Music Makes the World Go Round (Part I)

My third weekend in Lund was one of the most musical of my life, and also mostly spent outside of Lund. That Friday night, 19 August, began Malmöfestivalen, a weeklong, free and fantastic music festival in the neighboring city, bursting with names big and small, festival food and drink, rides, crayfish parties and loosened-up Swedes. A bunch of us went to see Iron&Wine that night.

Trying our first crayfish at a kräftskiva (crayfish party)

The Iron
The Wine
It rained on us, but at moments that made everything more beautiful.
Floating art

The next day marked an event I'd been waiting for pretty much the entire time I was in Sweden. Kristina and I set off to take the train to Helsingborg (the closest Swedish city to Denmark), where the goal was to gather at least 900 Swedes (or pseudo-Swedes, likes us) to beat the world record for the biggest ukulele orchestra playing a song together.
From the uke shop, this pair sold us our Swedish ukes, since I left mine back in California and Kristina was a ukulele virgin (no longer!)
I was amazed by the variety of people there: young, old, ukulele masters and people like Kristina who had been playing for a total of 3 hours (bravo!).
The man on the book cover and the man holding the book are one and the same! Ukulele love forever, through the decades.

In the end there were 1,547 of us, and beat the world record we did. What an amazing day! They filled the day with rehearsals, performances and ukulele-jokes (bad ones). We played Vikingarna's "Leende Guldbruna Ögon" (Her Golden Brown Eyes), which is every bit as awful as it sounds, but is pretty fun when you're playing it along with 1,500+ other ukulele enthusiasts.

The middle woman is from Guinness World Records, and announced that we had officially broken the record! The audience thundered into Bob Marley-style victory "oi oi oi"s.
We walked away as world record-breakers and spent the rest of the daylight exploring the beautiful city.

That night, I returned to Malmöfestivalen to see an excellent performance by Amadou&Mariam, a blind couple from Mali that combine French, Mali, and other worldly rhythms into their extremely dance-inducing music. I couldn't stop moving.

I must credit an old friend, Hjalmar, who told me they'd be there, and he was actually the first friend from International House that I had a reunion with. Back in San Diego, Hjalmar and I would trade ukulele lessons (me) for Swedish lessons (Hjlamar).
The lovely Raphaelle, Antoine and Robin
The boys

One of the best weekends of my life, both for the music-related events and the company. Music has turned out to be a huge part of my journey abroad so far, entwining itself into the best moments I've had in Sweden, in other countries and in the friendships I've formed. Next post, exploring Skåne and then exploring Berlin, Germany. It only gets more musical.