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Written in fRoots issue 187/188, 1999

ORSA SPELMANSLAG
Orsa Spelmanslag 50 År
Giga GCD-42 (1998)

MALUNGS SPELMANSLAG
Malungs Spelmanslag 50 År
Giga GCD-41 (1998)

LEKSANDS SPELMANSLAG
Leksands Spelmanslag 50 År
Giga GCD-40 (1998)

KUNGS LEVI NILSSON, SARAS GÖTE ALFREDSSON, ALM NILS ERSSON, KJELL-OLOV NILSSON
All Den Kärlek
Giga GCD-38 (1998)

PERS HANS OLSSON
Låtar Inifrån
Giga GCD-37 (1998)

ELLIKA FRISELL
Tokpolska
Giga GCD-36 (1998)

During Sweden’s “folk vogue” in the 1970s many people joined spelmanslag, clubs whose members gathered to play traditional music, mainly on fiddles. Many new spelmanslag formed, but several had been in existence for many years. Rättviks Spelmanslag was formed in 1944, and fiddlers in other Dalarna townships were inspired by its success to form their own groups. Giga released Rättvik’s 50th-birthday CD in 1994; 1998 is the anniversary year for Orsa, Leksand and Malung spelmanslag.

      The full Orsa Spelmanslag, whose repertoire centres around the Orsa tunes, which have a particular minor key flavour, has around thirty players, and some tracks of the album feature the massed fiddle sound, while others feature solos (including Pelle Jakobsson and Jonny Soling on willow pipe, horn and goathorn), duets and small groups, or the three fiddles, accordion, guitar and bass of Orsa Spelmän, a subgroup of Orsa Spelmanslag which has become famous in Sweden through collaborations with Abba’s Benny Andersson. Many leading solo fiddlers are active members of a spelmanslag; Orsa has Jonny Soling, Björn Ståbi, Hans Björkman, Olle Moraeus and others, all featured here.

      Other nationally well-known and influential fiddlers lead Malungs and Leksands Spelmanslag - Kalle Almlöf and Kungs Levi Nilsson respectively. Both their anniversary albums, like Orsa’s consist of a mixture of full ensemble, smaller combinations and solos, some featuring instruments other than fiddle including a harmonica polska from Urban Turban’s Pelle Lindström and willow pipe solos on the Leksand CD, Dalarna bagpipe on the Malung disc, and the occasional song on both.

      The Leksand Dance, an old 3/4 polska form in which the dancers turned slowly on one spot, was once the most popular dance in the district but died out when other dances arrived in the mid 19th century. All Den Kärlek is dedicated to it. Since 1979 four Leksand fiddlers, all from the village of Siljansnäs where the danced survived longer than in Leksand itself, have worked on rescuing the dance and working out the right quartet playing style for it. Kjell-Olov died in December 1997, just months before the album’s release.

      Pers Hans Olsson is a well-known Rättvik fiddler, a Zorn gold medallist, who plays solo and with Björn Ståbi, Rättviks Spelmanslag and others. On Låtar Inifrån he plays solo, tunes he learned from his father Pers Erik and the fiddlers he first took the young Pers Hans to visit, with a tape recorder, in the villages of the Rättvik district in the fifties. Erik was looking for the oldest local tunes, and here are polskas, herding-tunes, a march and a waltz, with six of a popular local form, marching-tunes, which are the tune-type of Rättviks Spelmanslag’s 1978 national hit Gärdebylåten ("The Gärdeby Tune") that spurred the formation of so many spelmanslag.

      Ellika Frisell, from Stockholm, came to folk music in the folk boom period, taking up fiddling in Delsbo, Hälsingland, then learning from Kalle Almlöf and Jonny Soling at Malung, and via Soling coming under the spell of the Bingsjö tunes of Nils Agenmark and Päkkos Gustaf. Subsequently came professionalism and periods with Filarfolket, Kapell Frisell and Den Fule, and formative playing encounters with the driving, expressive Norwegian hardingfele music of the late Torleiv Bjørgum and the Indian modal music of Bombay fiddle master Shivakumar. On Tokpolska she plays a set of polskas with some schottisches and waltzes, both traditional and her own compositions, solo or with lower parts on fiddle, viola or viola d’amore from Sven Ahlbäck and Mats Edén.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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