By April Kilcrease  September 10th, 2009 1:46 pm  |  Comments (0)

Swedish musician Victoria Bergsman (female vocalist on Peter Bjorn and John’s whistle-tastic hit “Young Folks”) traveled to Pakistan to record her new Taken by Trees album, East of Eden. A fan of Pakistani rhythms and native Sufi singers Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Bergsman packed her microphone and headed to the source.

She hoped to record with female musicians there, but was told that was out of the question. “I did find it very emotionally difficult, especially seeing how it was for women,” she says in a mini-documentary from National Geographic. Despite widespread sexism and the male musicians initial skepticism, eventually she gained her collaborators respect.

“Every third hour the electricity went off. So we had to hang around with them and improvise and play music and then in 2 or 3 hours the electricity came back… After some time…in the same environment…, they understood I was a professional, and so were they. So we were kind of the same and wanted to express something beautiful, something artistic.”

Reflecting on the experience, Bergsman says, “I don’t know if I’m brave. I think I’m just very curious and very restless.” Sounds like an Afar traveler to me.