Steelpan Jazz in the Arctic Circle?

Live from Sortland, Norway, Gregory Boyd with GBTNO at the Sortland Jazz Festival 2025, featuring Jens Damm on drums and Thomas Sejthen on acoustic and electric bass. Talk about amazing—Sortland, above the Arctic Circle, has blue water and fish right beside the hotel. By the way, we stayed at the Scandic Hotel in Sortland. It’s a really nice hotel, and a highlight was the food. During the first two days of the festival, I wasn’t very adventurous with my eating. If I haven’t heard of a place being good for food, I tend to be conservative about what I eat. However, on the third day, I finally took the plunge and had a brilliant reindeer shank! So, if you’re staying in Northern Norway near Sortland and happen to stay at the Scandic Hotel, do yourself a favor and try their restaurant—you’ll be glad you did. Sortland is a cozy town that seems a bit odd at first because many of the buildings are painted blue. At first, it seemed like one of those strange 1990s European ideas, but I realized it was actually a clever way for the town to stand out and get on the map. The decision was made to paint the buildings blue for the upcoming year 2000 celebrations. It’s also said there was a minor disagreement between those who wanted a darker shade of blue and those who preferred a lighter one, but they worked it out. I was warmly received in this town, along with my band, during our performances for both youth and adults. Seeing steel pans on stage with conventional bass and drums was, I’m sure, an eye-opener. I certainly did my best to make it an ear-opener as well. We had three performances in total, the first one for young people, roughly ages 7 to 11—and it was packed, by the way. It was challenging because, when we do shows about New Orleans music and explain cultural aspects, we usually speak in English with some Danish if it’s a Danish crowd. But here, we had to speak entirely in English, which was tough but manageable. On the second day, we performed for immigrants and young people, and the third day’s performance was for teenagers, who, I’m sure, loved us. I love it when I can connect with teens; they bring this energy that helps us get it together and give them what they’re really looking for in a band performance. All of a sudden, it feels like you're at a rock concert, and it can get pretty wild if given the green light. For example, at one point, the young people started picking each other up and tossing each other in the air like it was a football match, grabbing each other, leaning back and forth while listening to the music. I think whoever has the opportunity should perform for young people in their teens because music at that time in life is so formative. It makes everyone in the room aware of how powerful music is. It gives the performers life because it reminds us of what drove us to do this in the first place. So there they were, jumping up and down—I loved it, I was like "Jump! Jump! Jump!" and rocking along, even though my jumps aren’t as high as they used to be, I’m still pushing my limits. I have some pictures from these performances and some videos from Sortland posted on my Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok pages—all linked in my description. Please check them out. After the show, we had another performance earlier that’s worth mentioning, attended by about 40 immigrants who moved to Norway to escape or leave their homeland for various reasons. This is where I truly come alive. I absolutely love performing for people of diverse cultures. It's just in my DNA. Ever since I performed in Japan during that tour, specifically in Kobe, Japan, in 2013, for a festival called Asia Month. During that festival, I performed with a man called Ryiro Furusawa, who was a master percussionist from Japan. I was on stage with brilliant musicians and artist from all over the world and at one point I sang my song "World Groove" which is a song I wrote in the 90's that talked about settling our differences and coming together as people and there I was in thishuge performance area with all these diverse peformers around I immefiate sang to them and in true James Brown fashion included them in the song. People went crazy. I love doing this, and so there I was. I did not know where these people came from, but I was in my peaceful element once again, and I sang these songs to them. Along with our regular show of GBTNO GOING BACK TO NEW ORLEANS. So we finished the young peoples concerts and went to rehearse our show which was brillint to that too a nap and when to gt ready to for evening jazz concert I beleive we the last show of the day at night and knowning recorded this portioin of the show and unfortunatly it only recorded the first 23 minute not sure why it did not record the full hour and a half but it only record the very beginning but it was fun and we warmed with The Funky Meters Cissy Strut and then into Bill Withers Aint No Sunshine and my own conpostion "Common Ground".