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Written in fRoots issue 268, 2005
 

BOSSE LARSSON & OLE HJORTH
Förr Så Har Jag Dansat
Giga GCD-70 (2004)

PETTERSSON & FREDRIKSSON
Virek
Drone DROCD 039 (2005)

KVERRESTAD-MÖRSIL
Kverrestad-Mörsil
Home HOME 031 (2004)

Uppland, the part of Sweden around the city of Uppsala, is where the nyckelharpa tradition was maintained, largely by Eric Sahlström and August Bohlin, during the thin times of the mid 20th century, and it’s the detonation point of today’s explosion in nyckelharpa making and playing. But it also has a rich fiddle tradition, which naturally shares tunes and rhythmic styles with the nyckelharpa.

      The great name of the Uppsala fiddle tradition is that of Viksta Lasse Larsson (1897-1983). But he learned a great deal from Hjort Anders Olsson (1865-1952), an icon of a tradition different in rhythm and repertoire from Uppland’s, that of its neighbour to the north-west, Dalarna. Hjort Anders spent the last forty-six years of his life not in his birthplace, the village of Bingsjö in Dalarna, but in Altuna near Uppsala. The two played and performed together, and influenced one other in repertoire and style.
      Ole Hjorth and Bosse Larsson, major fiddling figures themselves, are direct tradition-bearers from their forbears: Ole learned from and performed with Hjort Anders, Bosse likewise from and with Viksta Lasse. They’ve played together on and off for thirty years, but this Giga album is their first recording together. In it they, like their mentors, mingle Uppland and Bingsjö tunes and styles, with the Uppland tunes, several of them connected with Sahlström and Bohlin, having the busy waltzing swing also characteristic of Uppland nyckelharpa music.

      The young duo of Daniels Pettersson and Fredriksson, from Skellefteå up north in Västerbotten, are significant players in the next generation of nyckelharpa and Swedish traditional music. Live over the past two or three years they’ve been making an impact on the Swedish roots scene with the sort of intense interaction that one sees in England with Wood and Cutting or the English Acoustic Collective, as well as with ever-developing collaborations with other leading musicians.
      Pettersson plays nyckelharpas, Fredriksson one of Ola Söderström’s beautifully ingenious, rich-sounding mandolas, as also favoured by Ale Möller, with extended bass strings, quarter-tone frets and individual string-pair stud capos. The energy and powerful bowed and picked string texture inevitably strikes comparisons to Väsen, but they’re their own men, mutually exploring a composition or traditional tune. The dance rhythms, usually a convoluted polska, are there, but they move in and out of them, incorporating slower spaces of lyrical melody or suspended rhythm. Virek is their second album in a couple of years, with more albums and projects on the way soon, and is a recommended listen.

      Kverrestad-Mörsil is another felicitous nyckelharpa pairing, this time with sax. Nyckelharpa player Niklas Roswall, of the Nyckelharpa Orchestra, Ranarim and the excellent Step On It! duo album with Ian Carr, is from Kverrestad in the southernmost county of Skåne; Hoven Droven soprano and baritone saxist Jens Comén comes from Mörsil in the north-western county of Jämtland. Their album combines dance music from both areas.
      Though sax might not seem as traditional in this music as fiddle or nyckelharpa, but reed instruments have a long history in Swedish tradition. The opening Jämtland polska comes from a traditional clarinet player, and various sizes of sax have had a shaping role in today’s Swedish roots music, in the hands of such as Sten Källman, Thomas Ringdahl, Dan Gisen Malmquist, Anders Hagberg, Jonas Simonson and Comén in bands including Groupa, Filarfolket, Avadå Band, Bröderna Blås, Trio UGB and Hoven Droven. The combination of sax and nyckelharpa might suggest an abrasive sound, but it’s actually airy, mellow and pleasingly varied, Roswall’s chromatic nyckelharpa or simpler moraharpa blending finely with Comén’s liquid soprano or warm baritone.


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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