Various Artists
Northern Nights - Music from the Top of the World (CD)
SD3002
Northern Nights is the soundtrack to an imaginary Scandinavia - of haunted valleys and windswept hilltops, white forests and dark winter nights... perhaps the Scandinavia of your imagination.
The real Scandinavia is cold. But Scandinavian music is hot. Recordings of Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish music, much of it based on folk music, have started to catch on. From foot-stomping folk dances to icy ambient soundscapes, from eerie tales of forest spirits to lonely herding calls from the high Nordic hills, Scandinavian music can surprise and delight. Northern Nights brings together some of the most ethereal, melodic, and nocturnal songs from a wide range of Scandinavian artists. The sounds range from the familiar synthesizers and electronic technology to the beautiful but exotic instruments of northernmost Europe. These include the Norwegian hardingfele - a violin with a second set of strings running under the fingerboard; the seljefløyte - a traditional flute made of willow bark; and the Finnish kantele, a harp with a crystalline sound that inevitably reminds listeners of snowflakes and icicles.
Nordic music might sound strikingly familiar to anyone who's been swept away by the tide of Celtic music that's hit the recording industry in the last few years. This shouldn't be too surprising, given the strong Norse influence on Celtic culture - an unintended by-product of Viking incursions. Fiddles and voices, especially female voices, helped make Celtic music a worldwide phenomenon. Those same sounds are central to Scandinavian music, and there are some world-class players and singers included on Northern Nights. They include the Norwegian folk trio Bukkene Bruse, who appeared on television sets around the world when they took part in the opening ceremonies for the Lillehammer Olympics; the Finnish band Loituma, who've taken their keening vocal harmonies out of the folk circuit and into rock clubs and movie soundtracks; and ten other contemporary Scandinavian artists. Some already have international careers, but others are getting their first widespread exposure on Northern Nights.
The compilation begins with the gifted Norwegian singer Kirsten Bråten Berg, whose recent Six Degrees recording From Senegal to Setesdal features an imaginative blend of Norwegian and West African folk songs. On Northern Nights, she joins with Ale Møller, one of Scandinavia's most versatile and sought after musicians. "Heiemo Og Nykkjen" (Heiemo and the Nixie) is an old tale of a haunted forest that gets an appropriately mysterious sound from the combination of Bråten Berg's earthly vocals and Møller's synthesizer drone. It immediately sets the tone for the whole album: steeped in a long tradition, developed over long dark winters, and conjuring up images of a warm hearth on a cold night... but somehow contemporary, timeless.Other notable highlights of this compilation include a song by Ulla Pirttijarvi, who is not Norwegian, or Swedish, or Finnish. Pirttijarvi is an ethnic Sami, the reindeer herders and salmon fishers of the Arctic Circle. Known for many years by the derogatory term Laplanders, the Sami have maintained their cultural identity through the centuries, and that culture includes a distinctive type of singing called joik (pronounced "yoik"). Pirttijarvi combines the high, lonesome sound of joik with an electronic tapestry of ambient electronics.Norwegian keyboardist and composer Øystein Sevåg, already known to listeners around the world for his Windham Hill recordings, including the techno/ambient Global House, contributes a beautiful work for violin and synthesizers called "Forgiving" that has a mournful, almost classical sound. The combination of violin and keyboard is repeated by his countrywoman, Annbjørg Lien. But while Lien's piece "Cantabile" has a classical title, it actually has an almost Celtic sound. It features the hardingfele, or Hardanger fiddle, which gets its rich, silvery tone from its additional strings that vibrate under the fingerboard. Lien has been one of Norway's leading fiddlers since she was a teenager (when she first joined the band Bukkene Bruse), and has become one of Norway's most effective musical ambassadors abroad.One of the most evocative, inventive songs on Northern Nights is "Minne," by singer Sanna Kurki-Suonio. She is one of the lead singers in the popular Swedish/Finnish band Hedningarna, and on this song she layers several tracks of her voice over a restrained but catchy electric bass and fleeting wisps of Finnish folk-harp, or kantele. Kurki-Suonio uses her voice as a rhythmic instrument and as the carrier of a deceptively simple, gently nocturnal melody.Unlike other collections of Nordic music (believe it or not, there have been <>a few), which attempt to mirror the great diversity in Scandinavian music today, Northern Nights
creates and sustains a mood throughout. The <>compilation touches on various folk traditions, electronic rock, new age, and classical musical styles; but in the end, the pieces all share a common goal: to evoke the cool beauty and ancient stillness of a northern night.
Published: 1999
Genre:
Various & World
Label:
Six Degrees
Tags: Compilation
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CD
€9.76
€11.73 €
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