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Written in fRoots issue 247/248, 2004
 

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Raddir / Voices
Smekkleysa SMK 7 (2003)

STEINDÓR ANDERSEN
Rímur
Naxos World 76031-2 (2003)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Traditional Music In The Faroe Islands 1950-1999
Frémeaux & Associés FA 5036 (2003)

Three very significant releases, of remarkable aspects of European traditional song that have until now been almost completely unrepresented on commercially-available recordings.

      In the current Rough Guide To World Music, Iceland only gets a couple of pages because there’s not much roots music around. The old epic poetry, first written down a thousand years ago, is still a keystone of Icelandic culture but, largely as a result of the influx of church organs and new hymns, during the nineteenth century the singing of the poems in the old way virtually disappeared.
      But in the archives of Reykjavik’s Árni Magnússon Institute there are some recordings from the 20th century that help bridge that gap. When writing the Iceland chapter in the RGtoWM I’d heard from Institute archivist Rósa Thorsteinsdóttir that an album called Voices, containing some of these recordings, was due to be released, and that it was the real thing. Here it is at last.
      In Icelandic culture the emphasis is on the words, the imagery and the stories. As explained in Smári Ólason, Jón Thórarinsson and Andri Snær Magnason’s full and lucid booklet notes, themselves an education in Iceland’s music, rímur are usually described as chanted narrative poems. But their tunes, often associated with a particular singer, are much more than mere chanting as we understand the word; they depend on the lyrics in the same way as they do throughout the European epic ballad tradition, and they can be of narrow compass, but the word-rhythms are varied and each tune is distinctive.
      On Voices are rímur, and the freer-form poems called thulas, recorded from an assortment of male and female singers. Direct, cherishing to the song and its meaning, these are voices full of humanity and character, well-recorded in their homes, mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s but some earlier, and one track comes from the first rímur recordings made on wax cylinders between 1903 and 1912. They tell of big, ancient things: chieftains, ogres, giants, dwarves, mermaids, gods, suitors, poetry and revenge. There are also lullabies, religious songs and a drinking song.
      A listen through to these nineteen tracks is a revelation, a window on a whole nation’s musical tradition that had been neglected and rejected by most of the population as they came under the influence of new cultural invasions and virtually disappeared from the world.

      Dolores Canavan, of Tennessee-based mid-price label Naxos World, read the brief RGtoWM Iceland chapter and resolved to do something about the lack of material on record. Rósa Thorsteinsdóttir put her in contact with Steindór Andersen, fishing boat captain, singer, collaborator with Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós and president of IĐUNN (www.rimur.is), the society devoted to the upholding of Icelandic song traditions, whose members meet periodically to sing in the old way.
The result is the CD Rímur. Though rímur from as far back as the 14th century are in the archives, those sung here by Andersen have lyrics by 19th and 20th century poets. By then the poetic use of descriptive and personal language seems to have become at least as important as the story. Andersen sings, in various different acoustic locations, in a voice with a quavery catch in it, for the most part unaccompanied as the tradition has always been, but a second singer adds parallel harmony on one track, and there are slight touches of harp or didgeridoo on three more.

      In Icelandic the way of singing rímur is called "að kveða". In the Faroes the old heroic ballads are called kvæði, and they’re sung by a ring of dancers, making a stamping shuffle-step two to the left and one to the right. (There are indications that in Iceland, too, ballads were danced). It’s not a performance – it’s a community event, a sharing of stories, songs and a contact dance all in one.
      Traditional Music In The Faroe Islands 1950-1999 is a double CD, put together by Faroese label Tutl and French Frémeaux largely using field recordings made in 1959 by Swedish Radio, of ballads and other songs in Faroese, and ballads and hymns in Danish. With vocal sounds full of grainy individuality in their wild, wind-blown melodies, it’s extraordinary, powerful stuff, a craggy sea-stack of European music.
      The Faroese ballads, like Iceland’s rímur, have stories that go back as far as incidents in central Europe in the 6th century; some were also perpetuated in the Viking Elder Edda and later in the German Nibelunglied. A good tale persists through time, and hurdles linguistic barriers. On the first CD there are Viking stories including one about Hálvdan and Finnur’s exploits in Ireland and Vínland (America), stories from the medieval romances stories of Charlemagne (here we get part of one about the battle of Roncesvalles), and widespread European ballad themes such as Harpu Ríma, which is a Faroese version of the “Two Sisters” story. The ring of dancers also embraced Danish chivalric ballads learnt from the printed ballad-sheets that began to arrive in the 17th century, and the second CD contains parts of nine of them. (Once they’ve got moving, these danced ballads can stretch to over a hundred verses, but you’d have to be there in the ring to appreciate them in full, so usually ten or so verses are given on the CDs).
      Another substantial part of the collection is of hymns in Danish, known as Kingosálmar after Thomas Kingo, who in 1699 published the most used psalm-book. Though some of these are still sung, it’s in a simplified, churchy way, but until recently people sang hymns as accompaniment to their day, and interpreted their melodies as it suited them. There are some sung here by a number of people, stretching and reaching in free rhythm somewhat as in Gaelic long-psalms, but most are from individuals; an outstanding example is Helga Thomassen’s free-flown melismatic rendition in 1959 of Gud Helligaand! I Tro Os Lær.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw


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