Keeping the Blues Alive Award 2025 to Little Steven’s Blues School

Notodden Blues Festival received the Keeping the Blues Alive Award 2024 from the American organization the Blues Foundation this weekend in Memphis for Little Steven’s Blues School. This is a huge honor for this blues school for young musicians that has existed since 1989. Little Steven’s Blues School is being held every year during the International Notodden Blues Festival in Norway for students between the ages of 13 – 26. Little Steven’s Blues School collaborates with the European Blues Union, and every year young European musicians can apply for a scholarship from the European Blues Union to participate in the Little Steven’s Blues School. Look out for more information about the scholarship for 2025 coming soon from the European Blues Union on their web page, newsletter and social media.

Thank you speech from Notodden Blues Festival held in Memphis on Friday January 10, 2025:

The Notodden Blues Festival wants to thank The Blues Foundation for honoring Little Steven’s Blues School with this prestigious award today. We are honored beyond words. We also want to thank you on behalf of Little Steven who was prevented from being here today due to the very bad weather conditions this weekend. He really wanted to be here with us to accept this award. We also want to express our gratitude to the Notodden municipality and to the county of Telemark for their long time support of the Little Steven’s Blues School over the years. Also included in our thank you list are all the teachers, Little Steven and all the volunteers who have made this long blues school journey possible.   The small town of Notodden, Norway, with its population of 13000, now has 3 Keeping the Blues Alive Awards: European Blues Center (2003), Notodden Blues Festival (2011) and now Little Steven’s Blues School. Little Steven’s Blues School is probably among the longest living blues schools for kids in the world. This blues education program has existed since 1989. The program has been running every summer since then, even during the Covid pandemic period, and was held for the 35^th time 2024. Since the beginning until today, more than 2000 kids have participated in the program. Former participants have moved on to be national and international stars within blues, rock, country, pop and jazz. Many of them have formed bands together and have had a lifelong musical partnership. The most remarkable partnership is from when Vegard Tveitan and Thomas Haugen met at the blues camp in 1989 and went on to form the band EMPEROR. EMPEROR is still today touring and headlining rock festivals all over the world. They went from blues to rock and became a groundbreaking metal band.

KBA 2025 Little Steven Blues School

The most well-known musician who has come out of this fantastic blues program is Kid Andersen. His blues schooling started here, and he has moved on to be one of the most important persons in the American blues community today. Kid Andersen is now a Keeping the Blues Alive Award winner and a Blues Music Awards winner as member of Rick Estrin & the Nightcats. Amund Maarud and Odd Nordstoga has become national stars with big careers in Norway. More and more young musicians from all over the world now come to Notodden to attend the Little Steven’s Blues School. Countries outside of Norway include USA, England, France, Croatia, Sweden, Finland, Bosnia, Poland, and more. They make music together and form bands together across national borders and across oceans. All this makes Little Steven’s Blues School (formerly Notodden Blues Festival’s Blues Seminar for kids) one of the most successful and longest existing blues initiative of its kind for the age group 13-26 years old. In the summer of 2015, Little Steven, of Bruce Springsteen E Street Band fame, visited the Notodden Blues Festival for the first time and fell head over heels in love with the blues seminar. He was so captivated that he wanted to be a part of it. The collaboration with Little Steven has led, among other things, to Notodden Blues Festival being able to expand the offer to include two courses with different target groups. Band Camp 1 (ages 13 – 18) is based on the existing and well-tested model, while Band Camp 2 (for slightly older young people aged 19 – 26), is an offer for advanced students and is aimed at a career as a musician. Little Stevens Blues School is a gathering arena for young musicians. Bandcamp 1 takes care of the breadth, while Bandcamp 2 is more pinpointed towards a musician’s career and goes deeper into the blues, the musical and social history connected to this special form of music, song writing and recording.