If you’ve been following our social media this summer, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve been posting about various other bands over the past several weeks. We are really excited to be part of Global Music Match, a program that teams up artists from all over the world to cross-promote their music to new audiences. Only 78 groups were accepted into the program and our team of six artists includes Lena Jonsson Trio from Sweden. They are a trio of fiddle (Lena), guitar (Erik Ronström), and bass (Krydda Sundström) in whose sound you can hear influences from Swedish traditional music, American old-time and bluegrass, and pop/rock. They are the reason we’re posting today!
We were especially excited to have a teammate from Sweden because Jeremy spent a year studying Swedish traditional dance in a tiny town a two-hour train ride north of Stockholm. As it turns out, Lena knows many of our New England folk friends as well, having recorded an album with Brittany Haas (sister of cellist Natalie Haas!).
In Sweden, there is a tradition of singing fiddle tunes called trall, similar to the mouth music/turlutte style from Quebec that you’ve probably heard Windborne perform. Jeremy learned some trall tunes when he was in Sweden and asked Lena if her trio had any pieces in their repertoire that would be a good fit for this style. They sent us Orsa Långdans, and this video is our work-in-progress on our arrangement. At this point, we’ve figured out the notes and rhythms we want to sing, but the piece that remains is the syllables–the trall equivalent of the lyrics! In trall (as with Quebecois turlutte), the syllables are not just any random sounds but specific to the culture and language. There is a big “vocabulary” of syllables to choose from, so our next project is determining which ones feel and sound the best. Stay tuned!
Be sure to check out our other Global Music Match teammates too! They are:
Andrea Kirwin, a Fijian-Australian singer-songwriter whose song Drummer Boy was the first collaborative piece we created through Global Music Match! Watch that video here!
Fanfara Station from Italy, a trio that brings the power of a brass band and electronics to North African vocals and percussions. You can’t help but dance to their music!
Eliza Marshall, a flute player from England whose resume spans movie soundtracks, classical orchestras, touring with Peter Gabriel, and her own folk band, Ranagri.
Stephen Fearing, a singer-songwriter from Canada who we’ve heard is already familiar to many folks in our audience!
We’ve been posting about them on Facebook and Instagram, and you should check out all their social media pages as well for other amazing collaborations they’ve cooked up with each other!
