Dan Lundberg: Swedish folk Music - from village greens to concert platforms
Folk music and jazz

FOLK MUSIC AND JAZZ The second step, after the old-time dance bands, towards the folk music bands of today is to be found in the Swedish folk music-based jazz of the 1960s. A highly significant event in this context was the recording of the radio programme, “Jazz and folk music — a musical adventure”. On the initiative of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation and the Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research, four Swedish jazz musicians and bandleaders were commissioned to make arrangements of folk music recordings which were preserved in the Swedish radio’s folk music archives. The programme became Sweden’s contribution to Triumph Varieté in Monte Carlo in 1965, where it was awarded the prize for the best entertainment programme. Parts of the programme were issued on an LP, Adventures In Jazz And Folklore. The manner in which the musicians and arrangers adapted and made use of the folk music material was unique. In earlier folk music adaptations by art music composers, the starting point was a notated melody which was varied and harmonised. This time several folk music recordings were used directly in the arrangements. The tune which has probably been most widely distributed was originally collected by the musicologist Matts Arnberg on one of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation’s recording excursions in the late 1950s. It was sung by Hilma Ingberg, a Finno-Swedish singer. The text of this comic song, which today is familiar to most Swedes, goes: I fjol så gick jag med herrarna i hagen ... I år har jag något som sparkar i magen (Last year I went with the lads to the meadow ... This year I’ve got something kicking in my tummy). The jazz pianist Jan Johansson (picture) made an arrangement of the song which begins with the whole recording of Hilma Ingberg singing, after which the orchestra gradually takes over.  I fjol så gick jag med herrarna i hagen. Hilma Ingberg and The Jan Johansson quintet (CAP21475) It is interesting to note that this technique has come to be regarded as an innovation in the media’s “folk pop” world of the 1990s. For example, when today’s ethno-techno musicians use sampled folk music, the technical conditions are obviously very different, but the principle is nevertheless the same. Much of what is new in the modern folk music that we are discussing here has its origin in the fact that the music has been transferred from one context — one arena — to another. During the nineteenth century it was possible to observe throughout Europe how folk music moved from the country to the towns, just as the performers moved from village greens to concert platforms. We can see Adventures in Jazz And Folklore as another type of move, which in all probability is irreversible: the exchange of one musical form of existence for another — from live music to medialised music. In Jan Johansson’s arrangement, moreover, this is a two-stage process: firstly, the result of the music-making lives on in the form of a recording, besides which we have the interesting fact that the recording itself is based on earlier recordings. This is arguably the most significant change in music-making and musicians’ attitudes in most camps during the 1990s. Music now has two forms of existence: music transmitted by the media and live music, and both forms are in a state of permanent symbiosis. Secondly, Adventures In Jazz And Folklore also represents a step in another, more long-term, process of transformation. When folk music was fashionable in nineteenth century Stockholm, the music was not performed by the tradition-bearers themselves but by trained singers. Here Adventures In Jazz And Folklore represents the first step in a development where folk musicians themselves take centre place on the artistic stage and experiment with their own music. In I fjol så gick jag med herrarna i hagen the tradition-bearer is part of the recording, but does not take part in the actual music-making. Obviously the next step is to bring the folk musicians themselves into the recording studio.

Folk music and jazz
Dan Lundberg: Swedish folk Music - from village greens to concert platforms