National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Producing a big festival is a complex undertaking anywhere in the world. But when Nat Geo Music attended Norway's 20th annual Førde Folk Music Festival in early July, we never even saw our hosts break a sweat.

"In the beginning we were more of a festival for folk music enthusiasts," explains Hilde Bjørkum, the festival's artistic and managing director. "Now we reach out to a much wider audience. The first year we were visited by 6.000 people, and now we have maybe 29,000 or 30,000 people. At first we had 10 stages, and 30 concerts, now it's more than 30 stages and 80 concerts. So the festival has grown to be a much more complicated and [have] much more professional production values. It has really developed. But we've grown with it, too. We're very lucky to have many of the same people working the festival now who have been here from the beginning. That's very unusual, I think, and part of what makes Førde unique.

Indeed, for a small Norwegian town, Førde manages to produce a world class festival that can compete with any similar event in the world. This year Førde celebrated its Jubilee anniversary with an inspired and eclectic lineup of traditional and not-so-traditional musicians from around the world. The festival's theme this year was "World Voices," and the world came in droves, as 300 artists from 23 countries poured into Førde for the four-day celebration.

There were African artists such as Angolan legend Bonga, Zimbabwe's Black Umfolosi 5, Kenya's Kenge Kenge, and the multinational trio 3MA. And Asian performers such as Mongolian ensemble Egschiglen, Korean percussion group Gong Myoung, and Tibetan monks from India's Tashi Lhunpo Monastery. While European artists were everywhere - Hungary's Muzsikás, France's A Filetta, Armenia's legendary Jivan Gasparyan, Finland's Sväng and Sweden's Nyckelharporkestern, just to name a few. Even the new world got into the act with Canada's Genticorum and Cuba's great Mazacote & La Sonora Cubana.

Norway itself was represented by a host of different artists, including jazz-yoik duo Skáidi, the eclectic, Balkan-inspired mashup of Farmer's Market, and the wildly inventive dance ensemble Frikar - whose theatrical reinvention of traditional halling dance helped them cinch top honors in this year's Eurovision song contest. There were also scores of aspiring young hardanger fiddlers, showing off the country's national instrument and eager to display their virtuosity.

"We've always tried to have a good balance of local and international artists," Hilde Bjørkum confided. "But we have always had an international focus, and the programming philosophy has never changed. The philosophy can be summed up by this idea of "World Voices" - we're open to all kinds of music in the world." And Thursday night's opening ceremonies proved her right.

The festival opening took place at Førdehuset, the town's regional cultural complex, which served as the main festival concert hall. There, three huge stage screens screened live video feeds and cute, taped introductions. Six acts would take the stage in quick succession, dishing out short, 10 minute sets as teasers for their upcoming performances.

Norway's tender-voiced Unni Løvlid, solo and in duet with Bulgaria's a cappella Eva Quartet, filled the hall with ringing ambient melody and harmony. The tough-looking though gentle-voiced 7 members of A Filetta who preserve Corsica's almost-extinct, sumptuous polyphonic music, struck deeper chords with 2 renditions of ancient, sacred church music. While Québec-based trio Genticorum appeared without their usual guitar, fiddle, flute, Jew's harp and bass. Grinning from ear to ear, they charmed us with folk-ditties, fulsome harmonies and foot-stomping accompaniment.

Norway's indigenous Sami ethnic community was represented by Inga Juuso, who mesmerized with her demonstration of traditional, deep throated, chantlike yoik singing. But the opening's true tour de force was the performance by the 21 members of the Norwegian Soloists' Choir. Led by charismatic conductor, Grete Pedersen, the choir bounced polyphonic harmonies around the hall, and introduced new compositions, based on folk and religious music, by composer Eivind Buene and fiddler Gjermund Larsen.

The evening concluded with the surprise arrival in the hall by the festival's mascot - a honking, brightly-painted yellow Ford pickup truck, driven by Zimbabwe's 5 Black Umfolosi a cappella singers and dancers. Dressed in shiny miner's hats and gumboots, the ensemble danced in unison and sang rousing Southern African popular tunes including "Wimoweh."
Later that evening, festivalgoers headed out of town to the Jølster Museum, an enclave of small, wooden cabins containing hundreds of folk artifacts, textiles and artworks. There the annual "Jølster Summer Night" further showcased brief, intimate acoustic sets by some of the festival's most popular artists, including Sturla Eide (Norway), Egschiglen (Mongolia), Talent 09 (Zambia, Tanzania, Norway), Synnøve S, Bjørset (Norway), Sväng (Finland), Rajery (Madagascar) and Ballaké Sissoko (Mali) of 3 MA.

On Friday, the first full day of the festival, the race was on to keep up with 20 or so concerts taking place in multiple venues throughout town, all during an unusual heat wave. Fortified with cold bottles of Norwegian glacial water and fistfuls of fresh strawberries, we set out to see and hear as much possible.

Beginning in our hotel at noon, we caught a rare performance by six young traditional master musicians and dancers from Zambia and Tanzania, each from various ethnic groups. Theirs was a joyous, compact orchestra with flutes, a one-string fiddle, drums, wooden marimba, rattles made from tin cans, and kalimba expertly played Wagogo-style by the granddaughter of Tanzania's late master musician, Dr. Hukwe Zawose - also a veteran of the festival. The exceptionally graceful dancing by Tanzania's Grace Kalima and Zambia's Winnie Luhanga brought on ecstatic cheers, whoops and claps.

Later, in the same room, Finland's dazzling quartet of harmonica players, Sväng quietly appeared, opened their harmonica cases, and proceeded to bob, weave and sway as they rippled through their original versions of beguiling tangos, peppy Balkan beats, ragtime and soulful blues.

The Norwegian duo Skáidi - double bass player Steinar Raknes and Inga Juuso - performed in a nearby wooden schoolhouse, playing pieces from their 10-year long exploration of jazz and traditional yoik singing. As Mr. Raknes plucked deep, rumbling ostinato rhythms, Ms. Juuso's plaintive, throaty chanting skimmed and spun above his percussive lines.
In Førdhuset's large Kinosalen amphitheater, Hungarian folk troupe Muzsikás's show was a crowd pleaser. The 35 year-old group fielded 4 core musician-singers on violins, viola, mandolin, flutes, bass, citera, koboz, and gardon, plus 10 brightly costumed dancers and the group's new Romanian/Hungarian soloist Maria Petras. Muzsikás's grounding in classical music and meticulous research into Hungarian folk music somehow translated into a non-stop dance party.

At precisely midnight Corsica's A Filetta delivered a rapturous concert in Førde's cavernous 19th century timber church. In front of the dramatically-lit 17th century Baroque altarpiece, the choir performed their repertoire of sacred medieval choral songs for over 600 people.

On Saturday, the whole town seemed to turn out for one of the festival's most beloved traditions - "Breakfast on the Bridge". A free, open-air breakfast feast was prepared by local chefs on the town's central Langebrua Bridge, while various festival artists performed, including a shoutout to Barack Obama from Kenya's roots-of-Benga group, Kenge Kenge, who danced on the brigde with locals [pictured]. Not long after, the festival's annual parade marched up Førde's main road and across the bridge with festival musicians and dancers who walked along, danced, or were driven in horse-drawn carts, waving their national flags, singing and playing away.

Later, in the Kinosalen amphitheater, Korean percussion ensemble Gong Myoung earned a standing ovation from the audience. Whether thrashing out rhythms on on traditional Korean drums, shaking tambourines, striking a gong, or flute-piping, guitar-strumming, harmonica-blowing, and tapping syncopations with hollow bamboo poles, the group's musical range hewed close to Korean tradition with occasional jazz, pop, and rock inflections.

Next door in the Festsalen venue, the old Scandinavian love of fiddles was never more evident than Nickelharporksteren, a mini-orchestra with a mighty sound by Sweden's six leading players of the 16-stringed keyed violin, the Nyckelharpa.
The evening's big Anniversary Gala in the main Førdehuset concert hall showcased 11 festival highlights in swift succession. Sweden's lovely Triakel, the trio of singer Emma Härdelin with her harmonium player and fiddler, opened the night with their yearningly quiet, almost hymn-like melodies. Heightening the gentle, poetic ambiance, the powerful Armenian double-reed duduk master, Jivan Gasparyan took the stage playing a melancholy Armenian mountain song. Gro Marie Svidal, Norway's rising female star on hardanger fiddle, performed brief duets with Jai Shankar, an Indian tabla player who resides in Norway - representing a growing trend of musical collaborations between culturally diverse musicians in the country. The exuberant Tanzanian and Zambian artists who'd spent the past week exchanging traditions with young Norwegian counterparts amused and delighted as they danced Norway's reinlander in mixed couples.

One of the festival's biggest successes, Oslo's FRIKAR Dance Company presented a re-cap of their thrilling full performance the night before by The Snuff Grinders' 3 combined dance traditions: Norwegian halling, Brazilian capoeira, and break dancing by one BBoy Arctic. All heads swiveled as the group's goggled, black-clad hardanger fiddler entered the darkened hall, playing a selje flute with a lit flame leaping from one end. On a stage platform, a trap drummer boomed out a relentless, slow 2/4 rhythm in funk/rock mode, and we were transported to an imaginative land where the three muscled, acrobatic dancers somersaulted, cart-wheeled, leapt, and spun on their heads.

Before anyone could catch their breath, Egschiglen's smiling throat-singing, horse-hair-fiddling members backed a wild, leaping shaman-costumed dancer. Muzsikás musicians and dancers sped up the stage rhythms with whirling, boot-slapping dance steps. Black Umfolosi followed with their contagious gum-boot dance and song. Girl-trio Pretiosa, an ensemble of 11 women and an orchestra of young women and men Norwegian hardanger fiddlers lined and banked the stage as a parade of all the musicians and dancers joined them in the gigantic gala ending, and to underscore the wonder, high-tech spurting explosions of mylar-particle "fireworks" showered the smoking air.

Late that night back at the hotel, the festival's Afro-Latin Festival Night brought together the sounds of Africa with the sounds of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cuban singer Mazacote was a sly charmer, of the same generation and suave demeanor as Buena Vista legends Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo. Mazacote led his band through a tight set of standard-issue Cuban classics, including the inevitable "Guantanamera" - much to the delight of dancers from a local salsa school. Later, legendary Angolan singer Bonga took the stage, and kept the dancers on their feet as her tore through a set of swinging semba classics, old and new. While on the downstairs stage, Senegalese/Scandinavian outfit Cissokho System rocked the house with a funky set of electro-manding rockers, anchored by the wicked electric kora of Solo Cissokho. Afterwards, Kenya's Kenge Kenge kept the energy level up with a hot set that showcased the traditional orutu fiddles of the Luo people.

On Sunday, the spell-binding 3 MA, Morocco's Driss El Maloumi oud, Madagascar's Rajery valiha and Mali's Ballake Sissokho on kora, again displayed their mastery of their various stringed instruments. This time in the open-air mountain setting of Rytne Gard, a small farm/hostel 27 km drive from Førde. Framed by a mountain vista stretching behind the stage, 3 MA's music poured forth in liquid sonorities accompanied only by the rustle of leaves. Much more than a cultural hybrid, each player is a tradition-bearer of the highest order. Yet, as Idriss stated, "Our music is speech between us, a dialogue between our fingers. We are trying to find bridges between three cultures."

Later that afternoon in Førdehuset's main hall, we were pleased to catch the super ambitious Qawwali-Gospel collaboration between New Orleans singer Craig Adams and Pakistan's Faiz Ali Faiz. A fascinating contrast between two giants from vastly different spiritual traditions, Craig Adams, one of New Orleans' leading pianists and gospel singers and leader of his great trio of singers, backed by guitar and drums, opened the show with stirring renditions of gospel including "Amazing Grace." Faiz Ali Faiz followed with a euphoric set of Sufi Qawalli with his clapping ensemble of singers and harmonium and tabla players. A highpoint of praise singing exchange between the 2 groups began to merge musically between the gospel "Amen, Amen" and the Sufi "Amin, Amin."

Though there would be more performances later that evening, it was hard to top what we had already seen - not to mention the many, many more great acts that we can't begin to describe here. Suffice it to say that the 20th annual celebration of the Førde Folk Music Festival was a crowning achievement for this unique event. And we can't wait to see how they'll top it next year!