watch the video, you will see other kind of beings entering and leaving the circle of dancing girls. Some are almost transparent, other have flesh on them but look more like shadows.

To the Eskimo, a human being consists of body and soul which is invisible and eternal. Like the Great Northern Diver, the soul constantly travels above ice and water, in light and dark, meeting the invisible spirits that populate land, sea and air.

You can clearly see these spirits arising like mirages in our Arctic Ballet: there is a circle within the circle, the realm within the realm. You can see these spirits as they enter the reel of whirling girls, as they float in the air like drifting icebergs and as they leave as if they never existed. They appear and disappear. They come and go. Then they revisit, but never the same.

Some of these spirits are half-humans, other are half-animals. There was a time when the animal and human kingdoms were one. Wolves and snow foxes could turn into humans and vice versa. By the way, it’s still believed that polar bears were once a race of humans who became bears by dressing themselves in fur. But as soon as they enter their Igloo, polar bears take off the skins and become humans again…

In the last few days we received many e-mails complimenting us for choosing beautiful “costumes” for our children. I have written about it on several occasions, and would like to reiterate again that skins are not “costumes”. Skins are normal every day clothing in Greenland. It’s not a fashion show, it’s a necessity. And it is still believed that we go inside the animals and become one with them each time we wear their skins.

Greenland is a land rich with metaphor, with adumbration. And the Arctic Ballet is a hymn to its complexity, vulnerability, sincerity and impermanence.

This hymn is both a dance and Nipi.

The flick of a whip, the squeak of the snow under the feet, the crackling sound of the breath instantly freezing in the air, the dog sled drivers’ voices, their unsophisticated conversations with their dogs: “Taama!” (Go!) Ili Ili (Go right!), Iju Iju (Go left!), Ah-ta-ta (Go faster!), Aaach…(Stop!), the dogs’ howling and squealing, the melody of the prayer to Sassuma Arnaa, all of this cacophony of sounds constitutes Nipi.

As you may have noticed when watching the video, they evolve from silence and then they return to silence one more time. Silence is a big part of Nipi.

It may be interesting to mention, that Uummannaq children danced on ice not only in the fog, but also in complete silence. Imagine transporting the piano on ice of the frozen ocean! All the soundtracks were added to the video later: on the other side of the world, nine time zones away from Uummannaq, Serge Morrell, our video and audio editor put all these layers of Nipi together in the midst of machine gun and grenade fire on the terrible morning last week that the bloody Kyrgyz revolution rocked Bishkek. From Uummannaq Island, we silently prayed for him and all other peaceful people in Bishkek, hoping that the Nipi of war, fire, hatred and destruction would drown in the silence of peace as soon as possible.

Sassuma Arnaa

Isumakkeerfigisigut Ilisimaassutsitsinnik…

Mother of the Sea, please forgive us for our ignorance…

Photo: @Tiina Itkonen, @Bertrand Lozay, @Galya Morrell

Transformation of the Angel

2010-04-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

When Joel Spiegelman told me that he composed the music for Ummannaq and let me listen to it over the phone, I knew that the Angel was born. But as soon as we arrived to Greenland, I realized that this Angel was naked, or rather poorly equipped for life at the extreme edge of the world.

As Joel played his Angel of Uummannaq at Ann Andreasen’s home just minutes after our arrival, the brutal northern wind lashed the walls making the miniature statues of Tupilaks vigilantly guarding the window quake.

I knew that our new born Angel would freeze to death if nothing was done.

Joel created a perfect Angel, but this Angel conceived someway between sunny Florida and sunny New Jersey, was not ready for the long Arctic flight above the tree-line.

His frail body was saturated with cold. His little feet were bleeding and sore. His breath was instantly freezing in the air, so that I could literally hear that crackling sound – “the whispering of the stars” - coming our of his little chest. The hard –baked Tupilaks were watching him with precision from their little surveillance station at Ann’s window shelf.

What should we do?

Should we dress him in skins and kamiks? Should we put polar bear pants on him and a seal parka?

It turned out that adding polar bear and seal skins was necessary but not enough. Our Angel still looked like a foreigner and still spoke with an accent. He was not cold anymore, but he was definitely a loner. And in the land of natural communalism, solitude is not a virtue, but rather a straight road to disaster.

He still was not ready to fly above the ice cap or beneath the sea ice. And neither he was ready to drive the dogs.

So I decided to wrap him in Nipi, gradually adding on layers of this wondrous fabric that exists only in Greenland – all the voices, all the sounds of speech, the cracking of ice, the howling of a wolf, the barking of a seal, the sniffing of a snow fox, the growling of a bear, all the daily conversations with all those little questions and answers, all the rumors, all the gossip, all the hints … in other words, all the "music" of the beautiful world of Uummannaq.

For days, inseparable from my mike, I was collecting sounds as thoroughly as only the Great Northern Diver collects dirt for its nest. Even at night, the mike slept next to me on my pillow, ready to record another nocturne of the dogs’ howling on a few seconds notice.

I was adding layer, upon layer, upon layer. Soundtrack, upon soundtrack….

The music in Uummannaq does not come out of affluence, it rather comes out of necessity. Like everything else here, Nipi is an integral part of the everyday battle for survival. I wrapped the voices of dog sled drivers around the Angel, like another layer of insulation against imminent death, “Taama!” - this strange word you will hear many times throughout the song means just this: “Go!” Go, or either die or freeze to death.

Pipaluk and Ole Jorgen Hammeken, the daughter and the father, whose voices I added to Joel’s music, are Eskimo dog sled drivers. Their little conversations with dogs and between themselves makes Nipi. For those who do not speak Greenlandic, I feel obliged to translate the refrain:

“Taama!” means “Go!”

“Ili Ili!” means “Go right!

“Iju Iju!” means “Go left!”

“Aaach…” means “Stop!”

It may seem that such unsophisticated talk should not be a part of a libretto, but as I have already said, the choice of words matters much more in Greenland than in the Old World: particularly, it may mean the difference between life and death.

Pipaluk Hammeken is only sixteen. She is an aspiring throat singer and hopefully soon we will hear her again, in some new and different genres. By the way, she is also a lead dancer in our Arctic Dance – you can see her figure in white making the “beak” of the Great Northern Diver on the ice of the Lake Uummannaq.

After the sound track with Ole Jorgen and Pipaluk was recorded, the turn of the old Eskimo drums arrived. Needless to say that the drum is a very special instrument in Greenland. In the olden days the drum – Quilaat – which can be translated as “the one that enables one to see Heaven”, was used by angakoqs to invoke other worlds. When missionaries arrived in Greenland two centuries ago, they outlawed the drum and labeled the drum dancers as ultimate sinners. Needless to say, Eskimoic society does not even have a notion of sin.

So, the drums, and some other rattling, rustling and jingling sounds were added.

Yet, it was just not enough.

In Greenland, music and dance are intimately connected. Eskimo people create music with their feet. The foot in a polar bear kamik is the root of music. So, I thought if our Angel wished to be a Uummannami local and not an outsider, he should dance too.

Eskimo people, like polar bears can walk on thin ice. The qanuallit – white people – can not. For days I was watching our young musicians walking and running on the ice and each time it looked like a dance. So, I thought our Angel should learn from them.

This is just a short preamble to how the idea of the Arctic Ballet on ice was born.

But the idea in Uummannaq means absolutely nothing unless it is shared and liked by everyone else, by the entire community. In other words, in Uummannaq it takes a village to stage a ballet.

To begin with we had to find the perfect stage. But no matter how strange it might sound, there was none in sight.

Siku (sea ice) usually comes to Uummannaq in September and stays till late April. But this year winter has not come at all, neither did siku. Should we stage out ballet on a flat iceberg that sat right in the middle of the Uummanaq Harbor? Or should we use the runway in the local heliport from which the majestic panorama of Uummannaq Bay opens up? Rumors spread in Uummannaq with the speed of lightening. In a matter of hours, everyone in Uummannaq knew that the Arctic Ballet, the first one in the history of Uummannaq, was on its way. Everyone was offering help - pilots, hunters, and even local doctors. There was no lack of suggestions.

We decided to launch a little reconnaissance expedition that included the French filmmaker, Bertrand Lozay, Sigrun Andreasen, Ann’s sister from Copenhagen, and myself. After having sunk through the snow up to our chins and taken a ride on a floating piece of ice which was surreally beautiful but too dangerous to risk innocent lives, we finally settled on the ice of Lake Uummannaq. This place had the best built in scenic decorations we could find. On one side there was a bay with breathtaking icebergs that were constantly changing their color as the light changed. On the other side there was Mount Ummannaq, the heart-shaped mountain after which the island is named.

We thought we had a perfect plan and could not wait till Sunday morning when the dance dress rehearsal and filming were scheduled. Everyone was excited – our children, social workers who work in the orphanage, all the visiting guests, and even the dogs…

Such was a view on Mt. Ummannaq from my window on early Sunday morning.

And this is how Mt. Uummannaq looked like when we arrived to Lake Uummannaq. In a blink of an eye, everything – the Mountain, the sapphire icebergs , and even the shores of the lake - disappeared in the thick fog that came from the sea. Dressed in polar bear pants, in seal parkas and in white kamiks, we found ourselves stranded on white ice, in the middle of a white cloud.

We had a plan, but as usual, Uummannaq had its own plan – Pilersaarut – ready for us.

Could we reschedule? Could we postpone? Could we go home? Could we call off the rehearsal? We probably could, but then we could not. First of all, our children were ready to dance, with or without the cloud. They were ready to dance in the fog. Second of all, suddenly we realized that our ice hall was full: even though the invites had not been sent out deliberately in order to keep the event private, the spectators kept arriving from all sides. Like ghosts, they were emerging from the fog, This scene was a surreal in its own right.

Everyone came. Locals, visiting guests from fifteen different countries, and even little Kasper, Tiina Itkonen’s 16 month old son from Helsinki chose to miss his nap and showed up on the ice of Lake Uummannaq accompanied by his music loving father Paavo. As it takes a village to stage a ballet in the High Arctic, so it is also takes village to cancel the show.

But the show had to go on. And it did.

In my next blog that is coming soon, I will concentrate on the details of the Arctic Dance and will explain what exactly was going on. I will talk about specific movements and techniques that require some translation, and the meaning of the story behind the dance.

But now I would like to say a word about those who did not dance but who nevertheless were an inherent part of our Arctic Ballet. Everyone- from Ann Andreasen and Ole Jorgen Hammeken who run the Children’s Home – to the hunters – and to the visiting artists from all around the world who came to Uummannaq on invitation from Ann and Ole Jorgen – was a part of it. We tried to count the countries – Greenland, Denmark, USA, Finland, France, Russia, Holland ... Fifteen countries! It looked like a United Nations at work.

Ann Andreasen calls it Uummannaq’s Order of Things. Joel Spiegleman found another name for it which he borrowed from Wagner: Gesamtkunstwerk. In a crude translation from German, it means a piece of art that combines many different arts into a whole work that includes music, dance, song, chanting, scenic decorations, poetry, myths, and in our case even nature. Our French colleagues - Bertrand Lozay and Judith Marechal call it Art Total. In English, you can probably call it a multimedia project, but in Greenland we prefer to call it Nipi. Because Nipi has it all.

When we returned home and had our portion of a mattaaq and halibut stew, Ann Andreasen pulled an old notebook from one of her numerous bookshelves. She handed it to me. “What is that?” I asked. “Arctic Ballet. The Silence of the Ice Dance.” - read the title.

It was a script that Ann wrote many years ago, soon after she arrived to Uummannaq from Faeroe Islands a quarter of a century ago. She dreamed about this ballet for many years, but she was always too busy with something else that was of a much greater importance. She was busy saving lives – literally – that’s why the notebook emerged only tonight when the Arctic Ballet suddenly became a reality.

I will talk about Ann’s dream in my next blog, because it constitutes a separate story.

For now, we all knew that Angel of Uummannaq was finally ready for his flight above the ice cap and beneath the sea ice. He was ready to drive the dogs. He was ready to guard us for life.

Photos@Galya Morrell and @Tiina Itkonen

What is Music?

2010-03-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

What is Music? This is a title of Lera Auerbach’s sweet and very touching children’s song that she sent to us in Uummannaq via the Internet. What is Music? was intended to be used in music appreciation classes taught by Professor Joel Spiegelman at the Uummannaq Children’s Home.

Lera Auerbach is a virtuoso pianist and one of the most widely performed composers of the new generation. Her music is cosmic. It swings between past, present, and future; it is not attached to any specific place or circumstance, yet each time I hear it, be it in New York or in Riga, I always think of Greenland. It is floating alone, all by itself in space, like a mirage, like an iceberg in Uummannaq Bay, as impermanent and ephemeral as an iceberg can be.

We hope that Lera will come to Uummanaq next year to premiere one of her works and really look forward to this because Lera’s music is Nipi.

For those who have not read our previous posts, we remind you that in the Greenlandic language, the word “music” - means so much more than just “music”. Nipi also means the sound of speech, the howling of a wolf, the barking of a seal, the sniffing of a snow fox, the growling of a bear, all these little daily conversations with their questions and answers… in other words, it means all the "music" of the beautiful world around us. That’s exactly what Lera’s children’s song she sent us is about.

Yesterday morning as I watched Uummannaq Mountain disappearing in the sudden fog, I listened to the powerful music of Lera Auerbach’s Russian Requiem. Those of you who have heard this magnificent work for mixed choir, large orchestra, boys’ choir, boy soprano, mezzo-soprano and bass , know that that there are multiple realms within it, that there is a music beyond the music there. In Greenlandic, you could also say that Lera’s music has many skins. That’s why you can see and hear Russia in it, with all its flaws and wonders, with its ugliness and beauty, with its perpetual oscillating between hell and heaven. You can hear a door swinging in a half-ruined hut, the dull gritting of the rusty toothless saw, and the meowing of an unhappy cat to the extent one can be only in Russia…

But now, sitting next to the window overlooking the Uummannaq Bay and listening to Lera's Russian Requiem, I could clearly hear something else in it - the crackling sounds of Greenland - of the ancient glacier ice melting in a glass of water, of my own footsteps in the snow, and of my breath leaving and entering my body in the frigid air of Uummannaq Fjord. There was another world in it – populated with other kinds of beings – some half humans, some pure spirits… This was a discovery.

Lera’s music makes you think about the cosmos, but it also makes you think about small things, the closest things and the nearest things we normally look at with disdain.

In a land where maintaining life itself means an epic battle on a daily basis, you have to think about simple things you normally do not want to think about. If you are thirsty, you have to bring the snow in and melt it. This can be a lengthy process. You have to learn to be patient. You have to heat your house, to repair your clothes and to clean after yourself. If you don’t, you will die. Here in Uummannaq you start seeing life and death in a different perspective, you learn to do simple things, to love them and to get inspiration from doing them.

Lera’s music is a state of mind. And so is Uummannaq, where distant seems near and vice versa.

That’s why I say that among all the halls around the world, Uummannaq is by far the best one for any of Lera’s works. That is why we want Lera to come to Uummannaq next year, and we hope she will. But it is not just a groundless hope. Lera is looking up North too.

Lera was one of the first people, or to be more exact the very first person who supported Ummannaq Music two months ago. She was the first one to join the Ummaannaq Music fan page on Facebook and she passionately welcomed the idea, quite vague at that point, of building the world's northernmost music platform on Uummannaq Island.

I still don’t know why she did it.

To begin with, Lera is a very busy person. You can look up her schedule, take just at two random days for comparison.

Lera Auerbach Today: Going to sleep - 3 am Getting up - 6 am Correspondence with Europe + emails - 6- 9am back to sleep - 9-10:30 am Editing and proofreading - 10:30 - 13:30 Breakfast/lunch -13:30 - 14:00 Piano practicing - 14:00 - 17:30 Rehearsal - 18:30 - 19:30 Concert + reception 20:00 - 23:00 Composing 23:30-1:30am Packing 1:30 - 2:30 am Going to sleep - 3 am

Lera Auerbach Today: Taxi to the rehearsal 10- 10:30 Rehearsal for the recital 10:30- 1:30, drive to the hall 1:30- 2:00, rehearsal with the Louisiana Philharmonic of my Symphony No.1"Chimera" 2:00 - 3:30, drive to the University 3:30- 4:00, teaching Masterclass at the Loyola University (2 pianists, one composer) 4:00 - 5:45, drive to the concert 5:45 - 6:15, recital plus reception 7:00 - 10:30 pm.

This schedule makes you dizzy to look at. But now listen to this: just a few weeks before Uummannaq Music was started Lera’s apartment in New York caught on fire. Lera is not a material person, but all her non-material treasures – her scores, her books, her archives, her childhood memories went up in flames, consumed by the avaricious fire. To say that she he was desperate is an understatement. Yet, she found time to join Uummaanaq Music when no one else did and since then has kept helping us to start something that had no history. From afar, she went all the way with us. Step by step. On the ice.

I am listening to What is Music? and I am thinking of Lera, who at the young age of 17 found herself in New York thousands of miles away from homeland and from her beloved parents with little hope of ever seeing them ever again. The times were cruel and I know how it felt: probably, like being lost in inner Greenland, with no footprints on the snow, and no road signs in sight… I think of Lera and I also think of the children from the Uummannaq Children’s Home who today are no longer lost but looking to choose their paths…

And here is the lesson. One of the reasons why Lera became what she became is because she did not look for road signs or someone else’s footprints. As opposed to the rest of us who look down to the ground at our feet, she looked up into the sky. Lera looks up and she sees things. She draws her inspiration from those other worlds hidden beyond the layer of the frost-green sky, beyond the borders of the visible world.

She sees things like the Dutch artist Rob Sweere who is known worldwide for his Silent Sky events when people lie down on the ground and look up at the sky. These events have taken place all over the world, including in Uummannaq. How much more can you see when you look up! Look up more often! Look North more often! And then you will meet your own heart as you’ve never met it before.

A few days ago we happened to have our own cosmic connection. A Cosmic Bridge via a Skype video connection was built between the Ummannaq Children’s Home and Pete Seeger, the iconic American folk singer and song writer who lives in Beacon, New York. Pete sang for the children, while they in turn sang a Greenlandic song for him.

And of course, this cosmic connection was Nipi too: with all the crackling sounds that Skype adds to the music and to all the voices coming from both sides of the Atlantic. All these local and foreign sounds - voices of strangers caught somehow in between and of invisible spirits from above…din and clutter, rattling, rustling, jingling, a-mo, a-mo – together with music constituted the real Nipi. Especially when Ole Jorgen Hammeken the French filmmaker Bertrand Loazay stuck their laptop out of the window to let Pete Seeeger see the majestic sapphire icebergs floating by the music room of the Uummanaq Children’s home. Distant seemed near again.

At the end of our cosmic session Joel Spiegelman played for Pete Seeger the song that he wrote for Uummanaq Children’s Home named The Angel of Uummannaq.

This song is a prayer and an incantation that sounded like a magical spell addressed to the Angel of Uummannnaq. It’s a very special prayer on top of the world in this land of impermanence, where all things come and go, where there is no yesterday or tomorrow, but only today. At first glance, it may seem that Angel of Uummannaq is quite a sad song. Indeed, it is a reconciliation with the imminence of death, with constant fear of Sila, of weakness, of sickness, of hunger, of cold…. Yet, it is a joyful song because it leaves you with hope. Eskimo people are well aware that life is neither black nor white. And this song is a celebration of the simple happiness at being alive.

Angel of Uummannaq is with us. It guards us. It gathers us together.

I listened to Joel’s song and wondered: what this Angel might look like? Would it be wearing skins and kamiks, like Greenlandic Ken who is fashioned in polar bear pants and a seal parka? Would it be flying above the ice cap or beneath the sea ice? Would it be driving the dogs?

I looked around while Joel was still playing and suddenly it occurred to me: there is not one, but many. It takes many Angels to make this town fly above the endless white desert and to be a heavenly inspiration for everyone who has ever come here.

Uummannaq Angel has many faces and many names. Ann Andreasen is the Angel of Uummannaq. She saves lives and souls on a daily basis, with no breaks and no vacations – around the clock. Louise Zebb who has served for a half century in the Uummannaq Children’s Home is known to have performed miracles. She is the Angel too.

Ulla, a 10 year old girl, our youngest musician – look at this picture drawn on ice and taken by the most wonderful Arctic photogrpher from Finland Tiina Itkonen – and you will see the Uummannaq Angel alive. Bjorn Kunoy, the lawyer, at first glance you might say he is not an Angel, but he is: he protected Uummannaq so many times and on so many different occasions; he is an Angel!

Lera Auerbach who inspired Joel’ s Angel for its fist flight… Dmitry Garanin who ardently supported Uummannaq Music on Facebook. Elena Kuschnerova, the pianist from Baden-Baden, who has long said that she was ready to come and share her talents and passions with Uummannaq Children…Pete Seeger, Ap Verheggen and Frank Landsberger from cool(E)motion, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and all our 1, 056 supporters on Uummannaq Music Facebook Fan Page…..they are all true Uummannaq Angels.

And what about Ole Jorgen Hammeken, this brave Eskimo hunter and polar explorer who travels the world, connecting all these Angels around the globe and eventually bringing them to Uummannaq? Yes, he is a Great Connector, but isn’t he an Angel too?

All these Angels sing to us today. They share one voice. And this voice is called Nipi.

Cool Emotion

2010-03-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

The most haunting part about life in Ummannaq is that everything changes here and yet nothing changes. Everything moves, yet everything stays in place. As you move, everything moves too: the Sun, the dogs, the icy road, and your final destination.

You do not have to travel far to be reminded that everything is provisional, including your thoroughly planned objectives, thoughtfully chosen destinations, calculated exits, and well…even life itself. Yet, at every single step here in Uummannaq we are being reminded again and again that the cessation of movement means death.

All things come and go, and only the movement stays.

I think about this as I walk up the hill to Ann Andreasen and Ole Jorgen Hammeken’s home where I am routinely fed and loved and from where a new whorl of my life miraculously unwinds every single morning. Even though the walk is quite short, the magic of Uummannaq obliges you to focus on the journey and not the destination.

Nothing has changed here from yesterday, yet everything is new. Wrapped in Ann’s scarves and wearing the oversized seal gloves she forced me to put on, I feel like an astronaut on the dark side of the Moon, watching my own breath as it enters and leaves my body, while dogs, icebergs and occasional snowflakes are floating by.

On this road to Ann’s and Ole Jorgen’s home I learn to notice the smallest things, the nearest things and to love them as they change.

Yesterday, this very flat sapphire iceberg was a living incarnation of the white loneliness. Today it turned into a hot spot, overcrowded and rainbow colored due to the efforts of Cool(E)Motion that installed here this afternoon two humongous sculptures that are seen from afar. The change of the landscape is so dramatic that the entire population of Uummannaq is out to the shore or at least to their windows to watch the happening first hand.

If you have not heard of Cool(E)Motion you should look at their work at http://www.coolemotion.org. These strange people – the Dutch artist Ap Verheggen and his international team – proudly call themselves Cool(E)Motion, but after meeting them in person, living with them side by side in Uummannaq and sharing not only a life of cold, but also the one of intimacy and true comradeship, I have to admit that they are indeed quite cool.

Their project is about climate change, yet unlike many others they choose to not blame anyone or anything, instead they just observe and make notes. There is a lot of coolness into that. Their main motto is “The sculptures will travel through the arctic, leaving a trail online”.

The big and quite revolutionary change they made today to Uummmanaq’s landscape is impermanent and everyone knows it. Otherwise, Cool(E)Motion would have never reached the shores of Uummannaq and would not have received the warm welcome and support from such people like Ole Jorgen Hammeken and Ann Andreasen who are the true and ardent guards of Uummannaq’s identity.

Everyone here knows that no matter how beautiful, sophisticated and inspiring, the sculptures will die leaving nothing behind. Or better say, almost nothing.

Made out of pure iron, they will disintegrate together with the iceberg they are currently planted on and eventually become the food for plankton, fish and other inhabitants of Uummannaq waters.

The Coo(lE)Motion artwork can be viewed ‘live’ via webcam until the iceberg melts and the sculpture is buried into the sea. This might be a lengthy funeral and the journey may end as far as on the east coast of the American continent.

Other than being talented and very artistic, Ap and his friends are truly smart to not talk about the “art for eternity”. They clearly understand the impoverishment of materialism and the beauty of impermanence. In other words, they are pragmatic idealists, the part of that very special crowd that is being attracted to the shores Uummannaq from year to year.

On the side of Uummannaq Music, everything changes daily too. Ulla and nine other musicians of the Ummannaq Children’s Home orchestra performed yesterday on the main city stage at prime time. Joel Spiegelman conducted. More than 200 people attended. For Uummannaq, this is a huge gathering! When Joel was playing his Angel of Uummannaq – little children surrounded him and touched him all over. They were literally trying to “touch the music” with their hands. And they did. Needless to say, for Joel Spiegelman it was his own Cool Emotion moment that he will never forget.

No matter how you look, these two events – Uummannaq Music and Cool(E)Motion are very much interrelated. Both, like good internists, come up with a diagnosis that may sound very unpleasant , even ugly, yet both also say: nothing is ever lost; hope dies last.

Both are trying to suggest a hope. Both understand that the main thing for any artist arriving to Uummanaq is this one: do not harm. Entering Uummannaq is like entering the Temple. Be silent. Be respective. Behave. Share. Learn. And, as Ann Andreasen never ceases to remind, clean after yourself.

Ships in Uummannaq Harbor

2010-03-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

Two big events happened in Uummannaq today. The first, Pajuttaat, a big ship (the size of a small iceberg) entered the Uummannaq harbor. And the second, our children saw for the very first time an actual symphony orchestra conducted by Joel Spiegelman, listened to recordings of music by Lera Auerbach and master concert pianist Elena Kuschnerova.

These two events happened pretty much simultaneously - soon after darkness fell on Uummannaq. Two different breaking news on two different channels, but you can only watch one – that’s how it felt. There was much confusion in the air and much excitement as well.

The importance of the arrival of the big ship can not underestimated. In the long and glorious history of Uummannaq this never happened before. A ship of this size never arrived in Uummannaq during the winter months because the harbor was always frozen. This year due to record high temperatures, the water did not freeze; it’s the middle of March and winter has not yet arrived in Uummannaq.

The importance of seeing and hearing a real full scale symphony orchestra be it on video can not be underestimated either; it too happened in the history of Uummanaq for the first time. Lera Auerbach, composer, Lena Kuschnerova, pianist, and Joel Spiegelman, conductor, – each of them alone was no smaller than Pajuttaat, the big ship that entered Uummannaq harbor this evening.

The Angel of Uummannaq

2010-03-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

Uummannaq has its own clock, and it moves on its own schedule. Even if the hour hand may be now spinning to the West, the minute hand may be very well unwinding to the East. That’s why time goes by non-uniformly, like a dog sled across a half frozen bay. There are days when it flows slowly, almost lazily, or even gets frozen on the spot; and there are days when it flies as fast as the Great Northern Diver, when everything happens momentarily, in a blink of an eye. In these very days, for no apparent reason, small, or even invisible things grow into ones the size of an iceberg, which of course, from our “old world” logic, does not have any feasible explanation.

Joel Spiegelman started to teach the kids on Tuesday night, at about 9.30 pm, and everything went wrong. The tiny glimpses of music kept squabbling like Eskimo multicolored beads gone lose from their seal skin string. Only hours earlier did we find out that Ann Andreasen had already planned and advertised a big concert on Thursday night for which the larger Ummannaq community had been officially invited. The occasion for the grand concert was the celebration of Louise Zeeb, a social worker who had served in the orphanage for half a century. Grandiose fireworks were promised after the dinner party; while Joel and Uummannaq Music were promised nothing but a grandiose fiasco.

By this time we already discovered that some of the kids had only few weeks of training, while others had several months; but none of this training had a continuity since Jonna Faeroe – the school’s fabulous, passionate and dedicated music teacher who started with these young musicians from subzero three years ago - could come here only a couple times a year. Which direction should we take? It did not matter. There was no destination in sight. The children did not comprehend Joel as a conductor, or better said they just did not see him at all. They saw through him as much more interesting things were happening behind his back.

Louise’s birthday was approaching like a fast freight train. The windows were being washed, the home bread and pastries being cooked, the smells of whale intestines and of other special delicacies were filling the air around Children’s Home; even the flowers were on their way (how on Earth can you get flowers in Greenland?) In other words, everyone was ready for the music which according to Ann’s thorough design was the highlight of the entire celebration.

I knew nothing about Louise. I only met her only once, in the kitchen of the orphanage; she gave me a generous smile. Luisa did not graduate from college, but somehow she knew exactly what the orphanage kids needed and she gave that very ‘that” to them for the last fifty years. I sat in a recliner drinking my tea and listening to Ann who was telling me some wondrous stories from Luisa’s long life.

“By the way, did you know that Luisa once fed all the Greenlandic people, the entire nation, out of her backpack?” asked Ann. No, I did not. So, this is how it goes. It happened that one time when Luisa went to Copenhagen, to the famous Tivoli Park, where once a year all Greenlandic people have a great gathering. For a trip, she packed a few snacks: some mattaaq (raw whale skin), some pieces of dried narwhale meat, and a couple of other delicacies all of which fit in her little carry-on backpack.

“I remember very clearly,” said Ann, “that there was enough food for herself, maybe for a couple other people, but obviously not enough for all the orphanage children who travelled with her to Tivoli. There were 18 in our group”. But then in Tivoli, a miracle happened. Every single Greenlander, who wanted to get a piece of this favorite delicacy, got it from Luisa’s backpack. Each, goes the legend, got a piece of mattaaq and a piece of narwhale’s dry meat. And at the end there was even some left.

How could this happen? How could Luisa feed everyone out of a small backpack? I didn‘t know the answer yet, but I had a feeling that magic and miracles were a common place in Uummannaq.

Believe it or not, what happened to Luisa that one time in Tivoli happened to us the next morning, on Wednesday, the day after our excruciating fiasco during the first music lesson at the Children’s Home of Uummannaq. It was only the night before that the flutes were rattling, that the clarinets were squeaking and the guitars produced an ugly rasping out of tune noise; and just to make things worse, it turned out that Joel forgot his baton in Princeton and now had to conduct the orchestra with a stump of an repulsive yellow pencil.

But then, there was morning, and after breakfast Ann presented Joel with a new baton which she fished out of her countless fine Eskimo art collection. This baton was as good as the one Joel left behind in Princeton, except it was just so much better. It was made out of narwhale’s tusk and was incrusted with carvings of many dog sleds and the figures of hunters chasing the Nanuk, the polar bear, the Lord of the Arctic.

This baton felt heavy and real. Joel liked it a lot. And suddenly, everything, that fell apart the night before, somehow miraculously glued itself back together. In a blink of an eye. Now the music flowed smoothly, flutes, recorders, clarinets, guitars played together, and the children finally saw Joel and followed his baton.

How did it happen? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. Was it a new baton? Was it Ann who told us a story about Luisa and a miracle in Tivoli? Or was it something else?

At 5 pm guests started filling the little theatre where the concert was scheduled to be performed. They came from all over. Some arrived by helicopter and planes. And of course, there wasn’t space for everyone. People were cramming in the hallways and on the staircase. Space there was not, but the excitement was there! I was looking through my viewfinder at many different faces in the audience, and could see clearly: people were ready for something big to come, something what I was not envisioning myself. They were ready for a miracle.

When Joel emerged from the darkness of the music storage room now dressed in tails, his little orchestra greeted him upon his arrival, it was seen as an apparition.

Against the view of the Uummannaq heart-shaped mountain in the window and sapphire icebergs floating by, his black and white figure looked surreal. Everyone was stunned. A great silence followed for a moment. And then he raised his baton and the music began.

I don’t know how long it all lasted. There was a clock on the wall; its hands seemed not to have moved at all. I was jammed in the corner with my video camera. Suddenly, I realized that finally I did not have fear any more. Finally, I was not afraid that something would go wrong, that someone would forget the music, or everything would fall apart. And indeed, everything happened as it was meant to be.

They played a A gift to Be Simple, a Shaker folk song and a All Through The Night, a Welsh song:. I found Louise in my viewfinder; she was wiping her eyes with her brown wrinkled hand.

It was at the very end of the performance, when Joel announced that he had a surprise for everyone. He had a story to tell and Ole Jorgen Hammeken volunteered to make a simultaneous translation in Greenlandic. When packing his suitcases, Joel said, a strange being sat down on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. “Who are you?’ Joel asked. It answered: “I am the Angel of Uummannaq.”

What did the Angel whisper in Joel’s ear, it was music, of course. It sang him a melody. Joel wrote it down. And now he was ready to play this new piece for us which of course he named The Angel of Uummannaq.

Whisper, murmur, rustle, noise, sound of speech, the cracking of ice, the howling of a wolf, the barking of a seal, the sniffing of a snow fox, the growling of a bear…

As the music played, it seemed to me that I could hear the Angel of Uummannaq gliding right over me, so close that I could hear the wind ruffling its feathers…. The Angel of Uummannaq was Nipi, and Nipi was The Angel of Uummannaq. The miracle happened. And everyone knew it.

Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why. I don’t know. And I don’t have to.

After the concert we sat at the dinner table holding hands together in the prayer, silently, like in a temple, with no words spoken. We were people of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religious denominations, but right now we were just people making the pilgrimage from cradle to grave. At this moment each of us was protected by the Angel of Uummannaq. This Angel, small and invisible, had enough for each.

Uummannami Nipi

2010-03-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

I know what you may be thinking. It’s been a week since you started reading my daily blog from Uummannaq, and you still can not find a single word about music in it. So, what about the music?

When exactly Joel Spiegelman, a renowned composer and conductor from New York will start his long-promised master classes with Eskimo children from Children’s Home in Uummannaq? When will Uummannaq Music be unveiled?

I will tell you just this. What was a week for those of you living in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Helsinki or Milano, was just a one long day for us. Time in Uummannaq flows slowly… molto adagio. Well, of course, you can rush if you wish, but on the other hand you can take your time. Because in Uummannaq, no matter what you do, whether you rush or not, things somehow get done just on time.

When we embarked on our transatlantic flight to Uummannaq, we had a magnificent Plan. We had a weekly, daily and hourly schedule of our stay in Uummannaq. But it turned out that Uummannaq had its own Plan for us.

According to out initial plan, Joel was coming to Uummannaq to teach local children the basics of music. But it happened so that at first we had to get schooled ourselves.

We too had to start with the basics . It turned out that we did not know anything.

So, we had to learn. We had to learn a lot of things. We had to learn to walk on ice. We had to learn to keep balance on a slippery road in order to avoid injury. Because an injured animal in the Arctic is a dead animal.

We had to learn to put skins and take them off. Because wearing polar bear and seal skins is not a fashion fad or a bow to a tradition here, but a daily necessity. European or American winter cloths, no matter how expensive or brandy, do not save you from Uummnnaq’s real cold.

We had to learn to fall asleep and wake up to the Rhapsody of the dogs’s howling. We had to learn not to pet the dogs – they are not pets, or feed them – they are fed only every other day, so that they can survive on the long winter rides that may last many days with no food in sight.

We also had to learn not to lock our house – this is not only a gracious gesture but an essential necessity of which I will be talking later. We had to learn to be patient; we had to learn to wait till the glacier ice melts in the carafe and makes a beautiful sparkling Ancient Water…

We had to learn to enjoy eating local foods, delicacies like narwhale’s intestines filled with mattak – raw whale skin, a healthy treat with lots of vitamin C. We also had to learn not to babble about global warming at the dinner table – in Uummannaq it is similar to talking about dying. Global warming is another synonym for death penalty here.

We also had to learn to appreciate silence. We had to learn to share everything, to live as a group. We had to learn to judge distances and to learn to love the nearest things.

Some things you learn fast, some skills take longer. It took a long time for Joel to get used to a communal slop bucket and he has not learned yet to consume raw blubber. But he is fine eating the cooked blubber, and he walks in the Blubber House without a fear.

But we learned a lot. We finally learned to say Uummannaq Music in Greenlandic: Uummannami Nipi. Nipi is so much more than just “music” in Greenlandic. Nipi also means the sound of speech, noise, the cracking of ice, the howling of a wolf, the barking of a seal, the sniffing of a snow fox, the growling of a bear… in other words, it means everything!

And yesterday we had our first concert! I will tell you about it in the next blog.

If Greenland Has a Heart....

2010-03-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

I want to think that if Greenland has a heart, Uummannaq just might be it!

I want to say nothing against Qaannaq or Aasiaat because I know them not, but anyone who has once been to Uummannaq will go here again.

Uumannaq is a town of 1,500 people and 7,000 dogs on the West Coast of Greenland some 590 km north of the Polar Circle at 70° 40'N and 58° 08' W. It is built on an on a rock at the foot of the heart-shaped mountain which gave the town its name. Uummannaq literally means just this: the heart-shaped.

If the big island of Greenland is a desert, then the small island of Uummannaq is an oasis in it. After the 7 hour long flight to Qaarsut, the disturbance aroused by bigness, grandness and endlessness of Kalaallit Nunaat, the White Earth, quickly becomes a liberation once you drop down to Uummanaq Heliport.

Here, in Uummanaq you learn to judge distances and to love the nearest things. The boiling hot halibut soup and the icy cold ancient water (made out of iceberg’s ice) are already awaiting for us at Ann Andreasen’s and Ole Jorgen Hammeken’s home where Joel and I head straight from the Heliport. While we are tasting the home-made bread and local caviar, the tupilaks (the bad willed Eskimo spirits) are watching us from the window shelf with precision.

Soon we are surprised to discover that we are not the only guests of the evening. More and more people are showing up, as if jumping out of the magic box of the night, and it seems there is not end to it at all. Will there be enough halibut soup for everyone?

The night is pitch black, no stars and no moon, and Ann is a lantern in the dark whose humble light attracts everyone who is caught in the cold at the extreme edge of the world. The stars are too far, but Ann is near.

You can say Uummannaq is a center of global warming, though many people here would rather not say it for a reason, but what you can absolutely say with a 100% confidence is that Uummannaq is a epicenter of global community. Would you like to know how many languages were spoken during our fancy halibut dinner at Ann’s? Let me count: Greenlandic, Danish, Faroesen, French, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, English, Icelandic, Sanskrit, or maybe I’am missing something?

We were from all over, from all walks of life: from Cuba to Island, from NASA engineer to the navy seal on break from some dangerous service behind the front lines in the snowy mountains Afghanistan, but in the humble light of Uummannaq we were just people. Inuit, which means just that - people.

Most of the old world would regard Uummannaq as an inaccessible place: island away from the island. Yet, it feels like a hot spot in New York, or Paris, or Istanbul. Next time I will make a list of people who at least once sat at this table sharing the halibut soup and I assure you this will be quite a remarkable list.

The Arctic world is small, and it seems that the epicenter of it is here, in Uummanaq. No matter who you are and where you are from, you feel at home here. Ann, Ole Jorgen and other citizens of the heart shaped town make you feel that way.

In the morning I find out that the windows of my little bedroom look over the local cemetery. White crosses on white snow, with odd shaped sapphire icebergs floating by. In Uummanaq, every day you get to see the life from a different angle, from a wider perspective. You learn to live with a joy of being alive. You learn to observe the world around you with precision, you learn to appreciate the nearest things. You learn to love them.

The first lesson we learned on our first night in Uummannaq was this one: you don’t lock your door. You don’t lock it during the day, and you don’t lock it at night. There is a hole for the key in the door, but this is only a hole.

Uummannaq is a heart of Greenland. And this heart is open wide.

The Road to Uummannaq

2010-03-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

The road to Uummannaq has never been easy, or short.

Every single time we traverse the Atlantic, rushing from point A in Europe to point B in the States, we fly by immense white plains of Greenland, the largest island in the world. We stare down, at what lies some 12, 000 m beneath us, and wonder: what would it feel like to happen to be there, right now? What if instead of heading some other 2,000 miles West or East to the port of our destination, the plane landed here, right now? Let’s say, what if there was an emergency stop?

We thoroughly scan the perfectly white surface trying to spot the familiar things – roads, constructions of any kind, or at least some secondary signs of life as we know it – let’s say chimney smokes – and of course, we do not find anything familiar. Ninety five percent of Greenland’s surface is pure ice.

What would it feel like, we wonder, if we happened to be stranded here – at the edge, between frozen oceans and rivers, pressure ices, mountains and barren lands - for some time?

We think about that, just for a moment, because in the next one, we are being served the second hot breakfast (according the schedule, at this very point) which faultlessly takes our attention away from Greenland and its wonders and securely locks it on the ham and cheese sandwich and a chocolate cake.

At the point when we are done with the breakfast, Greenland is still floating underneath us, slowly and silently, but now other distractions are coming: new movie and immigration forms.

So, we land in Greenland just for a second, in our dreams, and then we continue with our flight according the itinerary till we end up inescapably in New York, Boston or Philadelphia, or if we fly in the opposite direction, in Oslo, Moscow or London.

But this time everything is different. We do land in Greenland, and this is not a dream. New York - Copenhagen - Kangerlussuaq – Assiat - Qaarsut –– and finally Uummannaq! Planes, trains, automobiles, helicopters, fishing boats and dogsleds...

The road to Uummannaq obliges you to focus on the journey, and not the destination. To get there, you need to have gone every step of the way, which often differs from your initial itinerary. You probably will have to make some unplanned stops, and you most likely will experience some long delays. But in the end the road to Uummannaq, which I personally think is the most beautiful place in the world, gives you a bigger-than-life experience.

To make it all the way to Uummannaq you need to understand that Uummannaq is not a geographical point on the map, but a state of mind. Those who succeed in it are happy in Uummannaq.

Ummannaq is indeed the state of mind. It’s a promised land, but it promises only one thing: transformation. Here one day you may meet your own heart, like a stranger you have never known.

Other places have beaches and great shopping quarters, but Uummannaq gives you something else – a lantern that may lighten up your soul. At Uummannaq airport we finally meet our hosts – Ole Jorgen Hammeken, a legendary polar explorer, a hunter and a sharp-shooter, and his wife Ann Andreasen, a woman of many powers and talents; both being the very embodiment of Uummannaq and Greenland itself.

Neither of them have been born in Uummannaq. Ole Jorgen is an Eskimo from Nuuk, and Ann is a Faroe Islander who had immigrated to Greenland 25 years ago. But their daughter, the 16 year old sparking Pipaluk, a talented musician and a throat-singer, was born here. Ann and Ole Jorgen run the world’s northernmost Children’s Home where will be staying and working for the next few weeks.

Children’s Home which is almost 100 years old, has looks of the world’s finest museum. You can easily spend the entire day wandering through its galleries and exploring all kind of medias: from fabric to sound, from stone to bone. Some may define Ann and Ole Jorgen as greatest collectors: indeed, they have been gathering and producing the fine Arctic art for years. Yet, in reality Ann and Ole Jorgen are the Givers. To understand that, you do not need a day, or a week, or a month; you need only a minute. You only need to meet those who inhabit the world of these fine art galleries. Eskimo children. They will run by you in a minute and disappear again in the twilight.

We are going to know them better in the days to come.

The Road to Uummannaq has never been easy, or short for anyone. And this is the best part of it!

UP!

2010-03-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Up we are going! Further and further North…defying the gravity. Planes, trains, automobiles, more planes, that each time are getting just smaller and smaller... New York City – Moscow – Copenhagen – Kangerlussuaq – and finally Qaarsut with its 899m gravel runway. Qaarsut is our last stop before the Great Island of Uummannaq which according our multi-page tickets is our ultimate destination! But we already know that from now on Uummannaq will be our life-time journey, not a destination.

Many people kept asking me in the last days: “How long is the way to Uummannaq?”Apparently, there is an easy answer to this question. Uummannaq lies six time zones behind Moscow, four time zones behind Copenhagen and Paris and two time zones ahead of New York and Washington DC. But this easy and straightforward answer, as pretty much everything is Greenland, may be confusing. Because it does not tell you that to get to Ummannaq from New York you first have to travel all the way to Europe and from there slowly make your way back to the North-West of Greenland which is a much slower way than the overnight trip across the Atlantic to the East.

So, how long is the way to Uummannaq? You can say: it is 18 or more hours of flight from New York depending on your itinerary. Or you can say: it is only a 10 minute helicopter ride away from Qaarsut. But this also may be confusing. There are not too many buildings in Qaarsut but among them there is an mysterious structure named “Shelter for stranded passengers”. For how long can you be stranded in Qaarsut? Imaqa agaqu!

Immaqa agaqu means “maybe tomorrow” in Greenlandic. And tomorrow people may say the same words again: Immaqa agaqu! And there is nothing wrong about it. Life is based here around the weather and other cycles of natural kingdom. Sometimes you have to wait a day, sometimes a week. You can’t really do too much about it. There is not sense to get mad, there is no reason to get upset. Besides, nothing will change if you do something a little bit slower, or faster. Things just have to be done, and they are always done, sooner or later.

So, how long? How far? How soon? These questions are irrelevant in Greenland. It is also very difficult to judge distances here because we are above tree line. There are no landmarks, there are no road signs, and very often there are no even footprints on the snow that give you the sense of a distance. Everything looks exactly the same, exactly like every other piece of ice for miles around. There's really no “there” here.

And since there are no roads between cities and villages in Greenland, you always depend beyond the weather on the stranger. The stranger can give you a lift on boat or on a dog-sled. The stranger can make your life perfect or miserable. In the harsh environment of the Arctic you always depend on the stranger as much as the stranger can be dependant on you.

The best years of my life I spent in the Arctic travelling from village to village, from place to place relying on my Arctic hosts who always met me, a stranger, with open doors, arms and open hearts. I might have been lucky, but I never really was stranded in a bad way. My travel could go just a little bit slower, but by no means it was a tragedy. Things were always done in the end. So, if this night a friend calls me from New York and asks me again: “How long is the way to Uummannaq”, I will answer:” It is as long as the way from one heart to another.”

On Thin Ice

2010-02-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

It all started on that gloomy day in early December when we noticed that our dear friend, Tiina Itkonnen, the talented Finnish artist and Polar photographer, joined the FB group “Children's Home Uummannaq - Piano tuning”.

“The piano at the home is so out of tune, cried out the FB message. We are raising funds for sending a piano tuner from Ilulissat to Uummannaq. A round trip fare on

Air Greenland to Uummannaq and back will cost about 3.500 DKK and the tuning 1.500 DKK….”

Joel and I were intrigued by the message.

We both knew about the Children’s Home – a cozy retreat for abandoned Eskimo children in the snows of Uummannaq, a small town on a small island in a large fjord on the North-West coast of Greenland, some 600 km north of the Arctic Circle. I even knew the founders – the brave polar explorer Ole Jorgen Hammeken after whom the Hammeken Point, the peak of the world's northernmost mountain in Peary Land was named, and his awesome wife Ann Andreasen nicknamed in Ummannaq and beyond as the “strong woman”.

Joel has never met them. Yet, we both started thinking in unison.

“Wait a minute! we said out loud after reading Tiina’s comment. The piano is out of tune. Ok, we will probably be able to help out and to inspire our friends, including some world famous musicians living in NYC to pitch in. But what will happen after the piano is tuned? Do these little children know how to play the piano? Do they have a music teacher at all?”

We wanted to see what was hidden behind the horizon. But at that very moment, when we were musing on it over a coffee at Nespresso Boutique on Madison Avenue, we could not see much …beyond the glass walls of Nespresso… just because our five senses became jaded after long years of living in the civilized and ordered world.

You never know when, you never know why. I will probably never know why Joel Speigelman, a 77 year old renowned classical composer, a conductor and harpsichordist, once a friend of Igor Stravinsky and now one of Mikhail Gorbachev's favorite musician friends. Joel, who has orbited his long life between New York, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt and Cairo and who fashions French cuisine as much as French manners, said literally the following: “ I will go there and work with these children!”

Well, he actually said it after watching a fascinating movie Le Voyage d’Inuk “On thin Ice” by Mike Magidson set in Uummannaq and starring Ole Jorgen Hammeken. He also added that if possible he would rather to go after the sunrise: for those who do not know, the sun rises in Ummannaq in February and Prof. Spiegelman is a sunny man.

When Joel shared this idea with his colleagues, fellow musicians and music connoisseurs, some of them went speechless. Several suggested that Joel will sink in the icy waters of melting Uummannaq since he never learned how to swim. Others saw this as a pure act of magic that eventually could transform the world and maybe … maybe even affect global warming.

Yet, some carefully questioned whether music and ice belonged together at all. Whether these two powerful notions coincided or at least intersected in space and time…

Some knowledgeable people indicated that there was even no such a word for music in Eskimoic language. According to them, there were 874 words for snow, and 375 for polar bear, but there was no word for music. Therefore, these stuffy musicologists with linguistic proclivities suggested that in the absence of the word, the concept of music as such was also absent from the Eskimo culture!!!

That is a good example of what the arrogant civilized ordered world sometimes does to us! We are reluctant to believe that ideas may differ from their vehicles of expression, especially in such a multilayered language as Inuktitut. If there is no word for something, then it does not exist!

By that time, we’ve heard enough of Inuit music to have no doubt about its existence. We knew a lot about its complex rhythmic organization, and undulating melodic movement. One morning we listened to the recording of a really old Inuit song when we suddenly ran into this word – Nipi – and were immediately fascinated with it. Nipi according the authors of the text accompanying the recording meant music, but much more than just that. It also meant the sound of speech, noise, the cracking of ice, the howling of a wolf, the barking of a seal, the sniffing of a snow fox, the growling of a bear.. in other words, the real music of a big world, that obviously was much bigger than the world of some superior card carrying PhD musicologists. And it was then when the idea struck us:

Learning and creating a music that is as big as the world, one that is not limited by traditional walls of the European influenced conservatory would be our goal in Ummannaq. We did not care any more whether the Ummannaq children knew how to play classical piano or a saxophone, we knew already that we were going for something new, something that had no history We were going to make it. Step by step. On thin ice.

We decided to call our project “Making Music Together” and it means just that: making it together, on the spot, spontaneously, with what ever musical and non-musical materials would be available there including acoustic and electronic instruments, natural materials such as wood, bone, skins, the wind, metals, the sound of ice as it drips and cracks, the chants of the Shaman, the grinding of the earth, the howling of animals, the twitting of birds, and whatever sounds that may be produced by nature or manufacture.

This is how Joel Spiegelman, a talented educator who taught music in the finest American Universities for more than 50 years, puts it:

“I intend to use a series of improvisational techniques and exercises that allows each one to perform according to their own level of ability on what sound making implements are available, be they musical instruments such as a piano, flute, sax, or just pieces of glass, ice, wood blocks, a taught bow, the wind, a skin drawn over a kitchen pot turning it into a drumhead, and other sounds of nature and man as explained above.”

That said, we are about to pack our suitcases and head to Uummanaq.

We are packing all the important things – such as warm boots, socks, gloves, hats, and merino wool underwear which hopefully will keep us warm. We are stocking up with disposable heating pads that we will insert in our gloves and socks. We are thinking in layers, many, many layers. We are very busy doing just that even though our kind-hearted host, the “strong woman” Ann Andreasen has already told us imperatively: “Don’t bring anything. We have everything you might need. Just bring yourselves!”

But this is another story. It is a story about never ending Eskimoic hospitality and compassion, the art of sharing, generosity and willingness to give.

Once again, this is another story and we will talk about it next time.