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Written in fRoots issue 241, 2003
 

ALWA
Alwa
Amigo AMCD 747 (2002)

Some people with a potential interest in certain European musics are probably bounced out on first contact by what seems like a wall of fiddling. Not the live experience of a fiddle-filled bar or gathering, which many neophytes take to with enthusiasm, but on records.
      Take Sweden, for example. There was a time when in a compilation of extant recordings there would be barely a track that wasn’t essentially dance-tunes on fiddle. Natural enough; the country has a wealth of wonderful, fine-detailed fiddle-playing and fascinating tunes, and it was the main driving force of the roots-revival that began in the 1970s. But many of the recordings that seem to have attracted a wider audience at home and abroad have been those with clearly stated lines and a variety of instrumentation in the music, and particularly those where the human voice reaches out.
      This debut release by five-piece Alwa could well fall into that category. Singer and one of two fiddlers is Anna Elwing, who is also a member of the Skåne fiddle and vocal group Plommon. The other fiddler, doubling on viola, is Karin Ohlsson, a holder of the accolade Riksspelman (national traditional music master). They’re joined by acoustic and electric guitarist Jonas Göransson, saxist and flautist Torbjörn Righard and, on percussion including her characteristic berimbau, Tina Quartey.
      The latter, then Tina Johansson, was percussionist in Filarfolket, the band featuring among others Ale Möller and Ellika Frisell that for many in the UK, and indeed in Sweden itself, was one of the first revelations of Swedish roots music and the punchily melodic new things that could be done with it. (Incidentally, a Filarfolket reunion gig is in the offing).
      Indeed in the big tunes and deep sax-honking lines that underpin them there are resonances between Alwa and Filarfolket. But whereas the latter was an instrumental band playing mainly dance music, Alwa features a singer, calmly melancholic but well capable of power-surges, and while the band drives when it needs to, there’s plenty of lyrical, free-tempo spaciousness to its music which, while strongly rooted in traditional forms and often using traditional texts, is largely written by Elwing and other members.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw


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