Recently, one of my FB pals from Holland, folk singer Linde Nijland, wrote about how much she was enjoying a folk festival, Ransäterstämman, that she was attending in Värmland. I was surprised. A festival I’d never heard of!
I asked a few friends and no one else had heard of it either. But then I asked my pal, Astrid, and she knew exactly what I was talking about. And she wasn’t surprised that no one knew about it. It’s a “spelmannsstämma” and it was taking place at a “bygdegård”. It wasn’t the kind of event that normal members of the public would know about. The majority of those present would be “spelmän”.
Linde’s reaction and seeing what excellent folk bands were playing at the event (Ranarim, Groupa, Väsen Duo, ) made me very curious to know more. And I soon realised that there were a lot of Swedish words about the whole folk music subculture that I did not understand. And when I did understand them, I realised that they were infernally difficult to translate. There’s something about the folk music scene in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries which is very different to the UK.
But what a rich, exciting, mysterious, evocative, funky, joyous, terrifying world it is.
The instruments: nyckelharpa, Hardanger fiddle, kantele, a whole range of different accordions, tussefløyte….
The remarkable songbooks: from scary medieval ballads to exhilarating dance tunes.
The respect for the roots combined with a desire to experiment. Many bands exist so that the locals can dance. Other artists, like Finnish accordionist, Kimmo Pohjonen, are excitingly avant -garde.
Some extremely gifted musicians and some wonderfully idiosyncratic voices.
And there are so many Nordic folk artists whose music I really enjoy (Garmarna, Lena Willemark, Ale Möller, Triakel, Majorstuen, Värtinnä, Valkyrien Allstars, Sofia Karlsson, Mari Boine, Maria Kalamniemi, Chateau Neuf Spelemanslag, Ranarim, Väsen etc etc), it seemed like a good chance to find out more.
Folk music is dear to the heart of Scandinavians. Ulrika, my partner has happy memories of going to the local “bygdegård” (community centre? Folk museum?) as a child and doing all the old-time dances. Pianist, Jan Johanssen, one of Sweden’s most highly regarded jazz musicians, is best known for the wonderful “Jazz på Svenska”, an album where he reworked traditional folk songs. When Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek started to make a name for himself in the ECM world, he was touring and recording with folk singers Mari Boine (who sings in the Same language) and Agnes Buen Garnås (an expert on medieval ballads. Last but not least, when ABBA ame to an end, Benny Andersson went off to play accordion with traditional folk dance band, Orsa Spelmän. That’s rather like Paul McCartney joining Waterson-Carthy after the Beatles had split up.
Anyway, for the past week or so, to remind me of all the wonders of this rather unexplored corner of Nordic music, I’ve been listening to a lot of Swedish and pan-Scandinavian folk music.
My timing is perfect. In a day’s time it’s Midsummer and many Swedish folk musicians will be dressing up in “folkdräkt”, the national costume of the area they come from, and preparing to play at the local dance.
On the big holidays of the year, even members of the Scandinavian royal families dress up in national costume like everyone else. Oslo on 17th May is a sight to behold. Swedish Queen Silvia whose mum was from Brazil, dresses up like a farmer’s wife from Skåne. Can you imagine any of the British royal family doing this? Prince Charles as a Morris dancer? I don’t think so.
One thing that should be mentioned is that there are thousands of amateur Swedish folk musicians. It’s very much a “folkrörelse”, a popular movement with an “everyone can join in” attitude. There are a lot of similarities with the non-profit gym club, Friskis and Svettis, which was a milestone for me, when I arrived in Stockholm. “Yes, Fatso, even you are welcome! No pressure. Just have fun!” And of course the many local choirs. Swedes love to sing together. A very admirable trait.
Let’s go back to that Ransätterstämmen. A “spelmanstämma” is a gathering of musicians, in the UK they now refer to a “fiddlers’ meet”. It is very different from a normal music festival ,as, although there many performances by professional musicians, one important part of the event is “buskspel”. I had big problems understanding what this was. (I got a bit confused. A “buskis” is a kind of traditional, rural, slapstick comedy, usually performed outdoors in the summer. Hapless yokels and buxom wenches.)
Duuuh! I should have researched ”buskspel”. Literally it means “bush concert” and it refers to spontaneous jam sessions, where anyone can join in. These are based on tunes that everyone will know. One of the musicians, often the accordion player get going on a waltz, hambo, minuet, mazurka or waltz, and everyone else, whips out their instrument and joins in.
I was talking today about “fiddlers’ meets” and “bush concerts” with the bloke in Skivhögen, one of my favourite second hand record shops. He recommended that I get along to “spelmanstämma” if I get the chance.
“They are at it all night! And there is an awful lot going on in the bushes. Ingenious improvisation. Dexterous fingerwork. Unexpected chord progressions. And those squeezeboxes get a very vigorous squeezing.”
On Friday, Midsummer Eve, Stockholm will be like a ghost town. Everyone who can leave for the countryside, does so. No traffic at all. And the only people on the streets are confused Japanese tourists, who gather together at Skansen, the very enjoyable open air museum (Sweden’s largest bygdegård?) to try and make sense of it all.
I’ll be long gone! Dancing round the maypole and singing the Small Frog Song in the hamlet of Ortala Lund.
Curious to experience this all for yourself? I cannot provide you with seven different Swedish wild flowers to put under your pillow. But I have knocked together a cracking playlist.
Sweet (Midsummer Night) Dreams!!
I toast you all with a wee Midsummer Night’s Dram!
Oooh, I’m going to enjoy this thread, though I fear I will have little to contribute. My ability to polska was one of the casualties of Covid. You can mazurk and waltz and bourree on your own, albeit unsatisfactorily, but you need your partner’s reciprocated body weight to polska.
There are a few folkie things that I do that are not publicised. You have to be in the know, or rather, on an email circulation list. Like 90s rave culture! That sounds clique-y, but this jonny-come-lately to the folk scene soon got welcomed.
Interesting to hear that there is a folkie scene in the UK which is below the radar, Cheshire.
90s rave culture!
Here is a “buskspel” at Ransäter, the meet that my Dutch pal went to.
This clip gets the atmosphere better.
The musicians are playing as much for their own pleasure as for the audience.
Some of these old folk songs are very tragic. No one sings them better than Emma Härdelin of Triakel. (previously she was the singer in Garmarna).
Apologies if I’ve told this fact before: I doubt that this happens today, but when I was going to school we’d regularly (one week a year or so) have folk dance lessons at PE, taught by the PE teacher – I believe it was part of their education back then to have a knowledge of the standard folk dances to teach to the kids (or just common knowledge?)
Not having done any folk dancing since then I believe if needed today, I’d only manage a shottis, preferably a foursome (look – is that a moose saying “hurr” behind that tree in the forest?)
I always like Swedish folk music when I hear it, and some of it is brilliant, but I’d still never seek it out. Probably for similar reasons for why I’d never order meatballs in a restaurant! 😀 And no, I don’t mean that I’d make better music myself, I mean it’s too familiar, too ordinary. But I get that it would seem exotic and interesting to you guys!
On Midsummers Eve I’ll celebrate with mum and then walk back home in the evening sun through the empty city, one of the highlights of the year! Glad Midsommar!
Glad Midsommar to you too, @Locust. Your celebration sounds wonderful.
I have a Scottish friend who organises a regular ceilidh here in Stockholm. . It’s very popular and attracts a large, very international crowd. He tells me that in his school days, folk dancing was a regular part of the curriculum.
I doubt if many schools have dancers as good as these kids.
Lena Willemark and Ale Möller did two albums for ECM back n the 1990s and they were a way into Swedish folk music for me. The music they made is chamber folk, rather than the dance music that the “spelmän” play.
Here she is with the wonderful Väsen performing for Max Martin of all people!
And now from Allsång på Skansen with Systerpolskan.
Those ladies sound wonderful together.
Then again, you have musicians taking traditional folk instruments and taking them off to new places. I know that accordions are very popular on the AW.
Please welcome Kimmo Pohjonen from Finland. The devil has all the best tunes!
“I have a Scottish friend who (…) tells me that in his school days, folk dancing was a regular part of the curriculum.”
I can confirm. Not just folk dancing – but being in Scotland meant that Eight-some Reel and the Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow were included with the polkas and waltzes.
Not only did we have Music, Mime and Movement (the order of these three may not be correct) at Primary School, we also did Country Dances, with Miss Pierce at the piano. Brighton Camp was one.
https://www.broadcastforschools.co.uk/site/Music,_Movement_and_Mime
We did it too though I don’t recall doing any country dancing.
I think we did the dance stuff if it was too wet to go out and play rounders or football. MM&M was in the first couple of years at primary, CD was later.
Exactly. It was CD I was on about, not MM&M…
Music and movement was great, pretending to be a tree and all that shite. Beats maths into a cocked hat.
Of course these days “music and movement” may refer to what can happen to your digestive system when you play dub very loud. They don’t call him The Scientist for nowt.
” … there is an awful lot going on in the bushes. Ingenious improvisation. Dexterous fingerwork.”
@moose-the-mooche
Will you stop nudging me? You’re such a …nudger.
I was reasonably certain you’d miss this, buried as it is in an Ikea customer service contract (as far as I can make out).
‘If there’s a Razzle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now’, as Mr Plant doesn’t sing in Stairway to Heaven’.
Don’t mind me – I’m just ‘cleaning my spring’ for the May Queen. She’s over there – running through a field of wheat.
Ooop, she’s got her foot trapped in a snare. Hell of a hostile environment out there.
In Coventry, that sad battered city, the late ‘sixties, early ‘seventies, there were many, many “folk clubs” as we’d call them – the term is untranslatable into Swedish! – where “musicians” – basically, people who play “music” – would gather to “play music” together! Drawing on “trad. arr.” (again, no Swedish equivalent!) material, both instrumental and vocal, or more contemporary “songs” (literally, “songs”), the range of skills and instrumentation, from the popular “guitar”, through “violin” and “squeezebox”, often with “flutes” and other weird and wonderful “music machines” was a dizzying and joyous celebrartion of “folk music” (literally “music of the folk”) that extended beyond the legal definition of “opening hours” when the “pub” (“public house”) would “lock its doors” (literally “lock its doors”) and the music would continue into the “early hours”!
Happened every night of the week, somewhere. No big deal.
HP would it help illustrate your point if you embedded 30 or 40 filmed clips of people playing these “Songs” “Violins” ‘Squeezeboxes” “Flutes” and other “Music Machines”? Otherwise, frankly, it’s impossible to understand what this “folk music” could possibly be. Try not to give any context or limit yourself to your favourites, just as many random examples as you can find, please.
I’m working on it! So far, I’ve curated over three hundred “video clips” (basically, “short film segments”, although that term doesn’t quite carry the untranslatable linguistic nuance we English understand instinctively). There will also be a “playlist” (a list of songs you can play) to – hopefully! (LOL!) – help you to understand the very unique and English and totally untranslatable concepts of “people singing songs together” that we celebrated back then in our obscure yet compelling culture!
300! Wow! I can only imagine the blur of your cut’n’paste fingers as you tore through YouTube, blindly compiling anything (anything – one must not be blindsided by quality or relevance) – anything even tangentially released to this intangible thing we now know as “music”. Soon we’ll be able to say, yes! We have quantified music. Here it is, sorted, filed, complied, categorised.
Euterpe, Terpsichore, you sirens, you harlots, your charms cannot harm us. We will not listen, but we will list!
If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to send me to Coventry!
Back to that Coventry folk club. Even if Donovan did a gig, I don’t think he’d rock trousers quite as yellow as the dancers in this clip.
Not many British folk singers and dancers get togged up to perform, other than Morrismen and Ceilidh dancers.
Over here it’s the norm if you play in one of those combos who play folk dance music.
But that Benny Andersson does not seem to obey the rules.
Who does he think he is?? An international superstar?
Younger bands like Garmarna dress in their normal clothes most of the time.
*coughs* ‘Not many British folk singers and dancers get togged up to perform…’
I think you’ll find …
He’s thinking of the Nude Minstrels of Cleckheaton.
But then, aren’t we all?
I am now trying to unthink that concept. Or was it Unthank it?
Cleckheaton is further south. so to speak.
And just to my left or is it right? Depends how you’re facing.
Cleckheaton F F starts next week though they’re not booked I believe that The Nude Minstrels of Cleckheaton promise a few surprises and promise to let it all hang out, (in more ways than one)
https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/20227654.cleckheaton-folk-festival-2022-line-up-revealed/#:~:text=THE%20organisers%20of%20Cleckheaton%20Folk,from%20July%201%20to%203.
A few surprises? Are we talking, er, reassignments?
As Robert Helpmann said “The problem with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops.”
I’ll try and get photographic proof.
Othello said, “Give me the ocular proof!”
Turned out to be a handkerchief. It’s allus summat rum.
Alas struck by covid I was unable to visit, but a friend who did remarks that the Nude Minstrels of Cleckheaton made a spectacular entrance emerging from the bushes in a show of strength.
Well he thinks it was the Nudies (as they are known) it may have been The Nude Burghers of Heckmondwike, he says its hard to tell with their clothes off.
I was sitting at a bus stop outside a supermarket in Älmsta this afternoon when a family with two teenage girls walked past. No idea why, but the two girls were wearing full National costume.
Charming.
There is something wonderfully exhilarating about the sound of a spelmanslag, a flurry of Nordic fiddlers, playing away together.
Have we not suffered enough, KFD?
Is reading threads you’re not interested in compulsory now? Must have missed that email.
I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the idea of a “forum”, fortuneight. And it’s hard to see how your comment moves anything forward (or in any direction) more than mine. See? You commented about my comment (not the thread) and now I’m commenting about your comment, and you’ll come back with another comment about this comment and I can’t see any way out of this.
Are we not allowed to comment about comments now? What will we do? How about comments about comments about comments?
Oh, you’re allowed – didn’t you get the email? But I’m a little concerned that the central thrust of KFD’s splendid think piece on … on …. Tyrolean Oompah music (?) is being diverted to no good purpose. To get back on track, Mike – which is your favourite YouTube clip here?
Anything that involves spelmanslag is fine by me.
I’m more a fan of the Norwegian ‘Spelemannslag,’ which is a more nuanced variation on several people in aprons sawing away on fiddles to, or at least in close proximity to, a jaunty tune.
Spelmanslag slates and tapes
Hardanger has one of the most spectacular fjords in Norway.
And their spelmannslag is rather splendid too. An impressive mixture of different generations.
My heart bleeds for that young guy in the grey shirt who forgot his red waistcoat. He is so conspicuous.
The fiddlers among you will know the Hardangerfjol.
An instrument that takes no prisoners.
Here’s a Norwegian documentary that will appeal to all the hardcore fiddlers among you. You will enjoy the music even if you don’t understand the talking heads.
Don’t fret sausage. I can see a way out of this. And I think, deep down, so can you too.
And, all this time, poor old @kaisfatdad has felt nobody had clocked quite who his famous fb friend is!
I’m impressed, buddy!
(See also Ygdrassil)
Thanks @retropath2! Well spotted. She’s an excellent singer. After her visit to Sweden, Linde is now learning a few Swedish songs to add to her repertoire.
At the Midsummer party I want to, I got chatting with Ove, one of the other guests, who comes from Leksand. It’s in Dalarna, a very beautiful area of Sweden, famed for its scenery, music and folk traditions, which has marketed itself very successfully as the most Swedish place in Sweden. One of the local traditions is the churchboats.
Back in the 19th century, church attendance was compulsory. Roads were poor, so many farmers in Dalarna and other Scandinavian countries would get to church by boat.
Time for come carpentry! Here’s Arne Håll, one of the few carpenters who still makes churchboats.
You may remember that @Diddley_ Farquar of this parish, who lives in Dalarna described rowing one of these boats on a team building exercise.
One a necessity, the churchboats are now a tourist attraction.
Here’s a tourist vid from Leksand Municipality.
Here’s a Norwegian churchboat from 1876 which would carry 30 people.
What a discovery!
If you have a copy this 1964 LP by Alice Babs and Svend Asmussen back at your space age bachelor pad, you are a true hipster.
We all know Alice from the movie Swing it Magister.
For this album she sung Swedish songs translated into English in a Stockholm studio. Meanwhile Svend multi-tracked all the instruments down in Copenhagen. He was a virtuoso Danish violinist known as “the Fiddling Viking”.
All that fiddling did him a world of good. He lived to the age of 100.
Their LP won the Edison Award for being a state of the art recording.
Other-wordly, spacey stuff. It was released in the US as Scandinavian songs sung and swung.
Noggin the Nog! Could Smallfilms’s watching charming 1959 saga about the King of the Nogs at an impressionable age be the reason for my continued fascination with Norwegian folk culture?
But where did two chaps in 1950s England get the inspiration to produce a story about Vikings?
The answer seems to be that they visited the British Museum and saw the Lewis Chessmen.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/editor/noggin-nog#:~:text=It%20was%20inspired%20by%20the,highlights%20of%20the%20British%20Museum.
YAnyway, yesterday I was revisiting Pilegrimsreiser (Pilgrim Journeys) by Norwegian Early Music folk band, Kalenda Maya. I bought it at the Multi Kulti Record Shop many years ago. It was recorded at an inspiring location: the enormous Gothic, Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim (founded in 997).
It consists of medieval songs about the great places of pilgrimage.
The band’s lute player, Sverre Jensen, is something of a grand old man of Norwegian folk music and is famous for producing his own instruments.
My explorations led me to this excellent article about Norwegian medieval ballads.
https://www.bokselskap.no/boker/fagartiklarogtittelregister/espeland2
Reader-friendly and very informative. Not too many happy endings in medieval Norway!
“The ballad «Olav Liljekrans» (cf. the Scottish «Clerk Colvill», Child No. 42) tells of a young man who rides out to invite guests to his wedding. He meets a group of elves deep in the forest. The queen of the elves asks him to dance with her, but he refuses because he is to be married the next day. In revenge the queen curses him with sickness, and he returns home a dying man. His death is concealed from his bride, but she finally discovers the truth and then dies as well.”
Being a dancing man, I’m sure that @thecheshirecat knows that national dance in the Faroe Islands is a chain dance. I had no idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faroese_chain_dance
If you’ve had a postcard recently from the Faroe Islands, you may have noticed dancers on the stamp.
What’s more there is a tradition of singing ballads as they dance.
Here’s a quote from that article about Norwegian ballads.
“The rhythm of the Faeroese ballads is a dance rhythm, and there are several signs that they are dancing songs, but the ballads documented in Norway and Sweden are marked by freer, text-based rhythmics. The long burdens of the Faeroese ballads have an obvious function for dancing: the dancers sing along in the burden and give the lead singer a chance to catch his breath and to think about the next stanza. But in the rest of Scandinavia the burdens are generally much shorter.”
Thanks goodness for BBC Alba! Here’s a documentary in Scottish Gaelic about Faroese Chaindancing. (There are subtitles for those of us whose Gaelic is a bit shakey. I’m sure @retropath02 won’t be needing them).
Can you think of a more enjoyable way of spending Sunday morning?
In the second part, the interviewer mentions her Gaelic speaking granny and Faroese heavy metal.
Here are Tyr with a song based on a medieval Faroese ballad.
From chaindance to moshpit! All tastes catered for on this thread!