Rebekka Karijord @The Ruby Lounge

Most artist have some sort of interesting back story that inspires and drives their passion and Rebekka Karijord doesn’t fall-short in this respect.

Born in Sandnessjøen, just south of the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway, to two teenage sweethearts who split when Rebekka was only 3, Karijord was raised by her very young mother and had a relationship with her father that was sketchy at best. He suffered from a drug addiction that lasted 25 years and intensely shaped Rebekka’s perception of the world around her.

Her father suffered from a drug addiction that lasted 25 years and intensely shaped Rebekka’s perception of the world around her.

“While I grew up with a healthy and strong but very young mother. I had sporadic contact with my dad during my childhood, and missed him a whole lot: he was a musician, which I wanted to be, and I looked a whole lot like him. But I guess my relationship to him was coloured by expectations and disappointments, so we drifted apart. Then, when I was maybe thirteen, I found a notebook in the attic with my father’s handwriting. It contained his songs, sketches and poems he had written when I was a baby. A lot of the songs were written for my mum and me.”

This intensified Karijord’s urge to meet up with her father again, and after quite a wait, she finally managed to get back in touch with him. “The meeting was very sad and painful,” she recalls. “He was extremely sick back then, and I saw things a young teenager should not see. But he was profoundly happy to see me and, lacking other things to give me, he handed me two big plastic bags with all his lyrics. I went home with this treasure, locked it into my room and started a long process of reading that lasted many years. In there was documentation of his love for my mum and me. I got to know him through his lyrics, and a correspondence started where we sent each other tapes and songs. I started to write melodies to his lyrics, and, finally, I wrote my own songs and recorded my own demos.”

“The meeting was very sad and painful,” she recalls. “He was extremely sick back then, and I saw things a young teenager should not see”

Some twenty years after discovering the hoard of lyrics, Karijord is still writing, recording and performing music, and her latest album, WE BECOME OURSELVES, is arguably the finest of her career to date. Written with the intention of producing seomthing  “romantic, huge, physical and powerful, yet stripped and raw”, Karijord has certainly succeeded.

Tickets to watch Rebekka Karijord playing live at The Ruby Lounge on 17th January are available here. To find out more visit her webpage.

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Music