Nordic Roots Festival, Cedar
Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
September 17-19, 2004
In April of 1999, the first Nordic Roots Festival was staged at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rob Simonds, founder of the NorthSide record label, conceived of the festival in order to bring the best Scandinavian folk musicians together to perform in front of an American audience. The festival has undergone a handful of changes since its inception.
First, it was moved from April to September in 2002. In addition, as financial
limitations forced NorthSide to streamline its activity, the Cedar has taken
on a greater role in organizing the festival. Two very important things have
remained constant about the Nordic Roots Festival, however. The performances
have set and maintained a very high standard of quality over the six festivals.
Perhaps more significantly, though, the festival continues to bring a small
but fanatically loyal army of fans from throughout the United States to Minneapolis
for a weekend of music. These people have slightly varying stories about how
they discovered the music, or which act in particular induced the religious
experience, but somehow this esoteric musical genre cast a spell on them. Evidently
the effects of this particular spell do not wane over time.
For the 2004 edition, festival mainstays like Väsen and Swåp were
joined by newcomers like the Norwegian trio Flukt, the Danish quartet Phønix,
and the Finnish-Norwegian ensemble Frigg. The logistics of bringing these performers
over from Scandinavia has become tediously difficult in recent years, however.
Among other things, the organizers had to pay for the performers to journey
to the American embassies in their respective capital cities for interviews
which frequently consist of only trivial questions.
Furthermore, the political climate in America has made some performers more
reluctant to visit, and at least one performer from previous festivals has balked
at boarding an airplane. Still, most of the invited musicians embrace the opportunity.
Each of the first-time acts commented onstage how they had heard such good things
about the audience that they couldn't wait to perform for them. The audience,
for their part, gratefully showed the performers a different side of Americans
than is generally presented to foreigners. Ultimately though, despite some common
frustrations concerning the political stance of the United States, the performers
and fans came for the love of the music, and departed content with a weekend
very well spent.
The festival began on a somewhat sour note with the announcement that Harv,
who had performed at the previous four festivals, would not be able to headline
the Friday night show on account of illness. However, last-minute dropouts have
occurred before at the festival, and the organizers have become quite adept
at improvising on short notice. The Friday night show was restructured so that
the first set consisted of a "Festival Overture," involving a few
of the acts who would be performing full sets later in the weekend. Flukt, originally
scheduled to open for Harv, would now serve as the headliner for Friday.
Mats Edén and Tina Quartey led off the music on Friday night. Fiddler
and accordionist Edén has been the constant figure in the venerable Swedish
band Groupa, known for combining traditional Swedish music with jazzy improvisation.
Quartey, under her maiden name Tina Johanssen, had been a percussionist in the
highly regarded 80's group Filarfolket and also had a brief tenure in Groupa.
After taking a long hiatus to raise a family, she has recently resurfaced as
part of the promising new Swedish group Alwa.
Predictably, given their histories, their performance centered on improvisation;
a simple child's lullaby turned into an extended piece, with Edén switching
melodies at the drop of a hat while Quartey picked up one instrument after another.
English accordionist Karen Tweed of the band Swåp then took the stage,
accompanied on piano by surprise guest Timo Alokatila from the Finnish band
JPP. They performed a couple of pieces from the duet album May
Monday that they recorded together in 2001. The opening set finished
with Swåp giving the audience a sneak preview of their Saturday night
set. The highlight came when Carina Normansson exhorted the audience to sing
along with her wordless lilt on a polska.
A performance by Flukt
followed. Sturla Eide (fiddles), Øivind Farmen (accordion), and Håvard
Sterten (percussion) are not well known even among Nordic folk enthusiasts in
this country, so many people in the audience did not really know what to expect.
However, the band quickly won over the audience, thanks to superior playing
and a quirky sense of humor. Flukt proved to be masters at shifts in dynamics
and tempo, and Sterten's deft percussion enhanced the sound of the traditional
tunes without overwhelming it. They told a number of amusingly peculiar stories
between tunes, including one about the night they stayed up really late -- because
they heard that musicians do that sort of thing from time to time -- which resulted
in "three tunes and a large hangover."
In addition to live concerts, the Nordic Roots Festival has always included workshops conducted by some of the performers. These generally take place on Saturday and Sunday, before the afternoon shows. Among this year's workshops were fiddle lessons from Mats Edén and Väsen's Mikael Marin, a percussion workshop by Tina Quartey, and a vocal workshop from Carina Normansson. A special workshop of folk tales for children was also included for the first time. In addition, the festival attendees who brought instruments with them could be seen jamming with each other in several different places throughout the weekend.
The weather in Minneapolis over the weekend was uncharacteristically warm for late September. Like many buildings in Minnesota, the Cedar was built to keep the heat in, and unfortunately for the festival goers, it succeeds too well in that regard. The performers didn't seem to mind, though, and the Saturday afternoon show featured another strong performance, this time from Phønix. Phønix were, in fact, the first Danish band to perform at the Nordic Roots Festival. Just like Flukt, Phønix had little difficulty enchanting an audience which up to that point, had not been acquainted with their music. Karen Mose Nørgaard did a fine job singing traditional Danish songs, but the band has a strong instrumental core as well. Jesper Petersen played an excellent accordion and Jesper Felch's percussion was energetic but tasteful. The noticeably pregnant Anja Praest Mikkelsen smiled throughout the performance while providing a unique element to the band's sound with her giant bass clarinet.
The music continued in the evening with a full set from Swåp, frequent performers at the festival who required no introduction to the audience. Karen Tweed and Ian Carr mesh so well with Carina Normansson and Ola Bäckström that they could probably finish each other's sentences in both English and Swedish. They are four great musicians who clearly have fun with each other on stage, and the audience naturally relished every minute. Swåp were followed by the most intriguing act of the festival, Sámi singer Mari Boine.
Dressed in a bright red traditional outfit, Boine maintained a powerful presence on stage, whether performing a Sámi dance or simply standing with arms folded and staring out into the audience while singing. She was the only act in this year's festival to incorporate electronics into her sound; the programming fit her trance-inducing music rather well. Her music also reflected a strong connection with Native American culture. Aside from the inherent similarities between Native American and Sámi music, Boine's band included a Peruvian multi-instrumentalist of clearly Native ancestry, and Boine finished her performance with a cover, in English, of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Eagle Man."
The workshops resumed in the morning and early afternoon on Sunday. Mikael Marin had his fiddle workshop sounding like a real spelmanslag by the end. Ian Carr's guitar workshop was crowded, but curiously, only one person who attended brought an instrument with him. Everybody else sat back as "passive auditors." Chickens!
The Sunday afternoon show began with Roger Tallroth and Friends, during which
the Väsen guitarist brought up a series of guests to perform tunes together,
mostly as duos or trios, in an informal and relaxed setting. The guests included
Tallroth's Väsen bandmates Mikael Marin and Olav Johansson, Timo Alakotila
on piano, Karen Tweed on accordion, and Frigg's Antti Järvelä on bass.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that most of the groups who play at this festival
got started with a couple of members jamming on some common tunes. Johansson,
in fact, made a point of mentioning how a chance encounter with Tallroth in
the late 80's led from a few tunes to the formation of Väsen. It was very
clear that the performers in this set are perfectly happy playing just for the
sake of playing, and the audience seemed to enjoy the break from the usual format
as well.
Mats Edén and Tina Quartey followed with their full
concert set. Edén is a master player, but in a Nordic Roots Festival
where the percussionists shone to an unprecedented degree, Quartey shone the
brightest. The most remarkable of her assortment of instruments is the one-stringed,
bow-shaped Brazilian berimbau, which produces a distinct, percussive drone that
actually lends itself very well to traditional Swedish music. A great moment
of levity occurred when the string on Quartey's berimbau broke, and Edén
improvised on the fiddle while Quartey ran backstage, grabbed a new string,
ran back onstage, and restrung the instrument in what must have been record
time.
As enjoyable as the festival had been up to this point, the two best performances
did not take place until Sunday night. Frigg may have only been familiar to
the relatively small number of attendees who had already purchased their debut
CD, but the response
to their set increased in enthusiasm and adulation with each successive piece.
While the very young band presently lacks the stage banter and interplay of
some of the more experienced acts at the festival, they more than made up for
it on Sunday night with superior musicianship and exquisite arrangements. They
also premiered a few new pieces from their forthcoming album, including two
where Petri Prauda, normally a cittern and mandolin player, led the melody on
bagpipes. Most of their new material is original, including a really beautiful
extended piece from Prauda which I cannot wait to have on disc. That set the
stage for Väsen,
the band that just about everybody had come to see. The combination of Olav
Johansson's melodic nyckelharpa, Mikael Marin's counterpoints on fiddle and
viola, and Roger Tallroth's muscular support on 12-string guitar has made Väsen
one of the very best concert experiences on the planet for many years now. The
audience knew what caliber of performance to expect, and were not disappointed.
Much of the set focused on the new album, Keyed Up,
and the new material held its own next to the more familiar pieces. After roaring
their approval throughout the set, defying the stifling heat inside the venue,
the audience remained standing as Väsen left, reluctant as usual to accept
that the festival had concluded and it was once again time to go home.
The Nordic Roots Festival has managed to survive a series of logistical and
financial difficulties, and the reason is clear to anybody who has ever attended
it. All the effort and hardship required to assemble the musicians from across
Scandinavia for a weekend in Minneapolis are easily vindicated by one great
performance after another in front of an eagerly receptive audience, many of
whom have traveled a great distance and will happily do it again. I think I
can speak for the rest of the audience in expressing my deepest gratitude to
all the people who make the festival possible year after year, and are seeing
to its continuation. Of course, the fact that the audience at the festival cheers
so enthusiastically for every act they see might cause a dispassionate observer
to conclude that we're not being critical enough. But given the current state
of popular music, which rewards instant gratification and sneers derisively
at concepts like timelessness, I would never begrudge anybody who discovers
a sound that truly moves them, and continues to move them long after they first
hear it. Furthermore, fans of rock and pop music could learn a great deal from
people who embrace good new performers, anticipating and rewarding both quality
and innovation, while still showing the proper respect for honorable elder statesmen.
Plans for next year's festival are already taking shape. Expect a couple of
welcome new additions to augment the familiar, dependable faces, both on stage
and in the seats.
