Sweden has made its mark on the entire spectrum of Western music, with individual artists as well as national institutions making invaluable contributions in the fields of folk, rock, jazz, classical. The Swedish government has long seen its musicians as a source of cultural pride and as an economic resource. Sweden's export music industry brought in over $450 million to the country's economy and is third only to the U.S. and the U.K. For these reasons, the government has helped musicians by sponsoring recordings and concerts, both for domestic consumption and international.
Sweden has been a powerful promoter of its own folk music, helping sustain the revival of Nordic traditional music that has occurred over the past 30 years. While folk music faded in the 20th century, the back-to-nature "Green Wave" movement of the 1970s helped spark renewed interest in lost traditions and culture. A new generation made heroes out of old folk musicians who had fallen out of view and began their own new small ensembles, such as Groupa, that performed the old songs, initially without changing them much. The primary Swedish folk rhythm, which animated village dances for decades, is the three-pulse polska, but other rhythms have been embraced as well. Singers such as Susanne Rosenberg have revived the lost art of kulning, a piercing solo call that female shepherdesses used to communicate between each other in the mountains of rural Sweden.
In the 1980s, innovative groups such as Hedningarna, Väsen and Garmarna created a new enthusiasm for folk music with younger audiences. Experimental groups such as these have reinvented folk music, making it new while celebrating the old traditions and history that created the music. The revival has also brought new interest to instruments that had been eclipsed by modern instruments such as the accordion, which some thought would wipe out folk music as the 19th century came to an end. The keyed fiddle called the nyckelharpa has found a new life, among bands such as Väsen, but particularly in projects such as the Nyckelharpa Orchestra, which is composed of six nyckelharpa players. Väsen, in fact, was one of the few folk bands to find itself on the pop charts. Early in its career, the members joined two pop musicians to form Nordman, which released an album that sold 500,000 copies and played for screaming fans at huge rock-style concerts. The project turned out to be just a short-lived tangent for Väsen, which returned to its acoustic tinkering with traditional music.
The modern renaissance of Swedish folk can be roughly divided into two categories: acoustic and electric. Both wings, however, have experimentalists within their ranks. Totte Mattsson of Hedningarna and Stefan Brisland-Ferner of Garmarna created the Hurdy Gurdy Project, which ran the ancient Swedish hurdy-gurdy through a jungle of electronic devices to create state-of-the-art electronica, while the acoustic band Bäsk added a jazzy bass clarinet to more traditional instruments for a new sound. Multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller has been a notable groundbreaker for incorporating outside sounds such as the bouzouki into Swedish folk. Some musicians have jumped back and forth between the two wings. Kjell-Erik Eriksson plays with the electric band Hoven Droven and Emma Härdelin is vocalist with Garmarna, yet they also play in Triakel, which plays quiet acoustic music.
Musicians from northern Sweden, also known as Samiland or Lappland, have also stepped forward, highlighting the music of the Sami people. The singer Wimme has updated the spiritual, naturalistic vocalizing called yoik, reminiscent of Native American music, playing his own electronic atmospheric songs as well as guest starring on Hedningarna albums. Although the new folk music has not had a huge impact on the mainstream, even in Sweden itself, the movement continues to be self-sustaining and producing album after album of innovative, heartfelt music by young phenoms and the now-graying pioneers.
While Sweden most famously (and to some, infamously) produced the group ABBA, it has a fairly lengthy, if irregular history of placing groups on pop charts internationally. The string began in 1974 with Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling," then continued with the groups Europe and Roxette in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Ace of Base sold 21 million copies of its debut around the world. After impressing Swedish listeners, the Cardigans became worldwide favorites, with English lyrics that easily segued onto American and British charts. The band's hit "Lovefool" soared to the tops of the charts in 1997 after it was featured in the movie Romeo + Juliet. More recently, the Hives and the Hellacopters have slipped onto America's rock radar on their own terms and without being pigeonholed as Swedish exotica.
Jazz established itself in Sweden in 1933, when Louis Armstrong performed a series of much-heralded sold-out shows in Stockholm. The shows galvanized many young Swedes, several of whom went on to respectable careers in jazz. Rolf Ericson, who attended the Armstrong show at the age of 11, went on to play with Charlie Parker. His countryman Åke "Stan" Håsselgard played clarinet with top jazz musicians as did baritone sax player Lars Gullin, who was lauded as a top "new star" by Down Beat. Each decade has produced other notable jazz musicians, some of whom broke into the U.S. jazz scene. Most recently the electronica-jazz group Koop has made ripples.
Sweden also has a rich presence in the classical and opera worlds, contributing celebrated performers and composers. Opera singer Jenny Lind, "the Swedish nightingale" was an international star in the 19th century, while more than 100 years later, Birgit Nilsson became the world's premier Wagnerian soprano, retiring in 1984 to the southern Swedish farm where she was born and raised. The diva's return to a humble potato and beet farm is an apt metaphor for Swedish musicians: Wherever their art may take them in the world, they don't leave Sweden completely behind. —Marty Lipp
