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place in which Swedish folk musicians meet those who belong to the world
of improvisation". The two albums we're talking about are "Nordan" and
"Agram" (the first released in '94, the last in '98) and their front covers show
the same beloved element: water.
The northern-seas water, dark and
menacious, lying under the storm. This is enuogh to give the idea of what we can find in
these two little masterpieces of both ancestral and modern music, magic and evocative,
brought to reality by the inquiry of their two pioneers who deserve to be more popular:
the singer Lena Willermark and the multi-instrumentalist Ale Moller.
Lena
is a delicious swedish lady of the age of 35, as blond as only the Swedes can be, with a
charming voice, half the way between Agnes Buen Garnas's and the Norwegian Marie Boine
Persen's.
Ale, on the contrary, is one of those atipical Swedes. Not only because he is as dark as a
latin, and he has a street performer-like big beard, but especially because he is known
and loved as a great interpreter of the mandola, which it's not the tipical instrumentof
Sweden.
They're happily drinking together in the bar of an hotel in Milan., waiting to have a live
performance in Reggio Emilia, and it's a real pleasure to have a chat with them about
their "Nordan Project", which is the meeting point of some northern artists'
recordings.
Interview
Which was your musical inclination?
(Ale)" I've started from jazz, I used to play the trumpet rather good. Then
fortunately, I met a Greek musician and I got in contact with Greek folklore. It has been
an important step for me, because it has pushed me into Swedish popular tradition, which
is still alive and kicking even among the youngest. So, 15 years ago I started playing
only traditional music."
(Lena)"On
the contrary, I moved to Ale's opposite direction. I grew up in a small town in the
mountains. I learned to listen at same time to traditional music and to Radio Luxembourg.
Suddenly, at the age of 18 I moved to Stockolm and I literally got crazy for Jazz
music."
Where does this love for folk come from?
(Ale)"
It derives from personal tastes and from a way to percieve music. Its fundamental aspect
is that it has to penetrate deep into your soul while you're playing.
I mean, whenever we play folk music we don't feel it as an old-dated music, but , on the
contrary, we think it's extremely modern. And truely, it is."
(Lena)"
I think that we can love music only if we respect it, I mean, it's necessary to have a
good amount of deference for all those people who played it and made it sound alive before
you. From this point of view, you can find something growing in yourself: it's a sort of
mission which allows you to be part of the whole creative process."
In your albums, we can feel Nature as a dominant presence. By the way, the importance of
Nature is part of other Northern cultures, from Celtic to Lapp. How can you explain that?
(Ale)"It's
really simple. Nature has a dominat role in Nothern countries; as a consequence, men can
do nothing but love and respect it. From here borns the consieration of Nature as a form
of inspiration."
(Lena)"That's
true, but we have to point out that Northern music offers many different approches to
Nature. In the Lapp "joik", for example, some men sing and they address their
chants directly to Nature, to stones, to rivers, to mountains. We don't have this kind of
tradition. I mean our music is more related to society, and to relationships between
individuals."
Which
are the parameters your songs are based on, then?
(Ale)"First
of all, they're based on traditions. Generally, they are mainly vocal but everybody can
dance with them. These traditions require stories an legends to be told and coupled with a
melody. We are doing a recovering operation: we bring our old melodies back to life, the
ones which were passed on orally and were almost lost."
(Lena)"Sometimes
we created new melodies from the start and new lyrics for them, even if we obviously tried
to keep in mind the originals. I'm underlining this because the main characteristic of
folk music is the respect for its identity. Without this aspect, the music we would play
would be poor without its soul.
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