Detroit Festival of the Arts, featuring the band Hedningarna

Sep 7 04:08 UTC 2000

The Detroit Festival of the Arts is to be held on September 16 & 17
in and around the Wayne State campus.  The festival includes 
"a juried fine arts and crafts show"  (I put that quote in for Carla)
and an interesting assortment of musical performers.
 
For me, the star of the weekend is going to be the Swedish electric
folk band Hedningarna, who were my favorite band of the 1990s.
Hedningarna is scheduled to play one set on Saturday and one on 
Sunday, and I'm hoping to make both shows.
 
Other promising musical performers, for my tastes:
  Lo'Jo:   French/North African hybrid, with a male lead singer 
           croaking somewhere in the Tom Waits/Leonard Cohen orbit, 
           backed by the harmonies of two Arabic sisters
  Matapat: Quebec folk
  Jay Ungar & Molly Mason:  American folk/old-timey performers best known
                            for the soundtrack to "The Civil War" series.
 
In the evening there are Shakespeare plays.

Full schedule information is at: http://www.detroitfestival.com

response 2 of 45:

Sep 7 14:34 UTC 2000

heh, I like that...

response 4 of 45:

Sep 7 23:05 UTC 2000

  For those of you who aren't folk-music fanatics like krj and anderyn,
  and who may be put off by the idea of "electric Scandinavian folk",
  I still recommend Hedningarna.  I'm not a folk fanatic by any stretch
  of the imagination, and I still enjoy their music.

response 6 of 45:

Sep 7 23:56 UTC 2000

my mistake
it is actually september 29th

response 8 of 45:

Sep 8 03:57 UTC 2000

The terms are not well defined.  In particular, folk-rock has two different
meanings depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on.
In the UK, folk-rock is pretty well understood to be traditional tunes 
and songs played with rock instrumentation.  However, in the US, 
folk-rock has come to mean soft pop-rock music with an influence 
derived from the 60s folk revival, and most recently the term gets
slapped on almost any band with an acoustic guitar.  (Think: 10,000 
Maniacs.)
 
The "electric folk" term, in the 70s in Britain, unambiguously meant
traditional material in a rock setting, but now I've even seen that
term appropriated for bands playing contemporary material.
So in writing for a musically inclined audience I've gotten even 
more militant and started pushing the term "electro-trad."
But I decided that term would be entirely too cute for an item
linked to Agora.
 
Clear as mud?
 
So, in Hedningarna, what you get are mostly traditional Swedish and 
Finnish songs and tunes, arranged for two women singers (I hope the 
women singers are on this tour!!), bagpipes, fiddle, rather intense
percussion and electric guitar, and there are some other fascinating
traditional and home-made instruments in the mix.

response 10 of 45:

Sep 9 04:26 UTC 2000

Thanks for the explanation, Ken. So (just making sure I've got it right) 
"electric folk" and "folk rock" both meant about the same thing in Britain in 
the 60's and 70's?

Hedningarna does sound interesting. I'd like to hear some, but I doubt any of
my friends own it. :)

response 12 of 45:

Sep 10 03:32 UTC 2000

OK, i'll look there... (It's on amazon too, I just looked it up...somehow
I was under the impression that they were too obscure for internet retail
places, but I guess I confused them with someone else...)

response 14 of 45:

Sep 10 15:05 UTC 2000

        You can sample them some more on www.napster.com.

response 16 of 45:

Sep 11 01:49 UTC 2000

(... which are "Cheaper than Food," at $3 each for a fully-packed CD.)

response 18 of 45:

Sep 11 18:31 UTC 2000

  Even without the Iggy-exciting properties of these samplers, they're
  still great deals -- you get 20+ tracks from various bands on the 
  Northside label for very little money.

response 20 of 45:

Sep 13 03:13 UTC 2000

Thank you all for your suggestions. Within a few days (hopefully) we will be
getting a faster modem (and a faster computer) so I'll give the samples on
amazon and cdnow a listen then...

response 22 of 45:

Sep 17 02:07 UTC 2000

... and Leslie, Twila and I stopped by to say "Hi!" to Eric at 
the stage he was managing, on our way to the Hedningarna show.
 
Quick thoughts about Hedningarna: gosh wow.  The venue for Saturday's
show was a cafe' set up with tables, under a tent, and we got the 
front center table, best seats in the place.  Unfortunately the 
sound mix had a lot of problems; the band told us later that today
was the sound guy's first day with them.  
 
Hedningarna takes forever to setup and run a sound check.  We 
counted thirteen instruments on the stage, and we might have missed
one or two.  (We counted the drum set as one instrument.)
The band has added a new member since I last heard any news about 
them: Magnus on "octave violin" (it looked like a viola to Leslie).
 
It was fascinating seeing which sounds tied to which instruments.
I was sure they used an electric guitar, but instead Hallbus Mattson
primarily plays a ten string mandora (?) (or is that the lute?)
with a taped-over soundhole, and one presumes extensive modifications.
It sounds like an acoustic bouzouki; it sounds like an electric guitar;
it sounds like an upright bass, presumably through some sort of signal
processing.

Some of the sounds which I had always been sure were bagpipes turn 
out to be hurdy gurdy.  I was surprised at how extensive their use of 
electronics was, particularly in the bass and percussion sounds.
 
Most of the repetoire I recognized was from the "Karelia Visa" album;
one tune clearly from "Hippjokk", maybe two or three from "Tra", and 
the only song from "Kaksi" was "Vottkalina," which they did for an 
encore.
 
We talked to singers Liisa and Anita, and Hallbus the instrumentalist,
after the show.  Liisa talked about some of her other projects; it sounds
like all four of the women who have sung in the band are close, and 
they collaborate on a number of other recording projects.  
Liisa is particuarly happy about her album with Tellu called "Mateli."
based on old rune songs, whatever they are.   They say the next album,
probably due late 2001, will be another all-instrumental project without
the Finnish women singers.  Liisa said that it's expensive to have the 
women in the band, because they live far away from the instrumentalists
in Sweden.

response 24 of 45:

Sep 17 02:27 UTC 2000

Oops!  Add "at the MGM stage" before the first comma above, in resp. #23.