It was in 1990 that Hilde Bjørkum created the Førde Festival or Førde Folk Music Festival, a small town of 12,000 inhabitants in western Norway, 50 minutes by plane from Oslo. The theme of the 2022 edition: music in times of crisis. An edition that opens with 3 Ukrainian formations.
Before arriving in Førde, the festival team took us to Bergen, Undredal and Balestrand, just to get us on Norwegian time. Watch out, there will be seagulls, goat horns, cheese, cider, a retro train, woolen socks, ferry sirens swimming on the fjords. And a bit of music… (See RFI Videos).
1er part of the report is interested in the Nordic (and Norwegian) poster of the festival with a road trip by Cyril Étienne (video road trip RFI Vidéos), and our guests, Torill Faleide (director of Communication of the festival) the vocal trio Aurum , the Hardanger violin trio (Sivert Holmen, Anne Hytta, Tuva Færden)… the poet and jazz saxophonist Karl Seglem, also a goat horn specialist, the singer Unni Lovlid, voice teacher at the Oslo Conservatory, the young violinist Hannah Moira Midtbo-Godlynt and the Áššu trio with Ulla Pirttijärvi, a Sámi (Lappish) singer of Finnish origin and the Norwegian musicians Olav Torget, guitar and ngoni, Harald Skullerud percussion).
Meeting with the vocal trio Aurom : Malin Alander, Ingebjørg Lognvik Reinholdt and Guro Utne Salvesen.
The 3 young women set up Aurom in 2017, they collect traditional Norwegian songs and rearrange them in their own way. The trio also composes original material.
► 1st album Utan in dirre (“without shaking”) came out on the label Nye Nor in May 2021.
Then, it is in a small yellow house that we have an appointment with 3 Norwegian violinists: the trio of violinists from Hardanger (Norwegian variant of the violin, with 5 sympathetic strings located under the 4 classical strings) Anne Hytta, Sivert Holmen and Tuva Faerden.
The trio is filmed at Trapp Ned in Forde (haberdashery-restaurant by the river) see video RFI Videos.
► scrapbook Hitterdal (your:like – TA246CD 2021).
Then we meet Ulla Pirttijarvi Lansmana Sami singer from Finland who was part of the folk group Angelin Tytötand Norwegian guitarist Olav Torget from trioAssu.
In this training, the singer’s Joik (Sami vocal technique) rubs shoulders with the excellent guitar of Olav, who lived in Africa and learned Ngoni in Dakar from a Casamance musician. Sami tradition and Fulani music go hand in hand.
►Album Áŝŝu (Bafe’s Factory 2019).
Karl Seglem and Unni Lovlid accompanied us throughout our journey. Karl is a renowned jazz saxophonist and published poet. But it was with goat’s horn that he accompanied Unni Lovlid. The singer has improvised, from traditional to contemporary, in a wooden cabin in Undredal, in a cider cellar in Balestrand… Unni is a singing teacher at the Oslo Conservatory of Music. Many of his students participated in the 32th edition of the Førde Festivalen.
Finally, the young 18-year-old violinist Hannah Moira Midtbo-Godlynt will play the classical violin and the Hardanger violin in the small chapel of Hestad. Hannah Moira is typically a child of the Førde Festivalen, since her parents met, twenty years ago at the festival, in the indoor balls where ballroom dancing is practiced.
Translations are provided by Torill FaleideDirector of Communication at Førde Festivalen.
(continued on Saturday August 13, 2022).