>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for coming. I wasn't sure how many people were going to brave the elements to come to work or to come to the concert. So, welcome. I'm Thea Austen, the Public Events Coordinator for the American Folklife Center, and on behalf of our entire staff, we want to welcome you to the second concert in the home grown Music of America Concert Series that the American Folklife Center runs every year. The series was designed to feature the very best of traditional music and dance from around the nation, and we work with a number of very talented and dedicated folk arts coordinators across the country to help us select the most exciting performers from around from various communities. Today, we have two amazing researchers and scholars as well as performers who are going to share what they know with you. Today's concert is brought to you in joint sponsorship with the music division, and I want to have a special shout out for Mike Turpin and Jay Kenluck [assumed spelling] from the music division who are doing sound for us assisted ably by John Gold [assumed spelling], our own staff and also a thank you to our ITS colleague, Clay, who is taping this and so this is a good time to remind people to just turn off their cell phones or quiet your ring unless you want to be part of this concert forever and ever. Today's performance will be recorded, and the concert will become part of our permanent collection as well as be part of a webcast that's going to go up on our website so anywhere in the world you will be able to watch this concert or tell your friends about it and have them watch it. Today we're going to have a tour of traditional fiddle music from Norway and Sweden presented by two of the most accomplished researchers and performers of these traditions. Andrea Hoag and Loretta Kelley are among the United States foremost performers of Scandinavian traditional music. Each of them has spent years studying with tradition bearers in Norway and Sweden and honing their traditions at home, these techniques at home. They have many acclaimed recordings including Hambo in the Snow with our friend Charlie Pilzer, which was nominated in 2007 for a Grammy award as best traditional world music album, and I'm sure you want to get a hold of that you can come and talk to them afterwards. As the recipient of a fellowship from Skandia Music Foundation, Andrea Hoag studied in Sweden, and became the first non-Swede to earn a certificate in folk violin pedagogy in 1984. Since 1979, Loretta Kelley has made over 25 trips to Norway to study with master hardingfele players. You'll see some very, very beautiful Hardanger fiddles up here. I'm sure she'll tell you about those as well as her beautiful costume, although there's so much to say. She needs a couple of hours to go into that. Anyway, they both studied with many masters in many places, none of which I can pronounce so I'm going to let them take care of that for you, so please welcome Andrea Hoag and Loretta Kelley. [ Music ] [ Applause ] >> Thank you. That was a waltz to start out our afternoon together, and a waltz from the Swedish side from Yemptland. If you want to look at your map, it's in the northwest, a big province close to Norway. We need the mike for talking? Oh, we need this mike for talking for the recording. So, this was a waltz from Yemptland in northern Sweden along the Norwegian border, kind of a culture area where Sweden and Norway have a lot in common. So, Loretta's going to be presenting Norwegian music for awhile and then I will present some Swedish music, and we'll finish off with some more things together. Loretta Kelley. >> Thank you. This is-- we are now jumping over the mountains of Sweden to the mountainous areas of Norway featuring the Hardanger fiddle with four or five sympathetic strings that run under the finger board, and this music is special to Norway. It has been exported to some countries, but it has grown up there for a very, very long tradition over 400 years being passed down continuously from master to pupil, and I have spent many, many wonderful hours and days and months in Norway studying with some wonderful fiddlers there, and I spent most of my time in the area of Telemark, and this is a festive costume from the area of Telemark from a pattern dating around 1800, and these costumes are used for weddings, parties, any festive occasion in Norway, and I would like to play a tune for you on the Hardanger fiddle. One of the oldest tunes for this instrument dating back to probably maybe as early as the late 1600's called [inaudible], the tune from the hill. I learned this from one of my mentors, one of my favorite fiddlers in Norway, [inaudible], a great tradition bearer of the Telemark style and this tune has a little legend that goes with it that a man was hunting for his lost ox, and he fell asleep on a mountainside on a little hill, and he woke up hearing the singing of a beautiful woman who said, "So you will play this tune when you come back home to your wife and children." This is [inaudible]. [ Music ] [ Applause ] [ Music ] >> Many of these tunes have little songs that go along with them, and so the tune is based upon the song or maybe the song is based upon the tune, and I'd like to share one of these songs with you called [inaudible], and she's boasting about how many suiters she has, and she has [inaudible]. She has the village blacksmith, and she has [inaudible] the tramp, and she has [inaudible], the village idiot and everyone is coming to court her. And they're all jumping up and down in the yard like little billy goats. [ Singing ] [ Music ] [ Applause ] You might have noticed that I was tapping my foot and bobbing up and down. This music is primarily music for dancing, dancing at weddings and dancing at parties. It's couple dancing. This particular tune that I was playing is a springar dance from Telemark, and it's an improvisatory couple dance a lot like swing that partners do various figures based upon how they feel at the moment with the music and the partner they're dancing with, and these dances date back to the middle ages. Very courtly, but fast and furious sometimes. They can get very-- people can go into a trance sometimes doing these dances all night long. I brought several fiddles along with me because I wanted to demonstrate the different tunings on these instruments, and also the tuning. These instruments go out of tune very easily. They have gut strings. [ Music ] I'd like to play another tune for you from the area of Telemark that I learned from one of my teachers there, [inaudible], the tradition bearer of the Tinn tradition in Telemark. Tinn is a little county within Telemark, and this tune is found in most importantly in [inaudible], but it was also played in Telemark, and this is [inaudible]'s version. The Bells of the Church of St. Thomas, and there's a long legend about how when the church was dismantled they took the bells out of the tower and brought them down the hill, the mountainside, and they were crossing a frozen lake on a sledge with the two bells when the ice broke and one of the bells fell in and was lost. So, the bell at the bottom of the lake is still there, and it's said to answer the ringing of the bell that was saved when it rings in the new church that it was put into. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. This is supposed to be a musical tour of Norway and to do a real tour would take several hours at least. So, I'm just going to do a very short excursion over to the area of [inaudible], a long valley located to the east of Telemark where I've also spent a lot of time, learned the special dance traditions from that area, dance [inaudible], and they also have the [inaudible] but it has a completely different rhythm. Now, you might have noticed when I was showing you the Telemark [inaudible] rhythm, I was bouncing up and down in this sort of like a triangular wheel with one of the two edges a little bit longer than the other, so it was then da, da, da, da, like that. So it was not completely round. [Inaudible] has a wheel that's not round in the other direction, so it goes da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and it's much faster, and the dance is frenetic and wild, and so I'll just play a little bit of a [inaudible] tune. [ Music ] Called [inaudible] named after a famous fiddler from [inaudible] and I learned this from [inaudible], the grand nephew of [inaudible]'s greatest tradition bearers, [inaudible]. [ Music ] [ Applause ] I'm going to play one more tune for you from Norway before we jump back over to Sweden, and this is from the Valley of Setesdal in southern Norway. You can see a long valley running north and south. This was one of the most isolated areas in Norway. They did not get a full-- a year round road into the valley until 1960, and it had developed a very sophisticated and elaborate tradition of fiddle playing and harding fele playing there. It was one of the few areas in Norway or maybe the only one as far as I know that has a tradition of trance music. Tunes that are supposed to be able to put you into a trance when you play them or listen to them. [ Music ] I learned this tune from [inaudible], the son of the great [inaudible], and it's called [inaudible], The Judgment Day Tune. It's called that because it's supposed to be the tune that you hear when you rise up from the grave. [ Music ] [ Applause ] >> [Inaudible]. So, I'm Andrea Hoag. I'm going to be presenting some music from Sweden. I'm going to start off with what I think of as an ancestor to. It's [inaudible]. It's a kind of dancing done in the middle ages in a line or sometimes circle. So, before the idea of couple dancing was a gleam in anyone's eye, they did the [inaudible] dance, and you'll hear it's in a three four rhythm. You'll hear me tapping on one and three. And the other thing to listen for is the scale. It's not the scale you will find on [inaudible]. So, I'll say no more about that just that. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. So, that was a [inaudible]. [Inaudible] is the island in the [inaudible] in [inaudible], a wonderful rich province of folk tradition in Sweden. So, that scale had a lot of notes that were maybe in between an F and an F sharp or even the use of ornaments is not so much to say listen to this note but to put a different color on the note, so the note might change color even while being played with the use of ornaments. And in Sweden, they called this kind of scale [inaudible], and that means hurting music. So, in the old days when there were no instruments out on the farm, they would make instruments from nature, a willow pipe or a cow's horn or sheep horn. They would put holes in that and play it, and so you get the natural overtones rather then the tempered scale that we think of in western music. So, very interesting for the ear to listen to some of those older ideas of constructing a scale. I'm going to play another tune from not too far away there in [inaudible] from the village of [inaudible], and the first major collector of Swedish folk music, [inaudible], he said he loved the music of [inaudible]. It seemed to him melancholy with flashes of brightness, and I think that's an excellent description. So, this will be [inaudible]. We already talked about [inaudible]. In Sweden, it's all about the [inaudible] that comes from that rhythm of one, three, one, three, one. And there are different kinds of things that happen within those three beats, but it's much older than the waltz, and here is a [inaudible] after a fiddler named [inaudible] from [inaudible]. [ Music ] [ Applause ] I love that tune very much. Well, as Loretta said, it would take hours to really do a tour of the music of Sweden and Norway, but I'm going to give you just a quick thumbnail tour, and in Sweden we talk about three kinds of Polska. Eighth note, triplet and 16th note, and the one I just played was 8th note, which means the beats can move around a bit inside the beat, and I'll talk more about that later. Triplets, one, two, three, two, two, three, three, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, two, two, three, three, two, three. Very straight forward and 16th note, they're also very regular. It means each beat can be divided into four. [Inaudible]. So, of the three kinds, the 8th note [inaudible] have a lot more of-- the thing you heard in Norway, different ways of counting to three. But I'm going to play a triplet Polska for you, and they tend to be mainly along the west side of Sweden. This one comes again from Yemptland in the northwest, and it's a tune from-- many times in Sweden, the tunes don't have a name, but they're-- we refer to the fiddler who passed on into the tradition or sometimes the fiddler I learned from, but in this case, the tune is just called Polska After [inaudible] because [inaudible] made not only this tune well known, but he was a very, very well known fiddler from Yemptland along with his brother, [inaudible]. [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] Yemptland. Yes. A little bit south and west of [inaudible]. Yes. So, Polska from Yemptland. [Inaudible] lived from 1886 to 1976 just so you have an idea. Very influential. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. I see Linda Brooks and Ross Shipper [assumed spelling] smiling to that tune. I just want to give a shout out to Linda and Russ here who are amazing experts in the Swedish dances, so if you have any questions about the dancing, they are the ones. I'm going to move over to the east coast. So, along the east and south of Sweden, there was much more influence from what the Swedes call Europe. I know we think Sweden is part of Europe, but you know, the continent. Music came from the continent and in particular Baroque rhythms and Baroque feeling. This is going to be a tune from Gastrikland and Halsingland are two provinces that have a lot in common tune-wise. This one has the name of [inaudible] Polska, named after Carl Michael Bellman who was a troubadour, composer, songwriter and singer in the 1700's, very much beloved in Sweden. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. So, you can definitely here the Baroque feeling in that tune. I'm going to go a bit further south and along southern Sweden there were a number of provinces that had a dance called Slangpolska. That name is found in the north with an entirely different rhythm, but in the south of Sweden, Slangpolska is a 16th note tune, but instead of having that very straightforward feel that we just heard, it has what a friend of mine compared to horses cantering over low green hills. In Norway and Sweden both in the dancing, there's a turn called [inaudible] which means up and downness. So, sometimes a dance will have sudden motions up and other times it will be down into the ground. This one I think you can really feel just nice rolling sound. This will be a Slangpolska from [inaudible] which is close to Stockholm. And I learned this in the tradition. I had the privilege of meeting quite a few elder fiddlers. This was a tradition bearer really in my own age group, [inaudible], who came up in the generation where Swedish folk music had become very popular again. In the 1980's, they talked about [inaudible], the green wave, and so a lot of fiddlers began to grow up hearing the music again after years of popular music having taken over. So, Elika [assumed spelling] in her 20's was already a great scholar of music and also one of the most gifted teachers I've ever met and really enjoyed watching her teach every chance I got. And I learned this tune from her at this time of year in the Lenten season they have a pastry I guess you would say called [inaudible]. It's a bun. It's kind of sort of like a cream puff in a way, and you eat it in a bowl of warm milk and ooh, it's such a great thing for the winter time. So, I always associate this rather mournful tune with a very happy sweet pastry. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. Well, we're coming back up to [inaudible] where I started with the [inaudible] to the little village of [inaudible]. This is my favorite music and the place where I spent the most time learning from [inaudible] an elder fiddler, quite an amazing man. His family had lived there in [inaudible] for a couple of centuries, and his great uncle, great-great uncle [inaudible] was the legendary fiddler of [inaudible] in the 1800's. [Inaudible] is one of the thin marks that you find in Sweden and Norway and what that means is in the 1500's when times were very bad in Finland, the king of Sweden and of Norway said, "We will give you some places you can live here in our country but out in the woods away from anybody." And the road into [inaudible] was not paved until the 1990's. It was a long 30 mile dirt road from the nearest town, and as with many of the [inaudible], they developed a style of playing that was really unique and in many cases very almost frenetic and intense the styles of music that you tend to find in [inaudible]. So, [inaudible] it's the 16th note Polska, but it's a long way from the Baroque tradition, I think. A lot of ornaments, those different scales that I talked about and a little bit of push and pull in rhythm. This will be a tune that [inaudible] played called [inaudible], The Devil's Polska. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Well, beginning in the early 1900's and especially in the middle of the 1900's, harmony playing became a very strong tradition. Fiddling so much so that when most people think Swedish fiddling, they're thinking anything at all, they think two fiddle players playing together. So, I'm going to invite Loretta up to join me on a few tunes, and I mentioned before the 8th note Polskas have different kinds of rhythms, and there are many, many variations. But we're going to do something a little bit radical and put two different kinds together. We're going to do a [inaudible] Polska. That means Farmer Polska, and that's from the province of [inaudible] north of Stockholm and from a fiddler named [inaudible]. And this one has a little song that goes with it that says the first time they read the bands, announced the upcoming marriage in church, the women folk came and said that [inaudible] was pregnant. Between me and [inaudible] there has come another. What the hell, [inaudible] take her. And then we're going to move west back over to [inaudible] to the village of [inaudible], and these traditions are very much living traditions. Many people are composing tunes in the old styles. And this is one that was composed I believe in the 80's, maybe 70's by [inaudible] from [inaudible] musical family of [inaudible], and it was written as a gift for a wedding. It's called [inaudible]. Now You Are A Wife, so we get the whole marriage picture here in two traditions. We're just switching so that the melody fiddle is coming more at you. Okay. I'm going to sing my little song now. Wish me luck because I don't have much voice. [ Singing ] [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you. So two different feels, very different ways of treating the second beat. So, one thing we have not even touched on is the [inaudible] music. We've been playing the old traditional music, what's called [inaudible] music. [Inaudible] means old, but it's actually newer than the old music. It's dances that became popular in the 1800's. If you went to a dance say around 1950, you would be dancing hambo, which came out of Polska, waltz [inaudible] polka and tango. Those were the popular dances. So, we're just going to give you a little sample of what you might hear at a dance today and play a [inaudible] by [inaudible] from Halsingland. >> Did you want to give the name of the tune? >> Oh, the name of the tune. >> Yes [inaudible]. >> It actually has a lot of different names. I think he originally called it [inaudible], which translates as submarine [inaudible] but for some reason it became known as the leaky boat [inaudible]. [ Music ] [ Applause ] So one more dance tune for you here. Now if you go to a dance in Sweden or Norway today, you'll find a lot of people who know the old dances, and one that's become very popular all over the place in recent years is the southern Slangpolska, that rolling one. It has a pretty improvisational way to dance so maybe the Norwegians have rubbed off on the Swedes a little bit. >> Or the other way around. >> So, this one comes from [inaudible] in the south of Sweden, which is also the single province that sent the most immigrants to the U.S. [ Music ] [ Applause ] Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That brings our program to an end, and we want to offer great thanks to Library of Congress to Thea Austin for arranging this and Jay and Mike and all the audio visual team. And I think we have time to do just one more tune from Norway. Would you like that? >> Before we do our last tune, I'd just like to mention you're all welcome to come up and take a closer look at our instruments and you can also ask me more about the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America, and our website at HFAA.org. So, here is a tune from Norway from the [inaudible] rural heritage town of [inaudible] up high in the mountains. >> You can also ask about our recording. [Inaudible] okay. [ Music ] [ Applause ] >> Thank you so much. Thank you. If you've never danced to this music at midnight in a candlelit schoolhouse, you're really missing something. So, I think you should look up these guys. Look up their website and also look into Scandinavian dancing in your neighborhood because there is some. There's some local Scandinavian dancing groups so try it. It's amazing. It feels amazing to do that. Please join us next week if you have the opportunity on February 25. David Broza [assumed spelling] will be here in conversation with our colleague Nancy Gross [assumed spelling]. He's a multitalented Israeli singer/songwriter, and a Palestinian Israeli I guess. He's going to be dancing-- he's going to be talking with a Palestinian-- [ Inaudible Audience Comment ] [Inaudible]. >> Who's a Israeli Palestinian musician, very talented. >> And they have a project called East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem. So, they'll be here in conversation with Nancy on February 25. And our next concert is March 18. It will be a gospel group from Maryland called the Royal Harmonizers. They don't perform much out of churches, but they have agreed to come and sing for us. So, thank you all for coming and see you soon. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.