Just if we thought we did not have any more space in our life for twenty-first century Denmarkia, along comes another slice of Danish. This time, it’s really a singer: Lukas Graham.
The single by his eponymous band, “7 Years”, will not be released inside UK until March yet it’s already been a success all around. Across Scandinavia, many experts have a number one. In the Benelux region, it went top 10. It’s pop hip-hop, with sighing strings as well as an almost overwrought, consciously tremulous vocal. It’s the style of song that gets crowds waving hands in mid-air, swaying and singing along.
In the US, they have made only one TV appearance, recently, on Conan. When the late-night show unveiled its end-of-year viewers’ poll, the band’s performance of “7 Years” got a scarcely believable 98.86 per-cent share in the vote.
The track was created by a Danish backroom team called Future Animals (considered one of whom, certainly, also owns a trendy restaurant in Copenhagen). The lyrics are through the singer himself, under his owner’s name, Lukas Graham Forchhammer – a sign of his cross-national heritage. It’s a highly emotive song. The singer recalls his childhood, his hopes, his dreams – and smoking weed at 11. He looks to turning 60. It’s personal. “I couldn’t go any more than 60 because dad died at 61,” Graham, that is 27, has stated. Check Lukas Graham 7 Years sheet music here.
It’s already had greater than five million YouTube hits with two official videos. One is really a montage of family photos; one other was filmed partly in Los Angeles – the place that the singer was signed by Warner Bros in 2013 – and partly in Christiania, an element of Copenhagen where Graham was given birth to and pointed out and is the most intriguing aspect from the whole story.
A woody enclave by way of a lake, Christiania is merely down the road from both four-time “world’s best restaurant” Noma plus the parliament building we all know from Borgen. In, and not part of, Copenhagen, Christiania may be the closest the modern world must an autonomous village-size utopian community, a spot where dogs run wild and dreamers – Graham’s parents, one example is – dream new methods for life. No guns, no cars, no fireworks; a lot of street murals; as well as a house made entirely beyond windows.
Its mission statement was provided by Jacob Ludvigsen, among its many founders. For him, it turned out “a self-governing society whereby every single individual holds themselves responsible within the wellbeing in the entire community”. A sardonic US TV presenter called it a location “where people can just live free, man”.
It’s been this way since 26 September 1971, when Ludvigsen helped to steer squatters into an abandoned military barracks which had been built about the city’s 17th century ramparts. (It was also where, following war, Denmark executed its Nazi collaborators.)
Christiania is usually a tiny place, that has a tiny population. One count yielded 600 adults, 200 children, 200 cats, 200 dogs, 17 horses and a couple of parrots. Of the adults, a lot more than 150 are already there because the start. Actress Britta Lillesoe is a. “It was fantastic to get young and do everything you wanted to,” she says.
The community features its own anthem, with all the opening line “People get full of shit about us”. It has a slogan: “Lev livet kunstnerisk! Kun dode fisk flyder med strommen” (Live life artistically! Only dead fish adhere to the current). And it has a flag: three yellow dots over a red background. It’s said the dots represent the Os in “love love love”.
It boasts what is the world’s biggest open-air hash, weed and drug paraphernalia market, which can be one from the main reasons which the district is among Copenhagen’s popular tourist attractions. The market is what the Christiania council calls the “green light district” – but all others knows as Pusher Street. There is really a Woodstock pub. Blocks of hash resin, wrote one visitor, are “lined up like cheeses for a delicatessen”, as well as baggies of buds and ready-rolled joints in plastic tubes.
The market had its good and bad, sometimes tolerated through the authorities, sometimes governed by regular police patrols. There are “no photos” signs – to not shield the privacy in the town’s dreamers, but to defend its dealers from surveillance. Tourists taking pictures will probably be chased. To film there, you’ll be able Graham needed to make a deal with all the dealers.
Over time, there are actually days of riots, a machine-gunning (one death) and also a grenade attack. In one crackdown, the authorities dismantled all of the drug stalls. One, Snyder ryg med hjem (Snyder’s Smoke Takeaway), was preserved, however, and reassembled inside the Danish National Museum, such are Denmark’s contradictions.
Drugs are big business in Christiania. Ten years ago, each dealer was estimated to get earning €325 (£246) sixty minutes. Both the government and independent academics give once a year figure of $170m, which may give Christiana a GDP per capita of around $2m.
But the drug money doesn’t remain in town. As everywhere, the trade is controlled by criminals – in Christiania, by biker gangs. They don’t live inside the area, but do cause serious parking problems inside surrounding streets and possess physically attacked traffic wardens seeking to issue tickets.
The area’s free spirits and its particular dealers are now living in uneasy truce. In the past, hard drugs happen to be forced out with the residents. For now, though, they don’t really want to discuss the biker dealers. Silence is safest.
But that form of money is perhaps what are the anarchists of Christiania need in excess of anything else right this moment. As with all modern city stories, whether idealistic or hard-nosed, that one ends up inside the estate agent’s window. With its location, Christiania can be a super-prime section of property.
A number of years ago, an agreement was struck with all the authorities whereby Christiania’s residents would choose the land for $12.5m (£8.75m) – way below market price. The deal was supported by the loan from those very authorities – without the need of set payback date. The idea were to sell shares to residents. They didn’t seem that interested, as may be expected with the anarchically inclined. Little over $1m continues to be raised.
Traditionally, a pop star would celebrate newfound success by collecting their mum a residence. When “7 Days” makes its millions , perhaps Lukas Graham may go one better and buying his mother shares in their whole home town.