Svensk Folkmusik

 

The sounds of Swedish folk music could easily be mistaken for the music of Scotland and Ireland, the historical intermixing of the Celtic and Norse peoples led to a sharing of instrument styles, as well as musical sounds and textures. The instruments primarily used in Swedish folk music are the nykelharpa, latfiol, sakpipa, accordion, and flutes. While modern musicians often include other instruments, such as the guitar and clarinet, in their performances, the traditional instruments are what gives Swedish folk music it’s unique sound.

            The nykelharpa is a string instrument similar to a violin, sometimes referred to as a keyed fiddle, and similarly played with a bow. Unlike the violin, “[T]he modern chromatic nyckelharpa has 16 strings: 3 melody strings, one drone string, and 12 sympathetic vibration (or resonance) strings” (nylelharpa.org). The nykelharpa has sets of keys attached to posts called tangents, these posts press the strings to allow certain notes to be played, the way a violinist does with their fingers. The sympathetic strings on the nykelharpa are not directly played but resonate with the melody strings creating a sound that almost sounds as if multiple instruments are being played instead of just one. The latfiol is a type of Swedish fiddle which like the nykleharpa makes use of sympathetic strings, though it only has two. The sakpipa is a Swedish bagpipe, it is a smaller and simpler type of bagpipe than the Scottish bagpipes, or the Irish Uilleann pipes.

Två Konungabarn played by Myrkur Oksemorder

I love this piece, it really shows the unique sounds that are produced by the nykelharpa.

Griselda Sanderson explains some of the unique features of the nykelharpa.

Thor Ahlgren & Simon Olofsson performs two south swedish tunes (skåne) at Skurups folkhögskola. This video really shows how different the sakpipa are from the Scottish and Uillean pipes, both in their simpler sound and their function.

The style of fiddling used by Swedish players is one of the ways in which Swedish music varies from that of the Irish and Scottish. “Swedish fiddling is rich in grace notes, rolls and trills, double string unisons and drones, and notes raised or lowered by quarter tones…Rolls in Swedish music are not unlike those in Irish music, but the trills which are a very characteristic feature in Sweden are never heard in Ireland.” (Haigh)

Carol Ann Wheeler: A Demonstration of Different Fiddling Styles

These instruments, together with the accordion create a hauntingly beautiful sound, giving Swedish music a sound that makes the listener think of the way it would sound played out over the fjords of Sweden. The deep and clear resonation of music played out over vast mountains and valleys on a cold crisp winter morning. “Swedish folk music evolved out of music for dancers in the courts and later in the countryside, where villagers gathered on icy winter nights and in the long, eerie twilight of Swedish summer. It has a lilting, dynamic quality reminiscent of Celtic music and a propulsive energy akin to the barn dance-driven sounds of Appalachia. But Swedish tunes, unlike their brethren to the west, are often written in time signatures based in phrases of three, lending them unusual buoyancy; players—generally fiddlers—stretch and contract these rhythms for a suspenseful, slightly off-balance feel. Tunes range from the furious and notey to the measured and stately, but like the whirling couple dances to which they owe their form, all share a sense of perpetual movement, of the centrifugal force generated by two bodies in motion.” (Mason) “Early Swedish music was primarily constituted by ballads and kulning, or herding calls. Kulning is a song typically sung by women for the purpose of calling sheep and cows down from the hills upon which they graze…Kulning’s vocalizations are marked by many quartertones and halftones – which are often referred to as “blue tones” – leading to a haunting, ghostly effect.” (Fredriksson)

I enjoy both Irish and Scottish music, but not as much as Swedish folk music. I really think that the ethereal sound of the slow songs, the deep resonance of the stronger tunes are beautiful, and the lively polska gets my toes tapping every time with it’s dance friendly rhythms.

Lyricist: Mikael Wiehe  Song: Flickan Och Kråkan, 1984  Singer: Sofia Karlsson

Song: Alla Gossar  Performed by: Triakel

 

Björnberg, Alf, and Thomas Bossius. Made in Sweden: studies in popular music. Routledge, 2017.

Fredriksson, Joan. “The Evolution of Swedish Folk Music.” The Evolution of Swedish Folk Music | Swedish Press, 1 Aug. 2016, www.swedishpress.com/article/evolution-swedish-folk-music.

Gällmo, Olle. Swedish bagpipes, www.olle.gallmo.se/sackpipa/.  

Mason, Amelia. “Väsen-And Its Nyckelharpa Virtuoso-Make Old Time Swedish Folk Music Fresh.” Väsen-And Its Nyckelharpa Virtuoso-Make Old Time Swedish Folk Music Fresh | The ARTery, www.wbur.org/artery/2014/10/15/vasen-nyckelharpa-swedish-folk-music.

Norbeck, Henrik. “Swedish Traditional Music.” Swedish Traditional Music – Svensk folkmusik, 1998, www.norbeck.nu/swedtrad/.

Chris Haigh. “Scandinavian Fiddle.” Fiddling Around the World, www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/scandinavia/.

Ternhag, Gunnar, and Mathias Boström. “The Dissemination of the Nyckelharpa The Ethnic and the non-Ethnic Ways.” STM-Online, no 2, vol. 253, no. 5021, 1999, pp. 740–741., doi:10.1126/science.253.5021.740.

“What is a Nyckelharpa?” Nyckelharpa.org, www.nyckelharpa.org/about/what-is-a-nyckelharpa/.

The Origins and Evolution of American Country Music

 

American country music comes straight from the heart and soul of the everyday working men and women of the United States. It’s origins are in the deep south and it’s influences range, from old world folk music to the soul music of African slaves. The lyrics of American country music speak to the daily toil and hardships of life, the love and loss found in human relationships, and the pleasures to be found in simple country living.

Country music can trace it’s history to the 1920’s, when the technology of recordings and radio brought folk musicians across the United States the opportunity to have their music heard on a wider scale.  While the music industry often referred to these styles of music as ‘old time’ or ‘hillbilly’ music, they found that it’s popularity began to reach beyond it’s rural, small town roots. “The subsequent history of hillbilly music prior to 1941 cannot be neatly summarized nor really evaluated with any assurance. Even to sketch in its broad aspects is difficult. Too much of the information stems from the statements, activities, and opinions of recording and radio executives, and it is a proven fact that they were groping in the dark, did not know what they had… Early hillbilly music was strongly based in the country string band, frolic, and banjo-minstrel tradition, though the recording companies sampled almost every thing available, even the Sacred Harp … There was no stylistic uniformity, though to the outsider it seemed so. Instrumental styles ranged from simple to relatively complex, from self taught guitar strums to somewhat complex banjo styles. (Wilgus 162)

Through the 1920 and 30’s country music began to absorb the cowboy tradition giving uniformity and seriousness to country music, but it still lacked mass appeal and was seen as music for the lower classes. The population shifts of World War II boosted country music into the mainstream, and the mix of class and culture in the military gave it a wider exposure. In the 1940’s country music was recognized as a burgeoning genre by Billboard, and by the late 40’s country and pop artists began to cross genres.

The 1950’s brought a new style of country music, this new form infused country songs with the rhythms and vitality of rock and roll, while keeping the sound and lyrical styles that people had come to identify with country music. “First recorded in the North, it erupted in Memphis in the form of rockabilly, with Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins… Just as country-western music in the fifties was attempting to shed the last of its rural and low-class trappings and become urban middle-class music, national taste turned back to the grass roots, to the folksy.” (Wilgus 173)

Country music continues to walk a fine line between pop/rock and folk country, with many artists bouncing back and forth at will. “Within the hierarchy of American music, however, country perennially struggles for status and legitimacy.” (Tichi 01) This struggle is somewhat due to the fluidity of style and influences crucial to the genre and also in part to it’s continued categorization of being the music of the lower class. However country music continues to grow in popularity, and develop the nature of it’s sound with the fluctuations in the culture of it’s listeners. The country music of the 2000’s is a wild blend of folk, bluegrass, blues, latin, pop, hip-hop, rap, and R&B, showing the truth of it’s nature as the music of the common man

Fiddler Eck Robertson records “Arkansas Traveler” One of the first country music artists to make a recording 1922

Gene Autry “Riders in the Sky” 1949

Elvis Presley “Blue Moon of Kentucky”  1954

Johnny Cash “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” 1958

Dolly Parton “Islands in the Stream”

Garth Brooks “Friends in Low Places”

Jason Aldean “Hicktown”

Sam Hunt “Body Like a Back Road”

“Dolly Parton & the Roots of Country Music.” Special Presentation: Country Timeline (Dolly Parton and Country Music): Dolly Parton and the Roots of Country Music (Performing Arts Encyclopedia, The Library of Congress), memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/dollyparton/dollyparton-countrytimeline.html.

Flippo, Chet. “Country & Western: Some New-Fangled Ideas.” American Libraries, vol. 5, no. 4, 1974, pp. 185–189. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25619448.

Malone, Bill C. Singing cowboys and musical mountaineers: southern culture and the roots of country music. University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Peterson, Richard A., and Paul Di Maggio. “From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music: A Test of the Massification Hypothesis.” Social Forces, vol. 53, no. 3, 1975, pp. 497–506. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2576592

Tahmahkera, Dustin. “‘An Indian in a White Man’s Camp’: Johnny Cash’s Indian Country Music.” American Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 3, 2011, pp. 591–617. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41237568.

Tichi, Cecelia. “Consider the Alternative: Alt-Country Musicians Transcend Country Music Stereotypes.” The Women’s Review of Books, vol. 18, no. 3, 2000, pp. 14–15. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4023646.

Wilgus, D. K. “Country-Western Music and the Urban Hillbilly.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 83, no. 328, 1970, pp. 157–179. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/539105.

Analysis #2 “Come on Eileen”

Dexy’s Midnight Runners isn’t a name you’ll hear often today, and most people you ask will have never heard the song “Come on Eileen”, but most people who grew up in the 80’s will be familiar with the song if not the band. Dexy’s Midnight Runners were an English pop band whose music challenged the standard of American mid to early 80’s bubblegum and pop rock music. ‘“No matter how many times I’ve heard ‘Come on Eileen’, it’s still thrilling…It’s like four songs in one, like a mini opera. It just all works. It’s a fantastic mix of subject matter and the excitement is mirrored in the music.” (White 131)

“Come on Eileen” was co-written by Kevin Rowland and Jim Patterson with Billy Adams. The song uses some unique and inventive methods to offset different sections of the song, including both tempo and key changes. The blues and celtic mix in this song is played out by the violins and banjo with a somewhat pop style piano mixed in. The entry to the song is a distinctly celtic sounding fiddle style melody, it’s soft and sweet giving no indication of the music to follow. Then we get a sudden and distinct thrumming da-dada-da-dada, if you’re not expecting it, it can really throw you off, there is something about it though that starts a feeling of excitement. The thrumming continues in the background and the fiddling begins again with a catchy repetitive riff. A piano has also joined in with a similar thrumming beat to that of the banjo. This rhythm, melody, and key repeats twice, then there is a glissando and the key changes. The rhythm and melody continue as before but the key change is subtly dramatic. The melody is repeated twice and is punctuated between repeats by vocals with a singsong chant of ‘come on Eileen’. The melody repeats through the first verse. The lyrics of the first verse are, to many American listeners, distinct but unintelligible, the accents of the singer blending the vowels and consonants. When the song gets to the pre-chorus it begins to cascading increase in tempo, then at the chorus the rhythm and tempo have changed and once again the key changes. The chorus ends and there is a little banjo riff, that has always reminded me of a lower pitched version of a ‘breaking news’ ditty,  is played twice. The key returns to that of the first verse for the second verse, but the tempo is still the fast pace introduced in the first pre-chorus. The second repeat of the chorus almost seems slower at this point though it is played at the same tempo as the first time around, it starts to feel like a chant. The next section of the song slows way down, and slowly accelerates again into and through the pre-chorus, and has a distinct can-can style sound to it. Then there are two repeats of the chorus as the song fades out followed by a coda that is an entirely different song, a sweet little bit of a folk song that is tacked on at the end, ‘Believe me, if all those endearing young charms’ a popular song written in 1808 by Irish poet Thomas Moore, which is also the source of the lyrics of the first verse.

The song is unique, but it works. “[T]he live debut of ‘Come on Eileen’ was accorded a rousing reception.” (White 129) It’s success saw it reach number one on American top 40 charts.

White, Richard. Dexys Midnight Runners young soul rebels. Omnibus, 2006.

The Internationalist Review of Irish Culture. Edited by Andrea Binelli et al., Yorick libri 2007