Much of this is a happy Indian summer album – and with the turn the summer has taken here, we’re going to need something to keep our spirits up if this August steambath continues into September. Whatever the case, this is a mostly cheery, meticulously interwoven, smartly playful album of original Swedish string band instrumentals along with some imaginative reworkings of traditional material. Vasen’s guitarist Roger Tallroth uses an open tuning to maximize the incidence of ringing overtones, much in the same vein as Olov Johansson’s nyckelharpa (a Nordic autoharp with a set of reverberating sympathetic strings). The trio’s lead instrumentalist is viola player Mikael Marin, whose dynamically-charged playing ranges from pensively rustic to completely ecstatic.

A trio of dance numbers open the album, the third being Botanisten, a tribute to some Bay Area pals. It’s appealingly verdant and has some psychedelic tempo shifts if that means anything to you. Garageschottis is clever and shapeshifting as it builds tension. The title track, a tribute to a bunch of Indiana fans who campaigned to name a street in their hometown after the band, starts striking and minor-key before morphing into a dance. The best single cut on the cd is Absolutely Swedish, fast with eerie textures, sounding like there’s a wild mandolin solo going on. But it’s not! It’s Tallroth on the guitar, way up at the top of the fretboard, having fun as the nyckelharpa plinks in the background and the viola feels around for its footing.

Mordar Cajsas Polska (Killer Cajsa’s’Polka) takes its name from a friend of the band, fiddler Cajsa Ekstav who attacked some windows with her beer mug to to kill a swarm of wasps who’d invaded her studio. Ostensibly the results were not pretty. This isn’t nearly as murderous as the title implies, but it sways and spins and you can dance to it, as you can most of the album. Which wraps up with another series of upbeat dance numbers and finally the pensive Yoko, written about a Japanese manager (theirs?). It turns out somewhat pensive, reflective and ultimately very interesting. Happily, it’s not exasperated. Fans of JPP, Frigg and the rest of the A-list of Nordic string bands will love this; bluegrass fans ought to give this a test drive too, it’s a lot of fun. They’ll be on US tour starting September 18 in Boulder at the Boulder Theatre.

Sofia Karlsson

I checked my e-mail this morning and someone had subscribed to my artist site on YouTube.

The new subscriber had a very attractive site.

In checking-out the new subscriber’s favorites I was delighted to discovery a beautiful and talented singer, Sofia Karlsson from Sweden.

Must make a resolution to start learning Swedish.

Sofia Karlsson – Dina Händer (Live Lantz I P4 2008)

Sofia Karlsson – Spela För Livet (Live Nyhetsmorgon 2007)

Sofia Karlsson spelar Flickan och kråkan på visfestivalen

Sofia Karlsson – Jag väntar

Sofia Karlsson – Flickan Och Kråkan (Live Allsång På Skansen 

Sofia Karlsson – Jag Står Här På Ett Torg (Live Gomorron Sve

Background Articles and Videos

Sofia Karlsson

“…In the grey and pale Swedish winter season the onslaught of the annual domestic Eurovision Song Contest totally dominates the media and air waves. Meanwhile Sofia Karlsson and her band, on their second consecutive year, continue their seemingly everlasting tour. This time around Gothenburg, in the Southwestern part of Sweden. In churches, libraries, cinemas, restaurants and theatres Karlsson sings her songs to sold out houses every night. A renaissance for a genre, the Swedish visa*, today often dismissed as belonging rather in a museum than on stage? Whatever the reason, the longing for a strong melody, a good story and a fine story teller is beyond doubt. And few deliver like Sofia Karlsson in this sense. With a diction almost uncannily perfect and an unusual attention to the value of the words she has an ability to infuse new life into even the most worn out and often performed material. The unprecedented success of her platinum selling album Svarta ballader (Black ballads) from 2005 with her pioneering interpretations of Swedish poet Dan Andersson is a proof of this as good as any. …”

http://www.sofiakarlsson.com/index.php?pID=8 

Sofia Karlson MySpace

“…Sofia Karlsson – Vocalist from Stockholm. Musical influences: First grandma playing chorals on the pump organ, grandad playing the single row accordion and mother who always sang in the car, later Fred Åkerström, Dolly Parton, Tracy Chapman, Dansar Edward, Kirsten Bråten-Berg and Lena Willemark.

Educated at the Folk music dept. of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Between 1998-2002 full time member in Swedish folk music act Groupa. Released her debut solo album Folk songs (Amigo, AMCD 748), in 2002. Her hugely successful second solo album Black Ballads – Sofia Karlsson sings Dan Andersson (Amigo, AMCD 756) was released in 2005.

*VISA – The words chanson, lied, visa all mean the same thing in their respective language, i.e. song, and yet each of them has a meaning that distinguishes them from songs in general.

In Scandinavia, the word “visa” usually refers to a text of literary quality joined by stanzas and matched with a melody repeated with the stanzas. The typical visa is of “small size”. In recent years, yet another criterion has come along, namely that it should be “interpretable”.  …”

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=81593419

Sofia Karlsson

“Sofia Karlsson grew up in Enskede, Stockholm. She attended the Folk music dept. of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Between 1998 and 2002 she was a full time member in Swedish folk music act Groupa. In 2002 she released her debut solo album “Folk songs”.

In 2005 she made her public breakthrough with her second album “Svarta ballader” (Black ballads). The album contains her interpretations of the Swedish poet Dan Andersson. The album was in the charts for more than a year and has to date sold 60.000 copies and was rewarded with a Swedish as well as a Danish Grammy.

After touring Sweden for two years she released her third album “Visor från vinden” (Songs from the loft) with its collection of classical Swedish songs written by famous Swedish musicians as Fred Åkerström, Peps Persson, Lars Forsell and Evert Taube. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Karlsson

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

Songs

The Voice of An Angel–Hayley Westenra

I’m living this bizarre, wonderful life where I dream up wishes and then they happen.  Like that time when I was wishing I could someday have and play a hammered dulcimer… Well in 2001 it was my sincere wish that I could learn more about Swedish music and the very fascinating Swedish folk instrument–the nyckelharpa.  It’s funny that this wish came true in Ireland of all places, but there she was.  Elin Skoglund (at the time, now Anderzon) happened to be the flatmate of my friend Zena.  At the international student orientation, Zena approached me and said I had to meet her new Swedish flatmate, because she plays this really odd, beautiful folk instrument…. And I knew my wish was granted.

So this post is another invitation to my happy place.  If nyckelharpas don’t make your heart flutter like they do mine, there’s the seated dance these two are doing and the joy on their faces–sure to bring a smile.  This is Elin and Edward Anderzon, performing last year in Pennsylvania.  The tune is Spelmansglädje.

Although I promised a prompt delivery of Part 2 of my oh-so-interesting trip to Texas, sometimes important things come to pass. For example, I recently came to within an inch of my life, and the reason I am currently able to write this post is because I chose Red Lobster over Bennigan’s on Saturday. Let me explain.

Apparently, there was recently a Gay Pride Parade in Albuquerque. Now, we all have our own opinions on homosexuality; for example, I nicknamed my gay friend Dessie “Sabrina” after the noted deviant pervert furry comic “Sabrina Online”, about a skunk who works at a porno studio. This is not to suggest that I think that Dessie is going to work in pornography; she has already told me she plans either to become a physicist or a worker at a sewage treatment plant, both of which she would probably be very good at, considering her impressive sexual experiments with the female anatomy and all that. But still.

Anyway, apparently Albuquerque homosexuals stayed up very late, until 2:00 PM on Saturday, offending one woman, who said to our local NBC News Affiliate (Motto: We’ve Got The Same Theme Music As Every Other NBC News Affiliate), I quote, “the loud noise kept thumping into our room”. I should note that this woman was wearing plaid when she said this.

The reason this is important: Yesterday I had a choice: I could either go to Bennigan’s, which was near the gay pride parade (this was next to a Subaru dealership, I should add), or Red Lobster, which was not. I chose Red Lobster, because I wanted the taste of fish, which I knew I absolutely could not get at a gay pride parade, because I am male. And so I narrowly survived being trapped in a gay pride parade and forced to party fabulously until two in the morning.

Speaking of fish: My Texan fishing trip. This was an important part of my day before Shrimporee, the largest celebration of shrimp in America. Before we could go to the festival of sea-roaches, it was necessary that we go fishing. Our crew included:

• Mike, a second cousin of mine.
• Cindy, his wife.
• Mike II, who was the husband of Debbie, a second cousin of mine or something.
• Matt, who got sunburned very badly, to the point that all of his skin fell off, who was my third cousin, according to my mother who has already had several beers.

We drove out into the water and the heat, the searing, burning heat, oh God the heat, with country music playing loud enough to scare off fish for a distance of several hundred miles, and proceeded to not catch any fish for three hours. Well, to be honest Mike and Matt caught fish that were large enough to club several people to death, whereas I caught a sunburn that would stay with me until we finally got to New Mexico, which was a source of much more cursing.

Cap’n Mike got a catfish, which was also very large, and which added to its size by having large whiskers that could be used to cut people with. I was impressed by all of these fish, as well as all the water, which does not exist in any form in New Mexico, except in the form of occasional flash floods.

This fishing trip was immediately followed by Shrimporee, and although I very much wanted to use the fish we caught to smack around whoever invented Shrimporee, I thoughtlessly chose not to act on my impulses. This was probably good, because had I actually attacked somebody I wouldn’t have been able to watch my various cousin relatives get stung by jellyfish, which is a convenient way to introduce you to Part 2 of my story.

Apparently, in Texas they have large festivals, with much hooting and shouting and beer-drinking and country music, whenever a young Texette is actually able to graduate from high school in spite of being a Southerner. These festivals are huge, accommodating as many as twenty of the graduate’s friends, and are generally commenced by the graduate, in this case my cousin Jamie, throwing a random object, in this case a water balloon, at a random helpless sea-dwelling creature, in this case a seagull, which in this case appeared to waddle off, muttering under its breath that it was going to have its revenge. Such a festival is a source of great pride for a Texan, and so the proud Texan parents introduce their children to shitting seagulls and sand that smells like poo.

Indeed, “poo” would describe very succinctly the beach in Corpus Christi. For example, the sand underneath the ocean smells like poo; you swim around in various fish poo; the seagulls above you poo into the water; you feel like poo after having a jellyfish wrap its tentacles around your leg, as happened to my cousin Jamie; and so on. Basically, the beach is composed of various types of poo.

The first thing you notice in Corpus Christi water, besides the poo and the fact that it is surrounded by sand that is very sharp and painful to step on, is that the water is basically a giant pool of jellyfish that float back to shore, attacking anything that gets in their way, such as priests, nuns, Prince, clowns, and mimes. Jamie was outright terrified of these creatures, and asked that the large posse of people currently following her out into the ocean swim back into shore. We, the collective members of this large sheeplike congregation, chose not to, and were consequently confronted with Wrath of Jellyfish which immediately surrounded us.

“Hi”, I said to a passing jellyfish.

It began to move towards me, forcing me to walk away very slowly, making sure I did not haphazardly step on a stingray or some other Godawful stinging creature God put into the oceans to keep us out of them.

Jamie, naturally being the one who suggested we get back to shore, was the one who got stung by a jellyfish. The males in this party were then forced to carry her, kicking and screaming, all the way back to the hot sharp sand surrounding this scene, which by my estimates was at least twenty-five miles away, and which stretched at least one hundred miles before we could finally put some shoes on and get our collective glasses back on.

Once we finally got back to shore, it was time to “hang out”, which in this group meant “chatter nervously while people sing karaoke”. As a good example of the way these festivities went on, I mentioned to Jamie’s boyfriend that my favorite Def Leppard song was “Rocket.”

(Courtesy Choppo the Great)

I mentioned this because he was wearing a Def Leppard T-shirt.

Travel Tip: If a guy is wearing a band shirt, don’t ever say what your favorite song from said band is, because chances are it is absolutely terrible and he will tell you everything that was wrong from said album, such as that anybody who likes THAT album is WRONG and BORDERLINE RETARDED because the drummer had recently had his left arm amputated and thus could not play as well, and the album you are referring to marks the date the band SOLD OUT and WENT COMMERCIAL and EVERYTHING THEY DID AFTER THAT WAS MADE FOR STUPID RETARDED SHEEPLE WITH NO TASTE IN MUSIC LIKE YOU.

Travel Tip Number Two: It doesn’t matter if Allmusic liked the album. Nobody understands a band like the guy that demonstrates his love for said band by wearing a T-shirt.

So anyway, what I’m basically saying is, that being a desert-dwelling wolf-person who is as accustomed to the sea as a porcupine is accustomed to Swedish folk music, I did not fit in with the sea dwellers around me. I felt like an outcast, especially when I decided not to participate in the Great Volleyball Tournament that was to come. As some background, by this point all of my female cousins had taken off all of their clothing save their bikinis, and my own libido not knowing that they were in fact my cousins, had taken off; and thus I was thrust into the unenviable position of being the Jay Naylor of the group, which, as you may already know, is not a good thing, and you can probably imagine why it is not.

The other reason I chose not to participate in the volleyball thing is because various seagulls had taken to pooping on the beach, in their traditional mating style known as “shit on everything that moves”. I was debating with myself whether or not I should leave the underneath-part of the elevated building I was currently under. After a very long while I chose to try to run underneath the seagulls, until one, apparently seeking revenge on Jamie for the earlier balloon-throwing thing, flew before me, and as I watched it fly past, gracefully, out of its rear, came a pair of small white globes, which landed on the ground with a tiny “splat.”

“Fuck this,” I said.

Later on, we threw water balloons around in a circle, wherein if the water balloon exploded in your face, regardless of the pain and suffering and bodily wetness it dealt to you, you were “out”, and then finally left for home. This was the last day of our trip. There’s more to come, but I know you don’t care, so notice the tab above you marked “Toyota A-BAT”, especially if you happen to be named Matt Sperling or Ian Cartabiano, or if you think ugly pickup trucks are funny.

Until next time, when I lose what is left of my dwindling Internet audience.

-To Be Continued-

This was the first fiddle tune I ever wrote. It started out life as “Busshållplatsvalsen” – “The Bus Stop Waltz” — because it popped into my head while I was waiting for the bus.  Later I dedicated it to my friend Betsy in honor of her fiftieth birthday.

Today’s fiddle tune is a polska I wrote as part of my final project in a music theory and composition course last spring. I wrote the melody on the piano, so it’s a little tricky on fiddle in the B part.

Here’s a hambo tune I dedicated to my friend Carolyn when she had surgery. It’s called “Krya på dig” — “Get Well Soon” in Swedish.

If you’ve never seen hambo, here’s a video clip of the dance: