Hurv KRCD-18: Hopp Tussilunta - Tunes from Särna II

A living fiddlers' tradition

This recording is an independent continuation of the 1991 release "HURV! - Låtar från Särna" , with Anders Rosén playing solo violin.

The disc is somewhat different from the other, first and foremost in the contribution of Per-Olof Moll. Per-Olof knew Spak Erik well and learned most of Spak Erik's repertoire of older tunes. He also played a lot with Skår Arvid over a period of several years - they can be heard together on the LP Särnalåtar grovt och grannt, 1981. Another important difference is that most of Per-Olof's tunes, about half the album, are performed in ensemble.

The ways of playing together are the traditional ones, especially accompanying with chords and playing the tune in parallel octaves, called "grovt och grannt" in Swedish, 'roughly and finely' - a way of playing which is much associated with the area near the border between Sweden and Norway.

Anders Rosén's contributions are partly as accompanist to Per-Olof, partly as soloist on the second half of the album. Even if ensemble-playing was far from unusual, for the most part this form of music was undeniably borne by a lone fiddler. Many of the tunes use summer-pasture scales, where the intonation of certain steps in the scale can vary rather freely and in a very capricious way. Other variations - sometimes even the very form of the music - can be unpredicatable for an accompanist. Spak Erik was one of Anders' most important sources during the 1970s, when it was a question of finding the way back to the old playing style.

Kalle Almlöf contributes to several tunes as 'harmony' fiddler. Kalle is probably the fiddler who can play the greatest number of different Dales dialects with a perfect sense of style, something which has made him much in demand as a co-fiddler in both the East and West Dales.

All the tunes on this record are from the living aural tradition of Särna, one of the country's truly great musical dialects. We have sought to represent them as faithfully as we can.

Per-Olof Moll: violin 1
Anders Rosen : violin 2/1
Kalle Almlöf : violin 2

list of tunes