Hasse Poulsen & Thomas Fryland /  Record Cover Design

DREAM A WORLD

We’re really happy to have worked on this new album by Hasse Poulsen and Thomas Fryland « Dream a World ». Hasse and I have been collaborating for many years now on various projects and groups such as Das Kapital, Sighfire, Frizione, The Man They Call Ass, Daniel Erdmann and it’s always enriching and fun.

Hasse Poulsen: Guitar (vocals on I Dream a World)
Thomas Fryland: Trumpet & flugelhorn
Recorded December 12th 2019 at Hot Hut Studio, Copenhagen by Mik Neumann
Mixing engineer: Gilles Olivesi
Mastering by Pierre Vanderwaeter
Cover photo by Hasse Poulsen
Back cover photo by Jean-Gabriel Leynaud
Duo photo by Kim Wendt
Artwork by Christian Kirk-Jensen / Danish Pastry Design
Printed by Rockers. www.rockerspro.pl
CD produced by Das Kapital Records
with support from DANSK KAPELMESTER FORENING, KODAS PRODUKTIONSPULJE
Special thanks to: Kim Wendt, Xenia Dalgaard, Lena Polsinelli, Galaxie Poulsen
Contact: disques@das-kapital.com
Das Kapital Records
www.daskapitalrecords.com

Hope and Dream
Words that can express our most beautiful aspirations while reminding us that reality is not what it ought to be. No matter how joyful we are, we will end up dying. This is the basic feel of jazz music. Laughing to keep from crying. It can also be dismissed as being too sentimental and naïve. Imagine, I dream a world, The times
are a-changin’… Yes, naïve but still deep. This is also jazz: uniting the banal and sentimental with the greatest that art can express.

We need hope today. We need it badly! Not hope as a television show that tells us not to worry because things will work out. We need hope to be able to build up visions about how we should shape the world. How we can live together. How we can stop exploiting one another. We need these dreams and visions badly.

Around hope and dream there is a religious feeling. Or rather a spiritual feeling: an aspiration for something bigger than ourselves. In the Heidegger sense where spirituality is the partner of humanity and where not all gods are spiritual – or divine. It is difficult to understand. But one of the big dreams is universality. That we are all one. We are one and we are all. Unique and together. What is good for you is good for me.

Thomas Fryland and Hasse Poulsen have selected 14 tunes that express these human dreams and aspirations in 14 very different ways: Bob Dylan’s masterpiece The Times They are A-Changin’ is played in a groovy (to use a hipster word from the sixties) arrangement. It is a dream that every generation shares and feels for very strongly : Enough of the old, lazy compromises with life that they see their parents living. Make place for a brave new world. As Sergio Ortega expressed it in his song El Pueblo. The time has come to stand together. The song was first meant as a rally for the social, democratic projects of the Allende government but became tragically a song of resistance against the murderous Pinochet regime. It has now become a worldwide song of resistance and hope: A united people cannot be beaten!

The Danish poet Simon Grotrian has lend two poems to this collection: The first Prayer is a breaking wave is an abstract evocation of prayer and faith as a means to be saved from the pain in life. Grotrian was very religious and is the foremost christian poet in Denmark in modern times.

It is difficult not to adhere to Langston Hughes’ poem I Dream a World: “I dream a world where black and white, whatever race you be / will share the bounties of the world and every man be free”

Leonard Cohen was wonderful with words. Even if his melody to Hallelujah were not in itself a masterpiece the phrase “There’s a grace of light in every word, it doesn’t matter which you heard: the holy or the broken Hallelujah” would be plenty to include it in this collection of songs.

Once there was a dream of a united Europe – there still is. When Schiller and Beethoven wrote Ode to Joy Europe was divided into a patchwork of small kingdoms governed by greedy monarchs whose biggest joy was to sacrifice the lives of thousands of people in order to gain a piece of land. Europe is on its way to being unified and wars inside Europe have become rare. The song from Beethoven’s last symphony has been chosen as the anthem for the united Europe.

Out of the sixties came the group Pink Floyd who excelled in grandiose surrealism. With the film The Wall they gave a face to the aspirations of the ignored youth. That youth that has since become the motor of the worldwide alternative movements. “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control.” The anthem of defiance.

A few years earlier John Lennon wrote his anthem of universality Imagine. This song is everywhere. Because everywhere we need to believe that another world is possible, and that the destruction of our planet and all life is not the only future possible.

Trumpeter, poet, singer-songwriter Boris Vian expressed another kind of hope and defiance in his song The Deserter: He said: I will not participate in your war, mr. president, so go ahead and kill me when you find me. He is not just running away. He is explaining why he runs away, giving the powerful of this world the possibility to understand. They rarely listen.

Freedom is a big and difficult word. What are the limits to freedom? The freedom to carry guns and to squeeze other people economically. Or the freedom to develop your full potentials as a human. The freedom to stand up strong and free among equals. Oscar Peterson wrote Hymn to Freedom celebrating the liberation of African countries from their European colonisers.

“Last night I had the strangest dream, I ever had before. I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war”. Shall this only be a dream?

The second Simon Grotrian poem in this collection is Maybe Tomorrow. Maybe I will be called to leave life tomorrow. Maybe paradise is awaiting me. It is a very beautiful poem. Life with death.

Requiem is Hasse Poulsen’s lament at the death of Simon Grotrian in the summer of 2019. This is the only tune on the record without improvisation.

To end this collection of songs on an optimistic note we have chosen a song that Louis Armstrong made famous: What a Wonderful World. We can choose to be aware of all the beauty in life, even though the cruel realities surround us. It is possible to live. It is possible to be happy.

Hasse Poulsen