Kai Gullmar, the female pioneer in popular music.
Kai Gullmar was the first Swedish woman to compose popular music and many Swedes have heard and hummed her melodies without knowing that she was the author. The title tune to the film Swing it magistern is of course one of her most famous melodies.
From the stone city.
She was born Gurli Maria Bergström in Sundsvall on April 2, 1905. One of her first appearances was at the age of twelve when she entertained the audience at a Children's Day revue. She also took the stage name Gulli Charmados and preferred to perform in men's suits that she borrowed from the city's men's clothing stores. Her career as an artist seemed set and clear, but her parents sent her instead to London to train in shorthand and typing. Not unexpectedly, during her time in London in the 1920s, she was captivated by the modern dance music that was played everywhere.
The 1930s.
Of course, there was no office job for the young musical Kai, but she instead moved to Stockholm and took her stage name Kai Gullmar. She debuted both as a singer and composer on a record with the melody Kan du inte sjunga – så vissla! Soon she was collaborating and hanging out with the revue kings of the time such as Ernst Rolf, Karl Gerhard and Gustav Wally. Her songs were sung and recorded on records by the most popular artists of the time such as Sven-Olof Sandberg, Ulla Billquist, Alice Babs, Nils Poppe, Zarah Leander to name a few.
Went his own way.
Many admire her for the way she lived her life, a director's daughter who became a composer and singer, a woman who became successful in an otherwise male-dominated music world and a woman who dared to be open about her homosexuality. She holds a special position in Swedish music history. She wrote her music and lyrics in times of the 1930s depression, the Kreuger Crash, mass unemployment and world war. Her melodies and the artists who sang them can today be perceived as cheerful and cheerful, but during those difficult times a good mood and a smile were needed to survive. After an accident, Kai was paralyzed from the waist down and spent the last ten years of her life in her apartment in Stockholm and died on March 25, 1982.