Signe Aurell: Irrbloss

– A different emigrant story than the one about Karl Oskar and Kristina

FOR THREE YEARS, Maja Heurling and Ola Sandström worked to set the poetry of American immigrant Signe Aurell to music. The story about Signe is completely different from the famous Swedish one about Karl-Oskar and Kristina. Signe left Sweden on her own in 1913 to seek her fortune in the United States, where she worked as a laundress and political writer - at the same time as fellow Swedish poet and migrant Joe Hill was convicted of murder. Signe also published his metrically perfect and linguistically glowing poetry collection Irrbloss - in Swedish. Signe's up until now unknown poems are about longing fro home and the struggle for a brighter future.
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In October 2019, 100 years after they were published, the album with the songs of Signe Aurell's poems was released on Kakafon Records. The CD Irrbloss - Songs From the Poetry of Signe Aurell contains 12 of the poems from the poetry collection with the same name, as well as an instrumental track. Since the release Heurling and Sandström are touring with their show about Signe Aurell: IRRBLOSS - A different emigrant story than the one about Karl-Oskar and Kristina.​

The project has come about thanks to a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, the Swedish-American and phil. dr. Marcus Cederström. Marcus wrote his dissertation (published in 2016) about the lone women who crossed the Atlantic to the USA from Sweden around the turn of the last century. During his research time in Sweden, he heard Maja sing songs from the Påtår project with Moa Martinsson and sent her Signe Aurell's poems.​

The album Irrbloss was recorded in Playing With Music's studio by Petter Berndalen in the summer of 2019. Participating musicians: Livet Nord (violin quinton), Daniel Wejdin (double bass), Petter Berndalen (percussion), Lisa Långbacka (accordion), Helene Norrman (dobro) and Claudia Müller (recorder).​

In September 2022, four of the songs came out in English at Kakafon records, translated by professor Anne.Charlotte Harvey (University if San Diego), Maja Heurling and Marcus Cederström. Partiipating musicians on the EP: Livet Nord (violin quinton) and Daniel Wejdin (double bass).

​SAID ABOUT IRRBLOSS

​”Ask the refugee who crosses your path and you will most likely hear similar descriptions of longing for the known trails.”
​– Lira Musikmagasin
 
"Heurling/Sandström have preserved the origin but added time. The songs sound then and now, American and Swedish."
– Hifi och musik