[SINGING]

Hi, my name is Morten Sommerbakk and I'm the singer and the song writer of

the band Gatens evangelium and we've been playing together for about three years.

And our main reason for our music is to find a way out of the darkness and

out of drug use and bring that light into people so that they don't have to come here.

We call it [FOREIGN], to prevent them from falling in.

That's the main reason of this band.

And we've been playing together for three years, and I hope we play together for 25 years.

>> Okay I'm the last joining band member.

I just got a call from Morten, they needed another guitarist,

and so I said yes, let's try it out, that's it.

It's the only band I feel like I can be myself.

I can represent the music.

I've been playing with a lot of other people and it's always been this,

I'm not quite there as they are if you know what I mean.

I'm not good enough to be here.

I'm only slowing the band down.

And this is the only band that I don't have that feeling.

So yeah.

[MUSIC]

>> I came here because he asked me.

Maybe I can hold the what you call it?

The tock, tock.

This [SOUND] the beat.

And we played and he never said anything, we just played over and over again.

And they played for 10, 11 years.

>> My name is Sigurd Ekenes.

I play guitar in a band called Gatens evangelium and we have been playing for about two years.

The idea of the band, it started in prison.

It has a prison background.

I have been working as a music therapist in Britain for ten years.

We have this national project in Norway

where you have music inside prison,

and you can continue outside when

you are on open sentences.

And I was lucky to do a PhD 2010 to 2014 and

it ended up with written, action

research project with members

that got prison background.

We were kind of using the prison

background into something

positive in a way to preach about

the possibility of getting out of

the criminality through music.

[MUSIC]

Even though Lars is a music therapist, it's like here,

in here we don't talk therapy because as I said this is a freedom room.

So just that he's being here and

we know that if we have some problem we can take it up with him.

>> This band is different from an ordinary music

therapy group because it's a rock band

and it's not in a health

system, or a medical system.

So the process and

my role is very different.

But I think there's a lot of therapeutic process going on.

Yeah, and there's a lot of possibilities I think

in like a rock band that is not in health system.

>> When I understood that I can play drums, that was the only thing I did.

Yes, I did every day.

Every day, every minute in here, yeah.

I never thought it would therapy I'm thinking, no.

>> I didn't know that Lars was a music therapist until later on in the band,

yeah.

So, to me it's just another band to play in.

I don't look at Lars as therapist or my supervisor or anything.

I play with them and he treat me equal, so that's it.

>> I think I have many roles.

And I need to get in and

out of many roles, I think, yeah.

Maybe not like the leader with the capital L,

but more like the facilitator in a way.

So I make sure that we have [LAUGH] a place

to rehearse, bringing people together.

Calling people up, bringing people, driving,

sending messages and get the structure I think.

>> I think it's only one time we really felt Lars was a music therapist

then, when we had a gig far away from here.

And he couldn't come, because he had an important thing to do, and he said,

you can manage this alone.

This is going good.

We will never do that again.

Okay, maybe in a couple of years.

But that was the worst trick ever.

It was awful.

It was really really awful and that was because we didn't think about it but

it was only three and

we started to do behaviour the way we did when we were pushing drugs.

But really bad attitude [SOUND].

When Lars is there is there that never happens.

But suddenly when he wasn't there we were back in the old habits, the way we talk to each other.

>> Yeah

[MUSIC]

I think it's very important with performances,

to be on stage it's much more than just being on a stage.

You have a message to bring.

Get's a lot of processes going on just

by doing a performance, I think.

It's important for the band members,

because they kind of build up their self confidence and things like that.

But just also important for the audience and for

the people who are hearing it and seeing it.

And this is also kind of the heart of the moral and ecological thinking,

also that music is something that

It has a ripple effect in a way.

It brings me confidence, makes me want to be a better

person I think because I'm not criminal any more, yeah.

So, yeah, it's a good thing.

Lifts me up. >> I think music is the main reason that

I'm still alive, because in the darkest hour and the darkest part of my life,

to be able to sit down and get it down to the paper and get it out in a song,

Should I have taken all this negative energy and

you put it in to a song that is positive even if the lyric is kind of hard and

kind of depressing, it's a positive thing.

>> We got a kind of same story, life story,

and we can relate to a lot of stuff.

A lot of other people can't.

It helps also in giving and telling a story when we play.

And we tell it right.

Like in music or words or anything.

It's like I can give more of myself in the music than I can with other people.

>> So I guess that's it, yeah.

>> My name is Lars Tuastad.

I'm the bass player in the famous rock and roll band Gatens evangelium

[MUSIC]

>> [APPLAUSE]

Music and community with a Norwegian rock band

How Music Can Change Your Life

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