Name: Amanda Bergman
Nationality: Swedish
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: Amanda Bergman's Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever is out via CowCow.
Recommendations: Bright Future - Adrienne Lenker; A different Ship - Here we go magic

If you enjoyed this Amanda Bergman interview, and would like to know more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I think listening to music has the same inherent potential as anything else in life, in a sense that it can be very mundane or completely life changing, depending on the situation and how you choose to perceive it.

Personally I’ve always been drawn to the type of music that doesn’t serve a clear explanation. I like music I have to meet half way, so to speak. Because that’s when I need to involve a bodily experience.

And when that happens I believe music can teach me something.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

Humanity has a lot a flaws, for sure. But our ability to express ourselves musically is pretty fascinating.

I think that alone can make me enough interested in seeking musical experience - both as a listener and a writer - to last a life time.
 
What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

I started singing early on as a kid. As many people do naturally. We had a piano in the living room and I started playing it more as a way of passing time than with any intention of developing any technical skills. And much later on in life I just stumbled into becoming a musician for a living.

Honestly, I still don’t understand how it happened. But I’m grateful it happened.
 
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

At that time it was a means for seeking identity, I guess. Finding explanations.

As one gets older, I think music becomes a way of widening your perspective instead of defining it.
 
How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

My instrument is my voice, and I wouldn’t know what it’s like to be deeply intertwined with a guitar or so.

But as a matter fact, my instrument is a part of my body. Which of course puts a little more pressure on me. I can’t blame anything on a bad builder, haha.
 
Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I think from nothing and everything … it really depends on what’s happening in my life and in the rest of the world, and how that’s affecting my thinking on a daily basis.

I write about what lies right in front of me, I’m no conceptual artist like that.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I think, if anything, in music and in musical expression, one can show a very summarized and compressed version of one’s personality. The personality you have and maybe also a personality you wished you had.

That compacted energy carries the same potential as the principle of a short relay race.


Amanda Bergman Interview Image by Julia Mård

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

Well I think it’s pretty pointless to focus on trying to make every potential listener understanding your own viewpoint. That would be a very limiting way of working with music.

I very much like the thought of music as a tool. And when you set it free in the world you’re not supposed to try and control how it’s being used.
 
Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

I think it’s a matter of showing up and keeping a steady pace and a steady mind and all of a sudden sometimes you get to experience small miracles.
 
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I live on a farm so I have the privilege of experiencing a lot of amazing sounds every day. Helping me remember how insignificant I am, in a pleasant way.

Birds, insects, wind, rains and the sounds they make are extremely musical. It’s very anthropocentric I’d say to even define it like that, though …
 
There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

There are still things in the human experience that are very complex and that we can’t measure with our complicated inventions. And that gives me hope.


Amanda Bergman Interview Image by Julia Mård

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I think by mirroring ourselves in music we can improve and shorten the distance between who we aim to be and what we are.

In that sense, if you pair it with intention, music can be educating and even fostering.
 
We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Silence is probably very important but I think very few of us gets to know it these days.
 
If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

World peace.