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Watch it, here they come with all their resonating strings, catchy vocables and alcohol resistance. They’ll blind you with their melodies and drink you under the table, or at least they’ll have a damn good shot at it. I even heard tell of a Norwegian lass who kept the Shetlanders up all night - too proud to leave a party before a guest they nearly met their end. And it just so happens that very Norwegian is arriving in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks for the Scots Fiddle Festival so this is no empty warning!
There has been a real gathering of strength in UK/Ireland-Scandinavian crossover music in the last 10 years. With the term Nu-Nordic forming a neat umbrella over projects and bands that essentially form part of a line of musicians from the likes of SWÅP (Karen Tweed, Ian Carr, Carina Normansson and Ola Bäckström), Aly Bain & Ale Möller and Catriona MacDonald & Annbjørg Lien down through Baltic Crossing, Fribo, Auvo Quartet and Boreas to numerous genuinely great bands currently emerging.
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One of the most exciting things happening in the folk scene in Scotland is the devising/composing/creating of new music. Sometimes experimental – (electroacoustic, free improv) and sometimes more conventional but on a larger scale or featuring elements of different genres (fiddle concertos, orchestral works or crossovers such as jazz folk), these pieces of new music are increasing in number and variety all the time.
It could be said that some of this new music is a bit ‘out there’, a bit homeless - it doesn’t really fit in anywhere at the moment. And, perhaps as a result, it doesn’t attract the biggest audiences (and that’s an understatement). But what I find most interesting is that it doesn’t seem to be about the audiences anyway (unlike most other creative activity from the folk scene), this music seems to be about the musicians, about challenges, experimenting and expression.
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