The announced karaoke marathon for Icelandic natural resources is taking place as programmed at the Nordic House. It opened today and it will be going till January 8, 2011.
Despite all the early mediatic hype, the karaoke so far appeared to be an initiative far from any mindless sensationalism. Admirable as ever, Icelanders seem to be more focused on pragmatic aspects rather than in glamorous fluff that would have turned the same kind of event in a fair of pretension almost anywhere else. Even Björk, promoter and in a way host of the marathon, demonstrated to be rather at home even in this official context. She is very actively taking part in the event, singing and dancing together with others, but also taking care of the other details — let’s not forget this is all about the petition to restore the just right to people of Iceland over their own natural resources.
If you want to know more about the scandal of the acquisition of HS Orka by Magma Energy, we suggest you to take a look at the documentation in English available from the official petition’s site. Also, here is an interview that Björk gave to the Canadian magazine McLeans, interview that was afterwards retracted by the medium after Magma Energy threatened the magazine with a defamation suit — a sort of scandal inside the scandal, but sadly we all know too well that not all media want to make a stand, especially when money is involved.
To the joy of people around the globe that in spite of distances are following news and want a few more details on the marathon, we have a couple of videos — quality far from great, sorry — recorded in the course of the evening: Björk delights the present audience covering live Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and Kría Brekkan gives her more than peculiar version of famous hit Be My Baby. The day started with the anticipated duet of Björk and Ómar Ragnarsson, and after that Jón Gnarr and Sigurjón Kjartansson also sang together. Many other figures in the Icelandic public and artistic community took part in the marathon, and more are expected to join in the next days as well.
It’s kind of unfortunate that the terrible weather of the last hours is spoiling in part the success of the event: attendees are demonstrating great warmth and enthusiasm, but numbers can perhaps be improved even more. Hopefully hordes of Icelanders will face the cold and will show up in the course of the following days.
We encourage everybody eligible to take action and to join the cause by signing the petition: moral support from everybody else will also be appreciated. We truly hope the goal of collecting the needed signatures will be accomplished.
Images ©Pu the Owl. Don’t use without permission. Pu’s photography blog can be found at Manic Owl Works.
I wish I could sign! All the best to Iceland!