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Written in Folk Roots issue 193, 1999
 

UHRBRAND, LYDOM, CAHILL
Sik Og Sejs
ULC ULCcd 0199

PER OG LARS LILHOLT & NEXT STOP SVABONIUS FOLKBAND
Next Stop Svabonius
Danish Folk Council FFS 9801 (1998)

The oldest folk-dance surviving in Denmark is the pols, which was common in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its strongest persistence has been on the isle of Fanø, off west Jutland just south of Esbjerg. The local form there, the sønderhoning, named after the Fanø town of Sønderho, is unusual because while the music stays as swingy duple time march the dance steps alternate between duple-time and a triple-time swing.
      Since he moved to the island in 1976, fiddler Peter Uhrbrand has been involved in Fanø music, playing with the last surviving members of the tradition-bearing Brinch family and in the group Jæ’ Sweevers. Sik Og Sejs is a whole album of sønderhonings, plus one in another Fanø pols style, the fannik; fine, largely previously unrecorded tunes, given elegant, varied and sensitive settings by the trio of Uhrbrand, guitarist and bouzouki player Séamus Cahill, Sonnich Lydom on accordion and harmonica, and guest tuba, snare drum and bones. All three are experienced in other musical traditions; here by focusing on Fanø music they bring out its distinctiveness, making a notable step forward in the clarification of the nature of Danish traditional dance music, something of a landmark album.

      Next Stop Svabonius is a project involving 21 musicians, many of them leading instrumentalists in the Danish traditional-music revival, put together by fiddler, hurdy-gurdy player, hit-songwriter and rock band leader Lars Lilholt with his viola-player father Per, in tunes, including minuets, polsks, engelskdanses and others, from two manuscript collections from the turn of the 18th century and a 1688 music theory book. A few (including one item reminiscent, or rather perhaps preminiscent, of the Blackadder theme) have very close relatives in Britain; some dance tunes were hits, way back then, all over Europe.
       Moving between chamberish or baroque and rockism and techno touches in treatments by a clutch of overlapping ensembles - units led by hurdy-gurdy player Riccardo Delfino, guitarist Knud Møller and keyboard player and vocalist Sofie Bondes, plus the Lilholts’ fiddle and viola duo and a collaboration between fiddlers Michael Sommer, Bent Melvej and Ove Andersen and the Lars Lilholt Band - the obvious description of the sound of this album is a Danish Morris On. Its variety and exuberance of approach and melodic memorability are just the sort of thing to give the gathering momentum and self-confidence in Danish-rooted music another forward punt.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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