Rough Guide To Music Of Scandinavia

These 22 tracks offer an excellent introduction to some of the more progressive folk musicians from the contemporary Nordic music scene. Most selections come from Finland, Norway, and Sweden, but there are also tunes from Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, and Samiland (Lapland). One of the hallmarks of Scandinavian folk music is a reverence for tradition coupled with a need to innovate, and bands such as Vasen, who mix the sound of the nyckelharpa (keyed fiddle) with jazzy rhythms, or Varttina, who have created a unique sound with a quartet of singers backed by six instrumentalists, are the norm and not the exception. Other performers on this CD include JPP, a group of Finnish fiddlers from the village of Jarvela, where practically every resident plays the violin; Wimme, who improvises a joik (an ancient form of Sami song) to the accompaniment of synthesized drum beats and loops; and the Swedish group Garmarna, who play medieval ballads backed with modern electric instrumentation. --Michael Simmons

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