I have something to confess. I used to think that what Clandestino represents is not really that remarkable, that the artists performing at the festival after all are touring around the world and here it is only that things are going a bit slower than that. I do not believe so anymore. There’s a remedy. The insistent.

Clandestino Festival #5/2007 is inaugurated June the 7th inside that massive rock shelter that SKF (a Swedish bearing factory) dug out in the 50’s so that in case of war they were able to move Swedish ball bearing production to a safer spot. At Berg 211, as the place is called today, artists like Filastine feat Subzero Permafrost [USA], Maga Bo [Brazil] and Ayhan Aydin [Sweden] will create a whole different mood than that which prevailed during the days of the cold war.

Already by June the 1st there will be more than twenty artists arriving to the dub think-tank I’mPULSE Clandestino - the 4th Asia-Europe Music Camp. We are proud to arrange this in cooperation with Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF). During an intensive week they will meet to exchange ideas about digital music production and the history of dub. The guest lecturers will be Mad Professor & Blondub Sexy Sound [UK/Israel], Dr Das [UK], Daito Manabe [Japan], Dickson Dee [Hong Kong, China SAR] and Steve Barker [UK]. After a long period of contact on a virtual platform, the I’mPULSE artists will also rehearse in preparation for a number of performances scattered throughout the festival days. New constellations and projects of collaboration will emerge.

This year there is a special focus on dub music. It is question of dub in a wide sense. From its classic style with roots in Lee “Scratch” Perry via dub step (a genre that get it’s influences from jungle, breakbeat and grime) to its multiple electronic switches and reinterpretations.

However, it is not only a question of dub. As a matter of fact it looks like we are preparing one of the most eclectic editions of Clandestino Festival. We will not be long in that rock shelter where the inauguration takes place. On Friday June 8th the festival is moving, at first to the fantastic roof terrace of Museum of World Culture with Wildbirds & Peacedrums [Gothenburg] among others on stage. Later that evening we are moving to the former opera house Storan’s club stage, where we will meet a series of I’mPULSE-artist’s, but also the audiovisual artist 2/5 BZ [Turkey], Frédéric Galliano: The Kuduro Soundsystem [France, Angola, Portugal] and the highly topical Mapei [Stockholm].

On Saturday June 9th the festival spirit will start off with Tujiko Noriko [Japan] at Museum of World Culture, then later move on to Musikens Hus where State of Bengal [UK] are performing with their live band for the first time in Sweden. In addition we have a distinguished visit from the dancehall-legend Tippa Irie & the Dubashanti Band [UK] and the progressive dub duo Brain Damage [France].

Distinguished or not, the virtuoso Liu Fang [China] should have performed in a crowded Concert Hall or at the new Opera House but that will not happen - not this time. Instead you might be one of the few lucky people who will on Sunday June 10th experience one of China’s premier solo artist’s (both concerning pipa, that is a four stringed lute with a pear-shaped body and guhzeng that is a Chinese zither) on one of the world’s smallest stages.

Voice fading again, only sounds left. Bom-bom-bwam-bwam-bwam-bom, doo-doo-doo-duuung-duung. You know that it’s in there, inside your head, even with no words. The age of psychological warfare. ”You should build something small every day,” Mad Professor says in an interview. ”It’s about getting inside, to where there aren’t any words.”

This is what the Swedish poet Johannes Anyuru said in one of his artist presentations here. So we also have silence as an object for Clandestino Talks, where poets, moviemakers and musicians are brought together in discussions that our world makes necessary and unavoidable, even a weekend like this. For if these are the sounds, here also you find something much more frightening: the silence.

Dj Mleccha