Ólöf Arnalds

February 9, 2010 8:12 PM

As They Say is a 20+ minute musical composition by Icelander Ólöf Arnalds, where she plays and sings all the parts herself in nine-fold splitscreen. She created the piece from interviews with 17 New Yorkers, each of a different nationality, and she sings in all 17 languages. Other Ólöf Arnalds videos: 11 minute documentary, 4 songs live on KEXP, covering That Lucky Old Sun, original song that morphs into Springsteen's I'm on Fire live, new song, an interview broken up into 17 chunks and a 10 minute documentary. The interview, the first of the documentaries and some songs are in English. [Ólöf Arnalds previously on MeFi]
posted by Kattullus (4 comments total)

As a bonus, here's a short video from a performance at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Brooklyn. Her eight month old son had been crying and disrupting the performance and was brought on stage so that Ólöf could calm the noisy boy, and she sings a song for him.
posted by Kattullus at 8:16 PM on February 9, 2010

This is beautiful. Thank you.
posted by Spinneret at 10:13 PM on February 9, 2010

Fantastic! Especially the final section; all those 9 ukeleles Sung Tongs-ing it up.

(If anybody out there was deterred by the pretty-sounding but rather formless first 2 minutes, stick around. It goes to a healthy bunch of different places.)
posted by Rumpled at 11:06 PM on February 9, 2010

i liked this a lot. thanks for posting,
posted by peterkins at 9:57 AM on February 11, 2010