Your countries traditional music?

[AndersWestberg]

Hi. It would be interesting to see some music from the country or region you are from :-) I will start by adding some different swedish music.

This is a old early medevil tradition (ca1000), like old time hip-hop"battling". This is from the movie Ronja Rövardotter. The lyrics are simple. One side sings Mattis, the other Borka, the names of two chiefs.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_r6MjX_wrI&feature=related"]YouTube - Ronja och Rövardansen[/ame]

This is the typical style of swedish folk-music. The polska is 3/4 with the accents on 1 and 3.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHHFDAqqSTI"]YouTube - Folkmusik; "Polska in A minor after Hultkläppen"[/ame]

You here the accented 1 and 3 more here
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsd3GIY6jWc&feature=related"]YouTube - Folkmusik; Erika Lindgren Eklundapolska Nr. 1 Viksta-Lasse[/ame]

Some people think the swedish music is similar to the Keltic one, and although they are related, they are still very different in the tonality and also the rythms.

This is something different, its the traditional singing of the Samic people, the nordic "indians".
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaitEJidUs0&feature=related"]YouTube - Sami Joik[/ame]

This is an extremely old singing style of sweden called kulning. Its related to the swizz joddling and was used to communicate between villages in the north of sweden. For instance the shepardiss could sing songs about the wolf and outher information. You can also here the nordic tonality very pure here. Imagine yourself wandering the mountains of northern sweden 1000 years ago hearing this... http://www.aperturefirst.org/images/...aise_light.jpg
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyfdkvvzyzQ&feature=related"]YouTube - Vallåtar från gammelboning (Swedish kulning)[/ame]

This is the more normal way of singing "visor" short songs with very important lyrics. This one is about an parentless boy who has to work very hard.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPRUYsvM38c&feature=related"]YouTube - Swedish traditional folksong - När barnen mister mor och far[/ame]


This is an old swedish hymn (psalm?) First original, then swedish group ABBA, hehe.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shxbumoy4fA&feature=related"]YouTube - Gammal fäbodpsalm - Katarina Pilotti[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cOA59OA8TI&feature=related"]YouTube - Gammal fäbodpsalm från Dalarna - The ULTIMATE Version[/ame]

Well if you are interested in swedish music you can visit my bands myspace www.myspace.com/hervorband. We play traditional music with two violins and irish bouzouki.

[Florestan]

Wow! Thanks for that.

Well, I suppose we have the British (or specifically the English) folk music tradition, which has influenced many British composers, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth, (in much the same way that European folk music has influenced continental composers, from Mozart to Bartok). It has also arguably influenced American composers such as Samuel Barber, who have drawn on the musical traditions of the early European settlers in the US.

In the 20th century a number of people, such as the composers Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók (who recorded over 1,000 East European folk songs in the early 20th century) and the musicologists Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax, transcribed and recorded folk music to preserve it for the future.

http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Folk+(music)

Philidor knows much more about Cecil Sharp than I do but here is the wikipedia page on him

Sharp also helped instigate a period of nationalism in English classical music, the idea being to reinvigorate English composition by grounding it in its national folk music. Among the composers who took up this goal was Ralph Vaughan Williams, who carried out his own field work on folk song.
In 1911 Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society which promoted the traditional dances through workshops held nationwide, and which later merged with the Folk Song Society in 1932 to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). The current London headquarters of the EFDSS is named Cecil Sharp House in his honour.

The English are famous, or infamous, for Morris dancing, when men dance around with bells on their legs in front of country pubs and bang sticks together. Cecil Sharp has much to answer for!

Sharp taught and composed music, he was interested in folk songs and music, and became interested in traditional English dance when he saw a group of Morris dancers at the village of Headington Quarry, just outside Oxford, at Christmas 1899. At this time, Morris dancing was almost extinct, and the interest generated by Sharp's notations kept the tradition alive.
The revival of the Morris dances started when Mary Neal, the organiser of the Esperance Girls' Club in London, used Sharp's (then unpublished) notations to teach the traditional dances to the club's members in 1905. Their enthusiasm for the dances persuaded Sharp to publish his notations in the form of his Morris Books, starting in 1907.

[AndersWestberg]

Yeah we had that wawe of composers also using old folk-tunes and reusing old themes. The most famous one i guess is Hugo Alfvén and also Kurt atterberg, Lars Erik Larsson. there are so few clips on youtube... Sigh...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vac9kL8qCEA"]YouTube - 2008-05-08 Hugo Alfven[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSfnrqFUn6I"]YouTube - The music of Atterberg, p1[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py_661PyhNs"]YouTube - Pastoral Suite - meadow elves[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCEkWLMvOzw"]YouTube - Förklädd Gud, 1st movement[/ame]

This last pecae her is really beutiful event though this recording doesent quiet bring it justice. I´ve actually conducted it ones :-P. The hole "Förklädd Gud" (disguised God) svit is very good music. Check it out!

[Florestan]

I will listen to it this evening.

[haydnguy]

Here is Scott Joplin from Texarkana, Arkansas. (1867-1917)

Maple Leaf Rag Played by Scott Joplin

[ame="http://youtube.com/watch?v=pMAtL7n_-rc"]YouTube - Maple Leaf Rag Played by Scott Joplin[/ame]

[AndersWestberg]

AAh thats sweet :-) I love amerikan music, hehe.

[Philidor]

English folk music's odd. It's easy to conclude it doesn't exist: driven from the countryside when the towns industrialised, the peasants herded into the factories, overshadowed by the demands of empire patriotism when the British Empire, dominated by England, ruled half the world. But thousands still do it, from Ceilidh bands to Morris Dancing to acappella to old country to new folk. A hidden army in pubs and clubs who just get on with it, with little publicity. Here's a good example: five women in a group named after a Celtic goddess singing contemporary acapella. I think they’re stunning.

Sample:


Henwen

[Florestan]

Anders - The Larssen Pastoral Suite extract above shows that what we think of as typically English music is nothing of the sort!

It could easily be taken for Vaughan WIlliams, Butterworth, Howells - the supposedly typically English composers.

Perhaps we have no English music

[AndersWestberg]

No, i think u have english music. but you know engllish and swedish music have a lot in common. You know we aren´t that different, bouth culturarly and languagewise. At least not if you compare to like Spain or the other warm countries of europe :-) You can see how similar our languages are;

House-Hus
Man-Man
King-Kung
Cat-Katt
Dog-Hund
See- Se
Hear-Höra
Sing- Sjunga
There- Där
Here- Här
Them- Dem

and so on :-)

[Florestan]

True - we are very much North European - and not just because of the vikings' cultural influence. I was amazed but pleased to learn a few years ago that the distance from the north of Scotland to Iceland is the same as the distance from the north of Scotland to London (about 300 miles, I believe).

When we get some light days and warm weather, we get all excited and start writing elegies to elves.