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Written in Folk Roots issue 170/171, 1997

DANISH DIA DELIGHT
Live
CE Musik CEMCD 0496 (1996)

KÆTTER KVARTET
Kætter Kvartet
Olga Musik OLGA CD 96062 (1996)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Folk Music From Denmark ’97
MXP MXPCD 0197 (1997)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
World Music From Denmark ’97
MXP MXPCD 0297 (1997)

Sometimes, quite often in fact, in a folk music revival a band is needed that gives its audiences a damn good fun time while sneaking in a whole lot of the shapes and content of the tradition. Danish Dia Delight is just that band. It’s a bunch of very able seasoned musicians, including American Café Orchestra (and Wood/Cutting accompanist) guitarist Morton Alfred Høirup, diatonic accordionist Carl Erik Lundgaard and saxist Henrik Bredholt, throwing songs and tunes around between them, with accessible energy, charm and wit, a lot of traditional skill and no sense of educationalism or pompousness.
      The sound has affinities with British ceilidh-band and folk-rock, but it’s definitely Danish. To quote Alan Klitgaard’s notes, “In my opinion any musician in any musical genre stands a much better chance of making an international impression if he or she chooses their own tradition as their starting point”. Live is what the band’s about; I held off writing this review until I’d seen them, and can confirm that this is a true and faithful representation of the delights of Danish Dia (even if it isn’t perhaps the most foreigner-enticing name).

      A second jolt for any doubter of the Danish revival comes inside the rather uninspiring packaging of Kætter Kvartet’s debut album. These days Denmark is highly multicultural, and it’s natural that anyone making present-day music with Danish roots would embrace that reality. KK very naturally combines the structures of Danish, or sometimes Swedish, dance tunes, which include such pan-Nordic forms as hambo, waltz and schottish - with the lift and backbeat of other, hotter parts of the world. A prime example would be the swingy, eminently danceable Hambo.
      Most of the music here is by fiddler Søren Korshøj or mandolinist, guitarist and flute-player John Bæk; the band is completed by Svend Seegert’s keyboards and drummer Peter Weis-Fogh (replaced since the album by Vivi Kristensen). As with DDD there’s a sense of fun coupled with excellent musicianship and bright ideas. Some European musicians struggle with the problem of whether or not to sing in their own language; KK not only sings in Danish but has invented African-sounding vocalisations that don’t mean anything in any language (now there’s perverse for you, or perhaps just egalitarian). Sounds like it would be silly, but it seems to work; some of these are the sort of up-tempo dancing songs that need sound, not sense, in the vocals.

      Some of the wattage helping to power and illuminate the Danish voltage surge comes from an organisation called MXP - Danish Music Export And Promotion, which, in conjunction with the Danish Folk Music Council (and all the other main music unions and organisations) puts out an annual Folk Music From Denmark promotional CD-sized hardback containing CD featuring most of the prime movers, plus performer information and comprehensive contacts. And there’s one each for jazz, rock, classical, world music and so on too.
      On initial release they’re not for sale, so don’t technically qualify for review here, but in previous years the CD itself has been later put on commercial sale, so I can probably tell you that this year’s Folk Music one includes music from such as Danish Dia Delight, Dug, Sorten Muld, Phønix, Baltinget and the Faroes-based bands Spælimenninir and Suleskær, while that which documents Danish-based world music (that is, with non-Danish roots) has the pan-African highlife/jive of Ghanaian Afro Moses and his band, Moses O’Jah, salsa, Bahia-born Gil Félix’s samba-reggae, Salvador “Tchando” Embalo from Guinea-Bissau, the middle-eastern music of Oriental Mood (here without the fine Kurdish singer Nazé Botan) and more, and it’s an impressive, vibrant collection.


© 1997 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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