We follow five people moving from their home countries to Sweden. What brought them here? How do they see Sweden? What is it like to leave your homeland and come to a new culture?

In their own language, they talk about their home country, their sense of loss and longing. Slowly the five personalities are woven together by their experiences of Swedish culture. The piece contains a level of storytelling based on interviews, albeit in fragmentary form. The languages spoken are Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Kurdish and Russian. You do not need to understand the language in order to appreciate the music.

"We have selected languages that are not too common in Sweden. We did not use English, a language known to most Swedes, because we sought to use voices more like instruments and encourage listening to the melodies and universal human emotions in language. The voices interact with a web of environmental sounds and instrument sounds from around the world. Many of the instruments were recorded from the Swedish Music Museum's vast collection of ethnic instruments. The music moves in all three dimensions around the audience and encloses them in an ever-changing world of sound.”

The piece is specially composed for a 17-channel speaker set but an 8-channel mix is also available. The stereo version that you can listen to here was made with a dummy head surrounded by the 17 speakers. Please listen in headphones to get an idea of the surround effect.

FIVE TALES