Norwigi (AKA The Musical Slave) is a street musician from Norway. In her own words, she makes songs about 'love, the forces of nature and the world economy'.
Last year, Norwegi found herself in Dublin, whereupon she promptly fell in with a gang of horse-riding teens from Dublin's inner city, and created No Plan, an epic nine-minute long musical ode to their lives that's already en route to becoming somewhat of a viral video sensation.
We asked Norwegi to tell us the story behind No Plan, and her adventures in Dublin. Read on for more...
I´m The Musical Slave, a street musician and storyteller from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. And a few years back, I left my home town to go on a road trip - because I was sick of my life, and wanted to get back my feeling of freedom. And after a few months of travelling around northern Europe, I ended up in Dublin.
And on my first day there, I managed to crash my van into a wall in the middle of the city. And I was swearing to myself, when suddenly, I saw this horse coming out of the wall! I was filled with this feeling of fire and love, and I ran over to the horse, and suddenly I was surrounded by these teenage boys. And one of them asked me if I wanted to come for a spin. I didnt know what a spin meant, but I said yeah, and he brought me all around Dublin with a horse and two-wheeler, dodging buses and cars. And when we came back, he showed me the laneway where I´d crashed, and there were actually five horse yards and about twenty horses hidden behind the walls, right in the middle of town!
From that day on, I was hooked. I ended up buying my own horse, and moved him into the yard. And I think I wrote my first song about the horse yard the very first month I was there. I had never felt so inspired in my whole life. I also had a video camera, that I´d used to document my road trip. And now I realised I just had to film the boys and their horses, and show their culture to the world.
The horses remind us of our own wild nature, and remind us what it feels like to be free.
And so I ended up becoming friends with this gang of 16-year-olds from the horse yard, and they agreed to be in the video, as long as I would bring them in the van whenever they wanted. And so they practically moved into my van, and showed me the true meaning of life, to go "cruising".
The creative process
I remember the guards would stop us all the time - they didnt understand what a blonde Norwegian woman was doing in a van with a bunch of 16-year-olds. I tried to explain to the guard that the first time I saw the boys on the horses in the middle of the street, it lit the fire in my heart, and reminded me how life used to be when we were still living in the wild, and we made our own rules and didn’t need money to survive. And that now the boys were helping me make a video about the urban horse culture and the meaning of freedom. I usually made the guards laugh, and they let us go.
But it was no joke, the boys and horses really gave me back my freedom. And I think having horses in the middle of the city actually makes a lot of sense. I think people need to feel this contact with nature, and that the horses remind us of our own wild nature, and remind us what it feels like to be free.
About NO PLAN – the music video (AKA I'm gonna choke your chicken)
I had no idea what the video footage would turn into. But one day one of the boys asked me if I could choke his chicken for 20 euro. I didnt know what "choke the chicken" meant, but I thought it sounded very poetic, so I started singing it. Soon all the boys were on the floor laughing. I realised I was onto something, and the "choke the chicken-verse" quickly turned into a nine-minute ballad about the horse yard, called NO PLAN, and six of the boys from the yard appear in the song. And now the video footage just fell into place too, and brought the lyrics to life. And I released the track last month, and put the video up on YouTube.
So I'd like to give a shout out to the boys who appear in the song and video. It was them who brought me to the Ballinasloe Horse Fair where I found my horse, and it was them who inspired me to write the song, and they stood by me and supported me the whole time I was in Dublin. They are also the smartest and funniest people I’ve met in my whole life. And they have this way of always being in the flow, and making crazy things happen in the middle of everyday life. Also, it was the boys who taught me how to go "cruising" with the horses and the cars. And I want to show how cruising brings you into this zone where you don’t have to think and you can just enjoy being alive.
Listen: Norwigi (AKA The Musical Slave) talks to The Ray Darcy Show:
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So the point is that these boys are actually on the ball, and they have something important to teach the world. Also I couldn’t have made the song and video without them, and thanks to these boys, the urban horse culture in The Liberties will go down in history.
No Plan screens at the 2017 Galway Film Fleadh on July 14th - details here.
