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Its crazy I can read the runes on the sign

eivor - enn. best record in 24.

Hi. What exactly do you study? Do you look at musical systems across the globe? Musical theories of different styles? If not, what is its purpose then?

Some new discoveries to be made! What do you think of the fiddle and overall soundtrack of the Village? Composed by James Newton Howard. One of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time. Cheers!

Thank you from a new subscriber. Kati Rán is very interesting. :) Greetings from Germany!

What a great top 10, and I know who they all are, thanks to you Mr. Jameson! 😁

Thanks for opening my ears to new sounds this year! Looking forward to more in 2025!

Great video as always Jameson 🎉 There are at least 5 of these records that I need to give a listen to. Thank you for putting in the effort of sharing smaller and bigger bands here to widen me but also any viewers musical horizons. Best of luck these last moments of 2024 and I wish you the best for 2025. Happy new year 🎊 🎉

Thanks for sharing with us all, Happy New year

🥁

My daughter and i saw Wardruna at Red Rocks on 3 October and by far the most spiritual musical performance i have ever attended live and i have had 58 journeys around The Sun.

A huge number of older Kantele tunes, especially the Kalevala/runo ones, are also written in 5/4 time.

Something I want to add is the music itself "opens up" the same way the videos do. Hertan is intense, or even pained. Himinndotter is a release. By Birna, stillness.

Awesome! I love Lassi's album and it caused me to start playing the Jouhikko... I have since switched to the Estonian traditional way of playing but I will return to the album and learn some of the melodies (when I am good enough) (I also want to say something about the history... If you look at Scandinavia then the 1300 sculpture is the oldest representation, but there are older ones in mainland Europe... the oldest is the Werden Psalter (1030-1050 AD) which shows one bowed lyre (bottom left). The Klosterneuburg psalter from the 12th century has bowed lyres of different sizes, including a cello sized one... )

About what you talked about, conserning conserving tradtion vs being influenced. It's a dilemma because folk music oftentimes wasn't written down, so if anything changed there was a chance to just lose the old styles and tunes. That isn't a reality to the same extent anymore, but it might be a part of where this concervatism came from. And the local styles is a part of the local identity, like in Gudbrandsdalen you have longer strokes compared to say Lofoten on the hardingfele, and this gives different feelings, and the distinct feeling each style gives becomes part of the local identity for the people in places where folk music has a strong presence, like Lom or Valle, and that has a need to stay concervative. That's seemingly the environments where the concervative folk musicians comes from, the local traditions. And we need them for their great ability to preserve tradition and keep the local sense of identity. But at the same time there's very little in Scandinavian folk music which didn't come from the outside. There's waltz and polka, schottische and reinlender. Just the names proves they came from abroad. What makes it Scandinavian is the character it aquired after it came here. So why not play black metal on traditional instruments, that's in a way basically the same thing as when they hundreds of years ago first played polish tunes and called it polka. As long as you put your own character to the music, you're evolving it and keeping the spirit of folk music alive. The way I see, both of these two ways to approach folk music are vital for the survival and development of folk music. It's a healthy drag and pull, we need both.

- If you want to be better, you need to practice. - But I don't wanna! 🤣 Huge respect to Lassi. A continuos musical inspiration and a very down to earth individual.

Step one of learning how to play with the backs of your fingers. Don't play guitar for 26 years before learning Jouhikko. 😂

Thank you Mr. Jameson for another insightful and great interview. I’m always learning something new, while being introduced to some great artists and their music. My favorite two songs in Lassi’s Jouhikko album are Mielikki which is darker compared to the others and Jag Hor Harpan which ends it in a hopeful tone.

Great interview - very interesting to hear about 👍

Thank you so much for this! 💚

Hell yes!

I always say Music Theory is like grammar. It is a way of organizing the information using a common structure to make it easier to communicate ideas. Whenever I run into something that sounds good but breaks those structures I try to make it a song because I "it just works."

If you read up on the history of Ofdrykkja it’s pretty amazing that such beautiful music can come from such a dark place. A word of caution if any wants to research their back story as it’s pretty grim.

About what you discussed around 30 min in, and with Maria and Ingrid too, that if you search for Nordic folk music you have to scroll a far way down before you get traditional Nordic folk music; That's exactly my experience with traditional African folk music! Even though we live in an age of youtube, spotify and other apps where all kinds of music is just open to us one click away, my attempts to listen to and learn about different types of traditional African music often falls short of modern poppy African tunes. I have to specifically search for niche things like Igbo masquarades or Mbira. It really requires investigation, which makes it hard for new people to be exposed to traditional music, and it makes it hard for me to find and understand the range and diversity of traditional music. So seems like this is a universal phenomenon.

Folkmusic needs to be stolen. Lol. If you are stealing (or learning) from those who came before you it's folk music. Instrumentation doesn't matter. You can play Norwegian folk music on an electric guitar. Something in the music needs to come from the people (folk) who came before you. Harmony, melody, structure, feel, something.

Thanks for this interview! This guy is such a pleasure to listen to!

Welcome to what might be a pretty provocative video in the most literal sense - it should provoke meaningful discussion and intentional thinking about the ways we talk about and think about the music we listen to. I've found these conversations are almost always had behind closed doors in hushed tones, but I think there's much to be gained by bringing it out from under the rug after hearing perspectives from many sides of the Nordic music industry that tend to overlap more than one would expect. Therefore, the purpose of conversations like these is to create a space for open and candid discussion that encourages us to think more intentionally about the ways we think about, talk about, and listen to the music that we love. With that in mind, I hope those who do contribute to the conversation do so in the same spirit. Here are some points I want to continue building on in future discussions: 1. "Folk" is not a simple on/off switch. Whether something earns the designation of "folk music" depends on a constellation of factors that matter to the people discussing it and making meaning from it. So, making an argument for something to be "nordic folk" needs to meet those criteria for enough people for it to be convincing. Without sounding cliché, folk really is a "spectrum". 2. Where is the confusion coming from when certain things get labeled Nordic Folk when they clearly aren't? I believe it's actually the genre tags on TH-cam that typically come in brackets [Nordic Folk] and as Maria Franz mentioned in the Songleikr interview, from the names of Spotify playlists. Both of these tags are curated to get as many clicks as possible, honestly or not. 3. "Folk music" is not a simple genre designation like rock, metal, ska, etc. (though those genres are ALSO riddled with controversial conversations about authenticity). Rather, it is a descendent of philosophy and cultural identity dating back centuries, which is why conversations about folk music have quite a bit of weight to them. It's not just about the sounds - it's about the ancestry of the music itself. This point is a little too complicated for a youtube comment, which is actually the point - this stuff is too complex to answer concretely, which is why discourse is most important here. No one person has all the answers (let alone any answers) 5. I mentioned in the Norwegian folk albums video that calling your music "folk" is a promise of authenticity - you enter into an agreement with the listener that what you're performing is an authentic experience of heritage and tradition. When that kind of unspoken agreement is potentially being abused, and you're being misled by those spotify playlists, then that's when this conversation becomes important for you as a listener to be able to detect that. But again, it's complicated, and not a binary thing. 6. With that in mind, I would hope it goes without saying that none of this conversation involves personal morality or ethics. Calling something Nordic Folk - accurately or not - has nothing to do with being right or wrong. How one chooses to engage in that conversation though is a different story ;) Anyway, thank you guys for watching. I hope you get some worthwhile points to think about. That's what the Nordic Sound is about, after all!

Very nice, thank you!

I watched the live stream on mu phone but for some reason was not able to comment. I just want to say thank you! It's allmost 2am in Norway now, and I've been in bed sick all day and just started to wake up. So happy to find that you were streaming. Listening to you was such a lovely experience You made my evening! I hope it's not the last time. I wish you a great weekend.

Warts and all, this is my favorite kind of performing - holding a casual and friendly space for traditional stories and music, without pretense of perfection of curation. Will probably try to do this every other week, or at least once a month - next time with more lightning! Thank you all for hanging out <3

I'm loving this channel. Already put Maja Kjær on my playlist, and loved the last two interviews. Really looking forward to deepdiving into your vids to discover more great interviews and reviews!

that parrot on your back isn't moving much. might it be a Norwegian Blue, pining for the fjords?

Yeah us Norwegians don't believe in trolls anymore, for sure. Even us who grew up in the woods. I once saw a nisse, but, that's something else completely...

Thank you Jameson, such a pleasant conversation; also, thoroughly enjoyed seeing you nerd out!

Hey. I know Olav Mjelva. I met him recently as part of the Nordic Fiddlers Bloc. He's friends with Desiah Melby who plays violin on thr Skogtroll records. What a small world. Lol. We are starting a new record on Tuesday.

"..starting with a nude guy fiddeling himself into a trance." XD Definitely a new take on presenting folk music. Love it.

I had the chance to pre-listen to Birna in full length last weekend. And yes, you might be correct in expecting a new vibe in the music and lyrics. One song even reminded me a lot of older Apocalyptica songwriting. Still, Himinndotter is an exceptional track! We also had a couple of minutes to talk with the band. Einar said, that the last two albums (incl. Birna) are more direct and less esoteric than before.

Thank you so much for picking up my album and diving into the whole thing - the music, the instrumentation, the history and roots theme... it's really great when someone takes the time, and then shares what they find. Wonderful podcast too - thank you so much!

Thank you for all the good questions asked by interviewer and crowd. Very interesting!

I just gave the album a listen on Bandcamp 😍 love it. The first song already had some slavic/balkan influences, a bit of irish folk here and there on the album, Skydriver was great and Rolands Forste sounded like something that Floex (he made the soundtrack for the Samorost games by Amanita Design, in case you don't know him) could have played. All in all a must buy for me. Thank you for the review ❤ Edit: bummer, can only be bought via PayPal ☹️ no buy for me then...

Awesome album, so raw and the vocals just hit a good place!

I love Aftenstorm, and this album is fantastic!

yessssss more singing around the fire. it's the best.

I ran across this video searching for recordings of Winterhjelm's music. I wrote my master's thesis on Ludvig Irgens-Jensen. I will be listening to more! May I offer a helpful hint on the pronunciation of Kjerulf's name. Kj in Norwegian is the same sound as the German soft "ch." So KJerulf = iCH. The one American word I know with the same sound is the initial "h" in "Huge." (although I have met people from New Jersey who pronounce it "yuge.") The first sound in the name Hubert is also close. Thank you for an interesting 10 minutes.

Oh man. I feel the conversation about friction with the folk traditionalists. That is my experience with the bluegrass scene here in Wisconsin. You are expected to know the songs and the leads and everything the same way. That is just not how I work. I respect the tradition and the work they put in to learn these songs and keep them alive but I don't like limitations. I could never be a guitarist who played solos like on the record every night. That stance has cost me gigs but I have to be true myself or playing music would become work.

❤❤Songleikr❤❤

Great interview, loved it and very honest 💚🧡

What a nice interview About the roots part Even in Europe we do not really have roots. I come from a background of Slavic and Jewish roots so there was never much to be rooted in. I am happy to see more open spaces for ppl being able to reconnect to their heritage. From the natives to the African ppl who might be happier reconnecting to their old culture instead of Christian and Muslim cultures that did not treat them well.

New follower!

This Lithuanian project is amazing and Kjell is a magician for how good it sounds.