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Written in fRoots issue 256, 2004
 

ALE MÖLLER BAND
Bodjal
Amigo AMCD 752 (2004)

After the gig at festivals, Ale Möller can be counted on to be at the heart of a session, having musical conversations with whoever’s interesting and interested. For him music isn’t “listen to me”, it’s “join me”.
      When he was commissioned for Stockholm City of Culture in 1998 he and saxist Jonas Knutsson put together the multicultural Stockholm Folk Big Band. The commission funding was just for the year, but after it the musicians continued to play together, and the Ale Möller Band comprises three of them – Greek singer and dancer Maria Stellas, Senegalese singer and dancer Mamadou Sene and Mexican-born percussionist Rafael Sida Huizar - together with Swedish fiddler Magnus Stinnerbom, Quebec-born bassist Sebastian Dubé, and Möller himself on mandola, lute, accordion, diverse flutes, shawm and backing vocals. For Bodjal they’re joined by guests Knutsson, keyboardist Mats Öberg, Uyghur singer Kurash Sultan and Indian singer Shipra Nandy.
      Whereas the Big Band was a meeting-place, this is very definitely a band, a tight, big-sounding one with a meaty repertoire. Möller arranges traditional songs from Greece, West Africa, Bangladesh and Sweden and interleaves them with his own composition, illuminating the individual characters of band members and guests, and each track has a clear and striking melody, texture and shape of its own.
      Möller played Greek music before he played Swedish, and this line-up allows him to return to some of that, but from a new viewpoint coloured by his experience since then. Maria Stellas’ Greek singing is a key factor, in lovely winding melodies, beautifully juxtaposed with Sene’s Serer and Wolof and in a slow, soaring, surging duet with Nandy that combines a song from the Greek mountains with a Bengali farewell song.
      Stellas’ and Möller’s voices combine in tight intervals over churning hefty accordion-led rhythm in the Greek traditional Epese, mightily memorable as is the opener, Ilios, which begins with big spaced chord sequences and tensely shuffling frets and fiddle, opening out into a wide melody Stellas’ commanding vocal answered by Sene and developing into a rebétika 9/8 zeibekiko song.
      Kuresh Sultan contributes the song he wrote while imprisoned by China for his activity in attempting to keep alive the Uyghur language and culture of East Turkestan, Atlan Dok (To Freedom). It has an epic Middle Eastern sound with slithering strings and flutes supporting Sultan’s impassioned vocal and driving dutar. And there’s the 7/8 tango that morphs into the gorgeous rolling melody of the Greek traditional Vrisi and on into a Swedish fiddle tune, and in the Möller-composed The Dark Birds a catchy little chorus between west African groove under wild male vocals, bracketing a serene section of Stellas’ singing and moving to massed percussion.
      Further richness emerges over repeated listens. The variety of sources and sounds are pulled together into a rightness and unity in one of the most splendid products so far of Möller’s infectious musicality.


© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw



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