Invited by the Oslo Jazz festival, Jøkleba has joined the celebration of John Coltrane´s “A love supreme” recording. We have invited the vocal group Oslo 14 with 20 international young vocalists from the scene in Oslo, supervised by Elin Rosseland. Diving back into Coltrane´s music in preparation for this event, we are struck by the similarities between Moroccan Gnawa music and the simple, powerful structures of the recording. Both are celebrations of a spiritual creative force, both are based on simple pentatone scales and patterns, but expanding into myriads of variations, both are heavily bass-riff oriented , and both use music as a vehicle to enlightment.
Concert in Aulaen in Oslo, under the monumental paintings of Edvard Munch. 11 august at 18 hrs.

A totally smooth ride in top speeds up to 300 km / h with just a whisper from engines and wheels. City centre to city centre . The future of touring!

Folllowing an idea by Brescia´s concert promoters NuevoEden we rigged our gear at the middle plateau of San Faustino Metro station saturday, with sound engineer Fabio in charge of a very nice sound production. As the time of the concert approached, the place filled up nicely with an attentive audience looking for a unique sound adventure. A very special situation to perform in , with a kind of melancholic pitch of “a” rising up from the underground by every train stopping and leaving. Of course we had to implement this in our choise of sounds and harmonies:-)

As we wind our way up the Balkan we ask around to everybody we meet. Conductors, railway people,friends and fellow passengers. How is this engine powered? How is the electricity produced? What are the carbon emission figures we can log for this stretch? If we get any clear answers , they are not very precise, to say the least. About 100 km of the Sofia – Beograd stretch is diesel powered , that is for sure. But there is an ongoing railway strike in Serbia which makes the company search for emergency solutions. Our train out of Beograd was actually physically blocked by employees 100 meters out from the station. When we finally got going they used the red light at a lot of crossings to slow down the train. In this situation we don’t really know what engines were used. It felt like the smell of diesel was in the air for most of the time. Asking about how the electricity was produced we just get the answer that it is a mix , depending on the market. Coal, nuclear, water power. Somewhere this is probably monitored, but those figures are not accessible to us.

The Turks have made their own version of Jøkotour!

The gorgeous red Turkish flag at Taksim square waving lazily in the autumn sun on our last day in Istanbul before going up northwest. We looked at different options for the travel to Sofia, discussed with locals and travel professionals, and it seems the only option is bus. Again it is disappointing to see that the train companies don´t really stretch out to the traveller. By train we would have to change at the border, and everybody here tells us that the passport control is unpredictable , it could last several hours, where as on the bus it is efficient and swift.We will see….