From Local Fiddle Music to International Potential

For those whose love of and belief in Danish folk music began long before mine, there must be a real sense in satisfaction seeing it come of age and start to take its place on the international stage – where it now very firmly belongs.

With the folk music degree programme now well established at the Carl Nielsen Academy, young people who love folk music not only receive a thorough grounding in the tradition, but also the training to make them remarkable instrumentalists and singers, raising the bar of the music – while still keeping the roots intact. The graduates are artists who can look ahead because they’ve learned what’s behind.

Ballads and dance music
Folk music has always been there, of course; it’s part of the warp and weft of human nature, and Denmark was lucky in that its great ballads were collected early to become part of the national lexicon (although the fact that they’re taught as literature rather than songs seems a little self-defeating). Musically, much of the inspiration of what’s now deemed the tradition came from English dance music in the 18th century, disseminated across the countryside, and by a process almost like Chinese Whispers, changed in the process to take on a quality that might one have been English, but was soon heavily overlaid by Danish sensibilities.

It was music for dancing, pure and simple, and that’s always been its hallmark. Music from the tune books of people like the wonderful Rasmus Storm show it, happy in smiling major keys, without the darkness and shadows that typify Swedish music, for instance. It was music for moving the foot and looking into your partner’s eyes.

Kristine Sand finished her education from the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in 2007

The folk process, by its very nature, shouldn’t be set in stone. Traditions evolve as each new player and generation brings something new to the music, and that was especially true in Denmark, which remained a very rural society until the middle of the 20th century, later than many other Western European countries. But even then, the advent of the gramophone and the radio had made a marked difference. A performance on record became definitive, a benchmark, while the radio exposed people to far more styles of music, including popular music which became the common musical denominator, pushing folk music out to the fringes, where it seemed destined to remain, especially from the 1960s, as pop became the world’s music.

The folk revival
But not everyone felt the same way. Both England and the US had experienced their folk revivals in the late 1950s as a sort of backlash against the mediocrity of rock’n’roll, and, in a fashion, they were successful – indeed, very successful for a short while. Folk had been in danger of dying out; the revival gave it the oxygen it needed to survive.

Denmark experienced its own short-lived folk revival in the 1970s, but it was a very worthwhile one. Not only did it form a link with true traditional performers like the wonderful singer Ingeborg Munch and fiddler Evald Thomsen (among quite a few others), it also offered young, committed performers, like the members of Lang Linken, the chance to learn from those sources and begin playing to younger audiences.

Like the folk revivals in Britain and America, it was a bit of a false dawn, a short-lived hope. But it kept the flame alive, albeit sputtering rather than growing. Folk music in Denmark wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t exactly glowing with health, either.

An electronic turning point                               
The turning point for Danish folk music was unlikely – it arrived out of electronic music. Young folk bands had been forming since the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Phønix, but they’d remained very marginalised.

Sorten Muld, however, were not a folk group. They were a pair of electronic music and a singer who used folk songs as a vehicle for their music (and incidentally brought in some of those young folk musicians to help realise their sound). What no one could have predicted was the way it would resonate with the Danish public. Their albums sold incredibly well and won awards, and created what was a groundbreaking structure for folk music – and that’s in a global sense, not just for Denmark. For a small moment, folk music was truly hip.

That could have been just a blip, but instead it proved to be a foundation on which to build a future. The Danish Folk Council was already in place, actively promoting Danish folk music abroad. Then the start of a folk music degree programme at the Carl Nielsen Academy meant that all those young folk musicians could receive proper training. It might not have been the traditional folk process of a kind of apprenticeship, but it did mean that the best and the brightest – and those truly interested in folk and the tradition – would come out prepared for the world. Globally, musical standards had increased with each generation, and this meant the Danes would be as good as anyone else.

Young fiddlers turn up
Curiously enough – and typical of other countries where a young generation had embraced and renewed folk – the future was far more acoustic than electronic. 1998 saw young fiddler Harald Haugaard team with guitarist and singer Morten Alfred Høirup (who’s proved to be a mentor to a young generation) in a duo that embraced the past as well as playing their own folk-influenced compositions. Across a decade of recording and touring internationally, they’ve become wonderful ambassadors for Danish folk music, showing its lyrical, lilting and lively qualities – as well as the tenderness of its songs.

It’s right, too, that they include the fiddle (Haugaard is one of the top fiddlers in the world, period), the instrument that defines Danish folk music. Each year a new crop of amazingly talented violinists appears – Kristine Heebøll, Henrik Jansberg, Kristian Bugge and Kirstine Sand among many others – all with remarkable technical and artistic abilities. Look at any Danish folk band and, in virtually every case, fiddle is the prominent instrument (the exception that proves the rule is Phønix, a group that blossomed into full flower with the release of 2008’s Folk).

The music has been lucky, too, in that it’s enjoyed government support to help it grow and develop, and a record label that believes in its viability (Go! Danish Folk, run by the redoubtable Erling Olsen).

Lang Linken are still around, and these days they’re the older generation, presiding over what’s not been a folk revival as much as a folk revolution. It hasn’t captured the mass consciousness (yet!), but it’s found a home on the world music stage.

Expansion in different directions
Much of the credit belongs to the degree programme, which has fostered a new generation of artists who’ve embraced folk music, but folded it into their own sound. So alongside more traditional offerings there’s Instinkt, who can hint at Central Asian throat signing and incorporate the ethos of rock in their folk sound, or Valravn, who use dance music as part of their sound (and very well, too – the sight of a bunch of students waving their hands in the air like they just didn’t care during Valravn’s set at the 2008 ROOTS festival in Copenhagen was inspiring).

While remaining very aware of their roots, this generation of musicians is expanding in so many different directions as the definition of "folk" continues to grow. Trio Mio, for instance, are exploring textures and melodies, Phønix, with their distinctive clarinet/bass clarinet sound, are doing great things with Danish song – and delving into the ballads, while Tumult interweave Danish music with American roots. From the Faroes, Eivør Palsdottir might be a singer who finds big international success with her questing mind, even as Peter Uhrbrand looks outside his local tradition to play with a number of artists and configurations. There are, of course, many more bands and artists, and not mentioning them is no reflection on their quality.

But many people involved with Danish folk music are looking forward; the Folkstreaming festival (www.folkstreaming.dk) was a landmark, the first festival to be fully streamed online, and a great way to make people all over the world aware of the music.

The fact that the musicians have the confidence to venture this way stands as a sign that Danish folk music has really come of age. More Danish acts than ever tour abroad, opening doors for others to follow, and there’s a huge degree of co-operation between the musicians across the folk scene. It bodes well for the future. In 2008 Danish music is starting to make a global name. In another five years it will be a major player.

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Chris Nickson is free-lance music journalist. He has written several books on folk music and writes regularly for magazines such as fRoots. This article was written for DanishMusic.info and published in August 2008.