root salad f14 Väsen
The Swedish acoustic power trio talk to Tony Montague on their way through Vancouver. We’re so international!
L
ikening Väsen to the Supremes circa 1965 may seem an odd way to approach the Swedish trio, but they invite the comparison. Olov Johansson, Mikael Marin, and Roger Tallroth enjoy occasionally swaying in sync as they perform, and have a few such moves nicely worked out. The faux- slick routines humorously show the pleasure these friends of long-standing take in playing together.
Väsen formed in 1989 when nyckel- harpa player Johansson, five-string viola player Marin, and 12-string guitarist Tall- roth teamed up to play folk dance music from Uppland, their home province just north of Stockholm. A year later they released the album Väsen – a word that means variously spirit, essence and noise – and kept the title as the band’s monicker.
The three artists are well-suited in every respect. There’s no clashing of egos or antlers, the music always comes first – traditional and original Swedish folk tunes led by Johansson’s nyckelharpa.
The instrument, also known as a keyed fiddle, has a series of wooden pegs or keys along the side of its neck. When pressed they fret one of three melody strings to change the pitch. There’s also a drone string and several sympathetic strings, which give the nyckelharpa its unique sound, bright and ringing. It’s played with a shorter, stronger bow than a fiddle.
The instrument dates from at least the mid-14th Century. “You can follow it through history, through court and legal protocols,” says Johansson, in the green room of Vancouver’s Rogue Folk Club on a sultry September evening. “Things like students in the town of Uppsala in the 1600s getting arrested for being loud and drunk, playing the nyckelharpa and screaming in the streets. It has a strong and deep tradition in Uppland, and has mainly been used for playing dance and ceremonial music.”
Nevertheless, according to Johansson, by the mid-20th Century the nyckelharpa was dying out, with just some 30 players and 10 makers left. “Then what we call in Sweden the ‘green wave’ started, and the interest for traditional music revived. In the ’70s a group of people in a town in Uppland decided we should have an evening class on how to build the nyckel- harpa. They asked the leading player Erik Salström to teach, and for some reason it became a huge success.”
“Within 20 years in any little town in Sweden you could go build a nyckelharpa at the local school’s wood-workshop,” Johansson recalls with a laugh. “Suddenly there were thousands of nyckelharpa players. Uppland is still the stronghold for the instrument. The knowledge, the tradi- tion, and the best makers live in the province.”
J
ohansson, Marin, and Tallroth have recorded 14 albums together. Väsen Street, their latest, takes its title from a thoroughfare in
Bloomington, Indiana, named in praise of the acoustic power-trio, who frequently tour North America.
Väsen are one of the tightest folk outfits anywhere and – as their Supremes moves demonstrate – they love playing with the swing of tunes – or in Swedish the ‘swang’. “Personally I’m totally obsessed with the swang and the groove in the music,” says Johansson, waxing Ellington ian. “It has to be there other- wise it doesn’t get my interest, whether I’m listening or playing.”
“The swang is built into the melody. Swedish traditional music is still strongly connected to the dancing. So, for instance, different styles of polska have a different dance to them. With certain types I can play with full swing on my own for dancing, but when it’s the three of us it’s like a rhythmical counterpoint in how we construct things. Our way of playing together makes it bigger. Roger is usually the rhythmic engine, but he’s playing complementary rhythms, things that give a perspective to the drive and melody. He’s not so often on the beat, it’s more like a counter-rhythm.”
While most of the trio’s music these days is original – all three members com- pose – they always make a point of play- ing traditional tunes too, in the unique Väsen way. They love giving things a twist, exploring variants, sparking off each other.
“The elements of improvisation are there to make the melody interesting. How to build the phrases differently from time to time? How to develop ornaments so they make the melody interesting and support the rhythm? And all of this is trig- gered by what my bandmates do.”
“Some tunes are very free, the chords are not fixed nor the bass-lines. The melody is changing all the time, and Mikael is improvising harmonies and sec- ond voices in between that are made up instantly. When it works fully each of us is fuelled by what the other two are playing and we invent new things.”
“A friend of mine, cello-player Barry Phillips from Santa Cruz said once. ‘It’s like three soloists playing at the same time, still listening very carefully to each other but managing to keep three lines going at the same time’. I hadn’t thought about it before but I think he was pretty close in describing what’s happening.”
www.vasen.se F
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