Jazz på Svenska

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Socoder -> Music -> Jazz på Svenska
Wed, 02 Apr 2008, 00:34
Afr0	OMG! I just discovered a Swedish Jazz pianist, who, unfortunately, died when he was 37 years old. Anyways, before he died, he made tons of great music, and his best (and probably most infamous) album is 'Jazz på Svenska' (Jazz in Swedish), that's sold a quarter of a million copies in Sweden alone! I just ordered the album from a US online store yesterday, and everyone reading this should do the same (except for Phoenix, he's Swedish, AFAIK, and probably already has it)! Unfortunately, not many songs are available on YouTube, since this album could almost be concidered an 'indie' album outside of Scandinavia, but here are a couple of links I found so you can listen to some songs yourself before buying: Visa från Utmyra Berg-Kirstis Polska The name of this guy is Jan Johansson btw, and he's also joined by Georg Riedel on bass on this particular album. For movie enthusiasts, Jan Johansson made most of the music for the film adaptions of Astrid Lindgrens 'Pippi Longstocking', and Georg Riedel later made most of the music for the other film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren's books. Edit: Here is the album, available on Amazon in an EXTENDED edition! Go buy, go buy, go buy! -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!
Wed, 02 Apr 2008, 05:24
MetalMan	It surprised me a bit to see Swedish on this site, wasn't expecting that. Anyway, That first tune is often used in advertising here in Sweden. Haven't heard the other one though. I'm not really a Jazz fan but I found them a bit Catchy anyway. Cheers -=-=- ---------------------- Science, development and SciFi ----------------------
Wed, 02 Apr 2008, 07:14
Phoenix	Same here, I was a bit surprised, and I'm also not a fan of jazz. I've heard both songs before, and the first one is (as MetalMan said) played quite often. Can't remember if it's in advertising or not, but it probably is. \|edit\| No, I don't own the CD, and I probably never will. \|edit\|
Thu, 03 Apr 2008, 15:59
Mog	ski bip bop de dowwwwwww --- NO ONE TOUCH ME, Im in a jazz trance. -=-=- I am Busy Mongoose - My Website Dev PC: AMD 8150-FX, 16gb Ram, GeForce GTX 680 2gb Current Project: Pyroxene
Tue, 16 Jun 2009, 05:03
Afr0	Hm. Just thought I'd bump this thread because I found a good article on Jan Johansson in one of Norway's largest newspapers. It translates well in Google Translate, too! Surprisingly well, actually! Linky for Swedish and Norwegian people Translated version (cleaned up a tiny bit by me): 'TUESDAY NEXT WEEK it is 40 years since Jan Johansson died in a car accident, on the way to a Church in Jönköping. Perhaps the most important Swedish jazz musician in the past and today was only 37 years old. But the music he lived to create and perform in the course of his short career, seems to have an eternal life, also in Norway. How can it be that a long-dead Swedish jazz pianist still has an almost magical appeal to a wide and diverse audience? In the last 10-15 years, Jan Johansson's music has had a kind of renaissance. Almost all his recordings have been released on CD (primarily thanks to progrock-sons Jens and Anders). Succeeding musicians such as Bo Kaspers, Jan Lundgren, Tord Gustavsen, etc. has publicly confessed their musical debt to JJ. The poetic and original portrait film "Trollkarlen" from 1999 uncovered, even for the already initiated, several new depths and dimensions of JJs musical work, while it opened the door to his musical landscape for a new audience. And [Norwegian chain] Platekompaniet's priority is actually the fall of 2007 to promote the CD 'Piano' in their ads, which is relatively rare when it comes to jazz discs, and especially remarkable when we talk about something as remote as Swedish jazz piano from the sixties. Now, 40 years after his death, it should be possible to drag a few lines and try to find answers to what it is that has given this artist and this music such a universal and timeless appeal. Part of the answer will be found in a respectful, but un-dogmatic relation to different traditions, an intention to unite the people and the narrow, a good portion of intuitive musical creativity and humorous understatement, and of course, a solid professional craftsmanship. But perhaps most of all: the ability to lift up and convey the good melody. He got to eat cherries with the really big when he at the end of 1950s toured with, among other greats, Stan Getz and Oscar Pettiford (more on this, one can read in Kjell Erik Bergs book 'A visionary Swedish musician'). But he jumped off a merry-go-round that could have ended up in an international career, and instead pointed out his own musical training, which would prove to be both innovative, diverse and successful. In particular, his name was linked to a renaissance for the Swedish folk music. "Visa från Utan Myra" have been standing as a kind of signature tune for JJ. This wistful and beautiful melody initiates the collection "Jazz på svenska", which JJ with bassist Georg Riedel (which by the way is self-assured eternal place in music history through the Emil-songs) give folksongs new life. EVEN UNDERSTAND JJ, according to Ingmar Glanzelius' text on the cover of the record, that what attracted him by the Swedish folk songs was the "blue-chord illustrations," as opposed to "the closed-off and military ... [the] melodies have a suggestive rhythm, which is built into [the] melody. It is enough to play them as they are .... " The purpose of the project was "to give the listeners the opportunity to hear the melodic illustrations." It should therefore be sufficient to play songs the way they were. The melodic rhythm was a strong ENOUGH rhythmic element in itself. These recordings were also made without the drums, and songs were often played with a tone of time, in a sort of minimalist "less is more" spirit that may well have been inspired by Miles Davis's legendary 'Kind of Blue-LP' some years earlier. Anyway, here are made conscious choices, and JJ has ruled out many musical temptations to let the songs come in focus. Nevertheless, is it enough to "play them like they are"? Isn't self-destroying, even rash, to claim that the melody is an objective thing that the musicians just show off? When you go into this music and listen to it a few (hundred) times, there are several things that turn up: THERE are estimates and tone of the piano. There is nothing that like a personal attack, claimed JJ even after being confronted with this. You just press down the tangent. Well, it was not only his mother who could recognize his unique attack. "Just some notes, I can hear it is Jan," she said in a radio interview. It is a bit mysterious fact, which also Georg Riedel has pointed out, that one can recognize JJ after a couple of notes, without anyone being able to give any good explanation of why. In addition, there are a lot of different fins attract new wealth that is not so easy to capture and define. Or, as Glanzelius writes: "There is a cautious unruly[ness], a twisting of some tones and a flicker of over tones, that's not in the rules." In an obituary in the [Swedish newspaper] 'Express' was the following: "the notes were treated as if they were part of some fantastic ballgame: aware of the end-result with a pool player's feeling for clout, position, distance and angle." I could have listed the numerous other examples where the musicians and critics have used to highly tuned poetry and articulate metaphors in their attempt to describe the indescribable, which may be in this music. And, this is the essence of 'Jazz in Swedish'. It can be heard when JJ creates something you might call a Nordic blues by help of light, "blue" suggestive tones, combinations of major-and moll melodies and suggestions to the swing-groove, gently seasoned with small, discreet improvisations that not only is influenced by the Afro-American, but perhaps just as much by the Swedish tonal-language. The sum of this is that the melodies are played not only "as they are," they're conveyed in a unique and highly personal way. But the songs are in the foreground, everything else is built around in order to emphasize the melody. "Jazz på svenska" is one of the best-selling jazz discs ever in Scandinavia. It is surprising to register how this seemingly simple music seem fresh and viable after almost half a hundred years and a few hundred times through listening. BUT, there is a BUT. Making his name so closely tied to a success, may seem to reduce, in the sense that there remains little in the way of everything else to do. JJ is first and foremost related to the "Visa från Utan Myra" (for some also to the happy refrain "Här kommer Pippi Långstrump" [Pippi Longstockings]). But, in addition to that he also was a bit of an eccentric, at times avantgarde that could challenge both musical colleagues and audiences with both bitonal and atonal form and sound experiments, he deserves at least as much to be remembered as a virile, original jazz and virtuoso pianist of international format, that in addition to the folk-songs and compositions approached the standard repertoire in a fresh and unique way. Some of this is precisely the singularity of the melody, in how improvisation often takes the form of pregnant melody lines. This one hears, among other things, on the 'Inner Trio', the brilliant jazz-trio recording from 1962 where the Nordic tone vever care not only in Reinhold Svenssons and JJs own melodies, but also in blues and American songs. As musicteacher in 2008, it is a little sobering to see how both Jan Johansson, and Edvard Grieg's music often evokes a greater interest and enthusiasm of today's youth in music than most other past and present "heroes" in Jazz and Classical Music. An obvious hypothesis might be that this reflects how the melody, regardless of claims that tonality died with Wagner, is still the bearing musical element in our cultural circuit.' Ganglek från Alvdalen Treasures of the forrest (Leksands skänklåt) -=-=- Afr0 Games Project Dollhouse on Github - Please fork!
Sun, 21 Jun 2009, 11:53
dna	Yes, there is a bit of a twist toward Swedish here, and Dutch. That Dutch rapper was different. -=-=- DNA