he 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.