Instrumental
International relevance: **
One of the true masterworks to come out
of the Swedish folk music scene of the 70's, and a pioneering work
too when it came out in 1975 as the first release on the Hurv label:
”Forsens låt” was the first time ever than the soprano sax was
used on a record with Swedish folk music. Handled by Arbete &
Fritid illuminary Roland Keijser, it beautifully supports, chases and
embraces Anders Rosén's fiddle in a number of traditional tunes
augmented by a slew of carefully crafted Rosén originals. The music
moves in a space of its own, familiar yet different. Explained Rosén
in an interview I did with him and Keijser in 2014:
”'Forsens låt' is an obvious attempt
at creating a 'fantasy dialect' within folk music. It sounds like a
clearly defined style, but you can't really place it in time or
geography.”
”We were careful not to
sentimentalize the old folk music,” Keijser elaborated, ”and we
didn't want to jazzify it or dress it up in nifty chord progressions
or adapt it to God-knows-what. We just wanted to play the songs
straight without any hidden intentions, only adding a new timbre
through the soprano sax.”
The results are stunning, thick with rich textures of the intertwined timbres of the fiddle and the sax, and melodies dense with equal parts of pertinence and alluring ancient lore. It's Swedish blues without any stylistic evidence of American blues as we know it.
I realize that Swedish fiddle music isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if there's one album I'd like to recommend to listeners to the uninitiated, this is it. It's a masterpiece.
Springlek