GENRE:
Alternative singer/songwriter, snow songs, ukulele-wielding Eskimo tunes about coffee, and ghosts, and bugs… and ghost-bugs? Ice-folk?
MORE ABOUT:
Hi there. My name is Nive. I ‘m an Inuk, a real Eskimo from Greenland. Seriously. I play music, mostly on my little red ukulele and with some help from my friends Jan & Aarich. I like that. I ‘m currently working on my first LP. And playing. Which is just wonderful. Can’t wait for what’s to come! I love singing. And cowboy boots. And walking in the snow. Yay!
…Although I look at myself as a musician from Greenland rather than a Greenlandic musician, surely growing up and living in Greenland shaped my music. I have a couple songs in Greenlandic. There’s the traditional drum dances – those rhythms pop up here and there. Then there’s the climate -loooong winters, harsh, desolate, snow and ice, northern lights… It makes you want to sit inside, curl up in front of the fireplace, and just play. To give you an idea about how isolate we live: there’s no roads between the towns. So if you want to travel to the next settlement it takes a helicopter flight, or in the summer a (long) boat trip. Very little foreign musicians (especially indie or underground) ever make the trip. Greenland is a huge island but we’re only 58.000 inhabitants. There’s no record stores just electronic stores with a few CDs. Up until very recent, the Internet was so slow that streaming radio was impossible. Etc… so all this -basically just the geographic reality- seeps through whatever you create. It’s a bit like with the Icelandic bands. Nature and the way nature controls your life (can’t fight bad weather, see) is just all dominating. Also, when I was younger, I wanted to be an adventurer, an explorer – I thought that was a real job, something you could study for… I just dreamt of traveling, seeing the world, meeting people. So I did -which is why I ended up playing with all these wonderful musicians all over the place. Another result of living way up north in a remote place is that direct influences on your music are little – on the radio we hear mainstream, Greenlandic oldies, and classical music – no cool weird things, no new stuff… so you got to explore, look for it real hard… People sometimes compare me to Cat Power or Neko Case or even Bjork -but none of them I ever heard before leaving Greenland.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:
It’s in the make! Just gotten back from Bristol with John Parish; been in Portland with Eric Matthews, in SF with Ralph Carney (Tom Waits, B52’s)… soon to be heard… and yeah there’s been some tracks that are played; you can hear ‘em on myspace…
PRESS REVIEWS:
“If you have ever wondered how an ukulele-wielding Eskimo singing about coffee and ghost bugs and vacuum cleaner killers sounds, then Nive Nielsen is your woman. With a sound that blends in her heritage nicely into melodious tunes, Nive is making music that will have you instantly falling heads over heels about Nive Nielsen.” (Junior’s Cave)
LINKS:
www.myspace.com/nivenielsen
THU, 05 NOV 09, 19:45 KINGS PLACE – HALL 1 » BUY TICKETS HERE