Music gave Laura Lennert Jensen a place to belong – now they want to pass it on

In Laura Lennert Jensen’s high school class, there was a math teacher who was tired of the class lagging behind in math.

The students rarely handed in their assignments on time. The class was part of the musical line, so there were other things that occupied the students more than algebra and problem solving.

But math was important, the students had to understand. Few people would have a future in music and art, the math teacher said.

However, it wasn’t just engineers who came out of the class.

- Today there are two of us who work as coordinators within music, one – Andachan – who is a performing artist, one who is a musician and filmmaker, and two who are trained actors, lists Laura Lennert Jensen.

- And then of course there are also those who still play music, but where it is not their primary source of income.

Laura Lennert Jensen, who uses the pronouns de/dem, is standing in the living room in her apartment complex at Saqqarliit in Nuuk.

In the corner of the living room there is a keyboard, a ukulele and a guitar. At the bottom of the bookshelf there is a series of LP records. Everything from Elvis to Nat King Cole. In front is an original record with Sumé. Laura Lennert Jensen got the records from her aanaa (grandmother, ed.).

- I just need a record player, they comment.

When Sermitsiaq meets Laura Lennert Jensen, it has only been two days since they returned from two months in Sisimiut. This is where they were born and raised – and the last few months they have spent working with the Arctic Sounds Festival, which takes place in the town every year.

- I am a bit of an emotional mess during the festival, they say, taking out a pack of snuff and stuffing one of the white bags under their lips.

- You don't really sleep. I don't have the capacity to be of any help to others during the festival, because I have to be of any help to 100 people who need me to help them with this and that, they say.

Laura Lennert Jensen's mother sometimes asks why they have chosen a job that gives them so much stress.

But it is all worth it.

- Standing with a sleep deficit and hearing Angu Motzfeldt, who hasn't played her songs for 20 years, but who played at the festival this year, it's super nostalgic, and you just stand there and hoo.

A community of weirdos

Laura Lennert Jensen sits down at the keyboard in the living room and moans a little.

- This piece is called Dusting the piano, they say, wiping the dust off the keys with their hands.

They then start playing a piece by Niels Lan Doky (a Danish musician and pianist, ed.).

It was Laura Lennert Jensen's mother who forced them to start taking music lessons at the music school in Sisimiut.

- You need to see other people, said Laura Lennert Jensen's mother.

At that time, Laura Lennert Jensen was about 13-14 years old, and the number of friends they had was limited. Up until their teenage years, they had gone to taekwondo with their little sister – an atypical sport to go to in a town like Sisimiut, where most people went to football or handball.

- I also went to handball at one point, but it wasn't me at all, they say.

Laura Lennert Jensen would rather spend her time on other things. They loved reading – especially Fantasy – and easily devoured the third and fourth Harry Potter books in one evening.

Together with their nerdiest friend, they played a game that was a bit like the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. They drew their own game board – a large map, and then they played different characters.

- It was fun, remembers Laura Lennert Jensen.

But in a small town like Sisimiut, they stood out.

Do you remember when you first felt different from the other kids?

- June 4, 1996, they say, laughing.

That was the day Laura Lennert Jensen was born.

Starting music school was life-changing for Laura LennertJensen. First they started choir, then guitar – the following year they spent 13 hours a week at music school.

In addition to the fact that there were some committed adults at the school who influenced Laura Lennert Jensen to take more responsibility and become a bigger and bigger part of the cultural environment in the city, it was also at the music school that they met some of their very best friends.

- It was a bit of a community of weirdos. But you just accepted that.

In high school they chose a music major. Both parents and large parts of the family are teachers, and Laura Lennert Jensen also imagined that they would be high school teachers in music and English. But when they applied to musicology in Aarhus, they failed the entrance exam.

- And then I had to sit down and think carefully about what I wanted to do.

From pointy elbows to academic self-help

In 2016, Laura Lennert Jensen had the opportunity to participate in an internship for young musical talents in Greenland. It was called MUMG, and it stood for Music Education Internship for Young Music Talents in Greenland. Here, Laura Lennert Jensen and four or five other aspiring musicians came to Denmark, where they could try out the different music education programs over the course of a few months.

Laura Lennert Jensen thought it was fun to play music – but she didn't like the atmosphere surrounding the music community in Denmark.

- It was a bit too competitive. I had the feeling that you had to show how good you were – and that has never been my thing.

Instead – and more or less coincidentally – it ended up being anthropology, which Laura Lennert Jensen was admitted to the following year.

- It was the best thing that could have ever happened. It was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Anthropology is the teacher of people, people's behavior and their culture. Laura Lennert Jensen calls her time studying for her bachelor's degree in Aarhus 'academic self-help'.

- I suddenly understood a lot of things, through theory and analyses, that I didn't know before. I learned a lot more about the society I also come from, they say.

They could reflect themselves and Greenlandic society in the things they read about other countries and cultures during their studies. Whether it was India's relationship with Britain, or rap culture in Tanzania.

During one semester in 2020, most of the class went on exchange, and Laura Lennert Jensen chose to stay in Nuuk. When they finished their bachelor's degree, they stayed in the capital. Most of Laura Lennert Jensen's friends had moved from Sisimiut by that time.

They started a master's degree in culture and social studies - but Laura Lennert Jensen never got to submit the thesis that gives a paper on one's efforts.

Because suddenly Laura Lennert Jensen got busy with a lot of other things. Both with her work at MIO, where she was a student assistant at the time, but they had also gradually become a bigger part of the entire art, culture and stage environment in Nuuk.

Among other things, they helped release an EP with the band Zika in 2023. The following year they started their own podcast ‘Homoholdet’ together with Birte Olsen – whom they know all the way back from high school and growing up in Sisimiut.

The podcast currently has around 44,000 plays.

And new things and projects keep popping up. Last year, Laura Lennert Jensen was hired full-time at Arctic Sounds Festival on a three-year contract.

Until then, and for almost a decade, they had helped organize the festival on a voluntary basis.

- The festival received funding to hire one employee for three years full-time. And that was me.

Everybody needs a sidekick

Although the festival in Sisimiut officially ended a few weeks ago, the machinery “behind” the festival is still running.

And Laura Lennert Jensen is an important part of that machinery – right now it is the accounts that need to be sorted out.

- This is how my spring has looked for the last ten years, and this is how it will continue to look, they say.

But it is not only Arctic Sounds that Laura Lennert Jensen has to manage and take care of. As coordinator and manager for several Greenlandic artists, they will soon be busy again.

- So it is also a matter of keeping your mouth shut, they say.

A rare task that Laura Lennert Jensen will be undertaking soon is when she and Naja P. are to perform at the SPOT festival in Aarhus.

It is the first time in a long time that Laura Lennert Jensen is going out to play “just to play”, as they put it.

- When I have been out, it has typically been as a tour manager or similar. So it is absolutely amazing that someone has taken care of all the practical things, they say.

- I just have to show up at the airport with my instrument. It is really rare that I get to experience that.

The very first time Laura Lennert Jensen performed was on a stage in Sisimiut, which they largely helped build themselves.

- In Sisimiut, we were never just served something. We really had to put in the effort ourselves. That is why we, who made music, ended up being good at making lights and sound and everything behind it, they say.

The first time Laura Lennert Jensen tried to play at a concert where it was others than themselves who were in charge of the technology, sound and coordination, was in Katuaq in Nuuk.

Otherwise, they have spent a lot of time in their careers being the supporting figure for artists. The person who managed the calendar, emails and knew what it took to arrange a concert.

A role that Laura Lennert Jensen enjoys taking on.

- Everybody needs a sidekick, and I'll probably be that. That's where I feel best. I don't want to be a lead singer or anything. That's not my thing, they say.

When it comes to the future of the music scene in Greenland, Laura Lennert Jensen dreams of many things. A locally rooted music education and an export office that can help push even more Greenlandic music out to the rest of the world.

- Music is one of the art forms that can bring people together best, says Laura Lennert Jensen.

- Although Greenlandic music is already strong, I hope it can become even stronger abroad too – and I already think we are well on our way.