- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in Folk Roots issue 149, 1995

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Folk Music In Sweden: Varjehanda Folkmusik / Traditional Folk Music
Caprice CAP 21474 E (1995)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Folk Music In Sweden: Äventyr I Jazz Och Folkmusik / Adventures In Jazz And Folklore
Caprice CAP 21475 (1995)

76 minutes, 44 tracks of Swedish folk music, field recordings and album tracks: herding calls, spilåpipa, cow horn, work song, lullabies, nyckelharpa, ballads, joiks, skämtvisor, clog fiddle, religious songs, diddling, fiddling, harmonica, accordion right through to Väsen, Norrlåtar, Frifot and Hedningarna.
      And this, Traditional Folk Music (actually the Swedish title means “All sorts of folk music”), though a gem in its own right, is but a taster for the 24, yes 24, other CDs in the series Folk Music in Sweden which, a joint release by Caprice and Swedish Radio P2, is an expanded CD release of the Musica Sveciae set which first came out in 1977 on LP. Out so far are numbers 1 and 2, a double CD The Medieval Ballad; this one, which is number 3, and number 4 Adventures in Jazz and Folklore (see below).
     The rest will follow over the next three years, and will stand alongside the Grappa/NRK joint release of ten CDs of Norwegian folk music as classic evidence that there exist countries whose national media have not only encouraged their folk culture but make it available to their population in informative, elegant packages. And then there’s Finland, where from the nationally-funded Folk Music Institute emerges a steady stream of CDs.
      Sorry, BBC, I can’t quite hear you - what’s that, not enough money? - but isn’t the Lottery something to do with supporting national culture?
      In 1965 some of Sweden’s jazz-band leaders - Bengt Arne-Wallin, Jan Johansson, Georg Riedel and Bengt Hallberg - were let loose in Swedish Radio’s archives of traditional music recordings, and commissioned to come up with music drawing on them for a radio broadcast.
      It’s often the case that jazz musicians (for whom exploration is, after all, the true path) can be fired by the, to them, strange modes, tonalities and rhythms of the folk music of their own country. Though of course this is 1965 jazz, not the newly-evolving Nordic forms of the 90s which may well owe something to projects like this, the effect of the folk recordings, some of which are incorporated in the pieces, is to shift the modalities of the jazz in a very interesting way, even if occasionally swing fights back. It takes a lot to divert the grooves of a lifetime, but on this album you can feel the first blasts of that Nordic fresh air start to blow.


© 1995 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -