Concerts, Dance, & Music Workshop planned for April

This year spring will bring with it a blast of fresh air in the form of Bo Larsson, fiddle, and Cajsa Ekstav, fiddle, nyckelharpa, & song. They will be in the Bay Area the third weekend of April, (19th - 21st) for a dance, a couple of concerts, and music workshops. Most events will take place in the Palo Alto/Los Altos area, with an additional evening of fiddle workshops in El Cerrito.
Bo Larsson is a well loved & skillful fiddler, playing in the tradition of his uncle, Viksta Lassa, who was playing partner to the famous Bingsjö fiddler Hjort Anders. He also plays in the Uppland tradition. This is his second trip to the Bay Area.
Cajsa Ekstav became a Riksspelman in 1990. She plays Uppland tunes, many in the tradition of Eric Sahlström. She has traveled extensively teaching & performing Upplands music.
The details — Please make reservations if possible for all but event #1, to help us with our planning. (Seating, refreshments, etc.)
1) Mini-Concert & Dance, Saturday, April 19th,
8 pm, 1st Methodist Church, 625 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto (between Byron & Webster), potluck refreshments. Cost: $10
2) House Concert, Sunday, Apr. 20th, 7:30 pm, 77 Mountain View Ave., Los Altos Cost: $15.
3) Fiddle & Nyckelharpa Workshops, Saturday, Apr. 19th, 9:30 - noon, 2 - 4:30, Sunday, Apr. 20th, 1:30 - 4:30 pm. Cost: $15/session, 560 Kingsley, Palo Alto
4) Fiddle & Nyckelharpa Workshop, Monday, Apr. 21st, 8 -9:30 pm, 1925 Hudson St., El Cerrito. Cost not yet determined.
5) Private Lessons & Vocal Workshops. These are in the planning stages, and will depend on interest and time available. They may take place in the days immediately before or after the weekend. If you're interested, contact Fred Bialy.
For general information and reservations, contact Fred Bialy, phone: (510) 215-5974, email <bialy10@attbi .com>, Linda Persson, phone: (650) 323-2256, email <james.little@sri.com>, or Sarah Kirton, phone: (650) 969-3126, email <sekirton@ix.netcom.com>.
Watch for updates at your dance class and on the NCS Website Calendar at:< http://members.aol.com/jglittle/ncs.html>
These events are sponsored by the Northern Califor-nia Spelmanslag, a California non-profit organization. §

Nordic Fiddles and Feet Camp, 2003  submitted by Peter Michaelsen

This year's NFF camp is to take place the week of June 28 - July 5, 2003, at scenic Buffalo Gap, West Virginia. The week offers a great range of dance and music experience:
From Sweden, Eva Edberg and Lars-Göran Mackengard will teach slängpolska. Eva in particular has been central to the careful reconstruction of slängpolska in south/central Sweden over the past 30 years, and she brings an unusual depth of knowledge about that dance. Fiddler Britt-Marie Persson will provide music for them and teach fiddle lessons. Britt-Marie was early exposed to some of the great Boda fiddlers in the Röjås family, and got her riksspelman medal for playing Boda tunes -- but since the 1970's she has become increasingly well-known for adapting Bingsjö and Hälsingland tunes for use with the slängpolska, and today she's regarded as one of the very best fiddlers for that dance.
From Norway, Knut and Bodil Odnes will teach springleik from Vågå. These personable, knowledgeable young dancers were a hit at the recent Camp Julian in California. They have been class A dancers since 1996, and are quite active teaching and competing in Norway. Knut's brother, Ivar, will tag along as their fiddler. Ivar Odnes has been leader of the Vågå spelemannslag, and is a member of the popular folk band Nye Ringnesin. He has toured internationally, including several times to the US. We like him for his enthusiasm and his clear playing and teaching.
From Sweden: This year we're lucky to get Ann-Sofi Nilsson, a talented young singer (and a great dancer). Ann-Sofi grew up with folk music and dance in the Malung area of western Sweden, and much of her repertoire comes from there and from across the border in Norway. She is currently getting her degree in voice and vocal coaching (with a folk music emphasis) at the conser-vatory in Ingesund.
From the USA, Roo Lester and Larry Harding will be on hand as usual to teach dance basics and perhaps some review. Their class provides a great introduction for be-ginning dancers, but experienced dancers often find it valuable as well.
The American music staff for 2003 include:
- Andrea Hoag, leading the ever-popular gammaldans band and coaching ensembles. Andrea needs little introduction to U.S. scandophiles: for decades she's taught and played for dancing from coast to coast.
- Elizabeth Foster will add her talents on both hard-anger fiddle (Valdres and Hallingdal), and nyckelharpa. Elizabeth has lived in Norway, where she studied both Valdres and Hallingdal springar. She is a professional music teacher.
- Paul Morrissett will play and teach music from Telemark. Paul has been a frequent visitor to Norway, and has studied with master fiddlers such as Hauk and Knut Buen. Paul and Elizabeth are both amazingly adaptable multi-instrumentalists: I'm eager to hear what they come up with at camp!
- Peter Michaelsen, this year's music director, will be fiddling for dance classes, evening parties, and in between -- as usual.
Practical Matters:
Buffalo Gap Community Camp: Buffalo Gap is near Capon Bridge, West Virginia, about 2 hours west of Washington, DC. It is a rustic, 200-acre camp with a beautiful open-air, covered dance pavilion overlooking a small, private swimming lake with a sandy beach (Bathing suits optional) and wood-burning sauna at one end. Cabins are nestled in the hill surrounding the pavilion. This year we have a talented new chef.
Cost has tentatively been set at $555, with some partial scholarships available. For information or applications, please contact Meg Mabbs, 4401 Alta Vista Way, Knoxville, TN 37919; phone: (865) 522-0515; email: <FiddlesandFeet@ aol.com>,
or Peter Michaelsen, 720 33rd Ave, Seattle, WA 98122; phone: (206) 322-7936;  email: <spelman@u.washington.edu>.
The NFF web page is at <http://www.nordicfiddlesandfeet.org>. §

Kråkavisa - a song of an enormous crow and a brave farmer by Sarah Kirton

Nordlek is a festival of Nordic dance and musical tradition which takes place every three years. The location is rotated among the countries Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. In 2000, Stavanger, Norway hosted Nordlek. The organizers chose a theme song, “Kråkavisa” (“The crow song”), which is widespread in the Scandinavian countries. According to Nordlek 2000’s publicity, the oldest known version of the song is from a late 17th century Danish leaflet. There's also a Danish version from around 1630 about “The large pigeon.” It's almost identical to Kråkavisa.
While the numerous versions of the text from different places tend to be quite similar, the melodies vary greatly. As for the text, I found 131 versions of the text from just a few areas of Norway listed on the Norwegian Ballad Projects web page: <http://www.dokpro.uio.no/ballader/>. Unfortunately, the music isn't included. (I've used other sources for the both text and music examples here.) The tune goes under various names. The most common are: Kråkavisa(n), Bonden og/och Kråka(n) (The farmer and the crow), and Mannen og/och Kråka(n) (The man and the crow). There are, of course, variant spellings of these depending on the country and the dialect.
An example of a skjemtevisa, (a humorous song), Kråkavisa is about a man who goes out to cut wood and becomes frightened by a crow. He runs home, usually followed by the crow. He shoots the crow with bow and arrow, and proceeds to make all manner of useful articles from it. Often his wife, mother, or boss (manor owner or bishop) expresses wonder at his being frightened by a crow. Sometimes he shoots up through the smoke hole in the roof - an arrangement that predates chimneys. Other times he climbs through the smoke hole to get at it. Or, if the crow didn't follow him home, the farmer goes back to the forest, shoots the crow, and uses several horses to get it home again. At any rate, once the crow is dead, our hero quite skillfully makes many things. Perhaps the crow was truly huge and well worth being scared of. But it's most likely a tall tale… … … …
You can hear a version on the following recordings:

On the next page is a combined text from unnamed places in Sweden (all that I found were almost identical) and a melody from Sweden. A Norwegian text, and melodies from both countries can be found on our web page at
<members.aol.com/jglittle/ncs.html>. §

**Couldn’t find a translation (or Swedes who knew the word) for “skräddarsyring.” Our best guess is something like the ring sailmakers use to protect their fingers from the needle. Thanks to all those I asked.

is a Swedish version found on the web. Where in Sweden it’s from, they didn’t say.

a Swedish version from KP Lefflers Folkmusiksamling, Del II, Arkiv för Norrländsk Hembygdforskning XXV

is from the Nordlek 2000 website, and is the melody used for their version of the song. Their text is also given on this website.

is a tune from Land, in eastern Norway, from the book Folketoner fra Land, Boka om Land, Bind VII

is a tune from Land, in eastern Norway, from the book Folketoner fra Land, Boka om Land, Bind VII

“Field Guide” to Feleverkene on the Web by Sarah Kirton
Many thanks to Tellef Kvifte, the leader of this project, who provided valuable insights and corrections for this article.

The Norsk folkemusikksamling (Norwegian Collection of Folk Music), a section of the Department of Music and Theater at the University of Oslo has published their collection of hardingfele and vanligfele (regular violin) works on the net during the past year. This valuable and interesting database contains JPEG images of all seven volumes of the Norsk Hardingfeleslåtter, and of most of the four volumes of Norsk Slåtter for Vanligfele which have been finished to date. The vanligfeleslåtter database, while it contains images of most of the tunes, is still missing various keyword fields. The “Slåtter for vanlig fele” is a fairly recent project, and much material remains to be transcribed. Table I gives a general contents of each of the finished volumes and for the projected two vanligfele slåtter volumes.
I thought a “Field Guide” to using the database would help those without a knowledge of Norwegian. Since this article is meant to explain each web page you may encounter, it will make the most sense if read while surfing this site. The introductory page for the database is at: <http://www.hf.uio.no/imt/om_imt/nfs/>. On the introductory page, choosing “Feleverkene” takes you to:
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imt/om_imt/nfs/feleverk.html>
Here you find a split page, half Norwegian, half English. The left half has introductory comments in both Norwegian and English. As of 2/10/03, the English section gives general background information. However, the Norwegian section reads: “The two large fiddle-works (i.e. fiddle tune collections) currently contain 3862 tune transcriptions and a series of articles. The fiddle-works have always been an important part of the activities at the Norwegian Folkmusic Collection. Volume 5 of the work “Slåtter for vanlig fele” is currently being worked on, and will be published on the net.
“The transcriptions and articles from earlier volumes are accessible at this Website, with the exception of the transcriptions in “Slåtter for vanlig fele,” volume 4. These will be accessible in the near future.”
The right side contains links to our points of interest. The last two links are to sets of articles originally published in the printed Feleverkene volumes. These have been translated into English, and cover quite a bit of ground. The articles in the hardingfele entitled “Notation” is especially useful to musicians. The article on the relation of dance and music may interest both musicians and dancers. The articles make for fairly heavy reading.
The first link is to general information about the pages and the project. The second link, to “Søk i notene” (in Norwegian), and “Search among transcriptions” (in English), is currently active only in the Norwegian version. It grants us access to the hidden treasure of this site, the tune transcriptions themselves. Here's a rough translation of what you'll find there, and how to use these pages.
“Søk i notene” takes you to <http://129.240. 145.148/>. Here you see two headers, “Valg søk” — “choose search (type)” and “Valg Søkeord” — “choose keyword.” “@” acts as a wildcard in keyword searches. Choose a search type, fill in a keyword, and click on “Søk” (or hit <return>).
The buttons in the “Valg søk” section and their translations are:
“Søke slåttenavn” — “search on tune name.”
“Søke utøvernavn (etternavn først)” — “search on performers name (last name first). “ (i.e. whoever the tune was collected from. This is not necessarily who it's “after.”
“Søke tekst i kommentar” — “search for a text in the comments” included for most tunes. This is one way to find a specific type of tune - since they aren't all labeled by type in the title, and there's no “tune type” field.
However, the type isn't mentioned in all of the comments, either. (There's no sure way to find, for example, all hallings or all Rudls/Rulls using a keyword search. But, see Table I.)
“Søke sted” — “search on place “ where the performer or person the tune is after lived. Not all tunes, even those by the same performer, have this field filled in.
“Søke tradisjonsområde” — “search on the (general) geographical) area of tradition.” Sometimes this can be a bit hard for those not intimately familiar with the music or history of an area to figure out. One can always use the wildcard “@” as the keyword, and get a list of areas.
“Søke fylke” — “search on fylke.” Fylke are the modern political divisions of Norway, similar to provinces. These can contain surprises for the foreigner. For example, Valdres, a hardingfele region, and Gudbrandsdal, a vanligfele region, are both in Opplands Fylke. Hallingdal and Numedal are both part of Buskerud, along with some other areas.
Note from Tellef: Three different geographical levels are included because during the 50 years of work on this collection, different systems have been used. The two upper geographical levels in the vanlig fele section are not yet in place.

Things to try as you get acquainted with the database:
#1. Searching on tradisjonsområde with a “@” as the keyword, one gets a listing stating that 276 people were found. (Only hardingfele players are listed, due to incompleteness of the tradisjonsområde field in the vanligfele section of the database.) These columns are given for each person found.
“Pnr; Navn; F; D; Sted; Område; Fylke; Kilde“
“P nr” — a number assigned to the person in original order of collection. Note from Tellef: numbers not yet used in the number series will (in part) be filled with persons so far only mentioned in the comments and as ‘kilde’, and made searchable from the name search.
“Navn” — the name of a musician.
“F” — year of birth (fødd = born).
“D” — year of death is present if the person died before publication of the printed volumes (død = died). Some people listed are now dead, but the death date is not filled in.
“Sted” — the bygd – a type of rural community, (occasionally the farm or town) where the person lived, was born, or grew up, or in which tradition he plays.
“Område” — area - usually what we in the US think of as a cultural area, i.e. Hallingdal, Telemark, etc.
“Fylke” — name of the modern political area which the område lies within.
From this list you can click on a specific navn, område, or fylke.
#2. Navn gives you a list of tunes. Clicking on a tune name takes you to the tuners page. There, each variant of the tune has the following columns:
“Kilde; Etter; Trad; Ant var; Nr; Bind; Side”
“Kilde” — “source” for the tune.
“Etter” — who the tuners after.
“Trad.” — tradition (”lineage” or “genealogy” of a tune).
“Ant var” (an abbreviation) — number (antal) of variants of this tune which have been identified in this collection.
Note: Responding to my observation that not all variants of a tune are always identified, and my guess that this is an artifact of the number of people and years involved in this collection, Tellef points out: “The question of what constitutes a variant is not an exact science, and there is no way to make a variant system that all will agree on. You will certainly find tunes not given as variants that you would perceive as such; also the opposite will probably be the case.”
“Nr” — a cataloging number given to the tune in the collection. Many of these numbers are followed by a letter. Tunes with the same number are variants of each other, and are grouped together in the printed volumes, arranged alphabetically according to the associated letter.
“Bind” — “Volume.” In this column, hf means hardingfele, and vf means vanligfele. In the vanligfele section, area (Område) and Fylke aren't filled in.
“Side” — page (number) in the printed version.
#3.) “Ant var” gives a list of the tuners variants. (See the note under “Ant var” above.)
#4.) Each individual tune name takes you to a page containing a thumbnail of the tune, comments about the tune (in Nor. only), and the fiddle tuning. Clicking the thumbnail enlarges it. They're condensed JPEG files, and are not as clear as the originals, but are quite serviceable.
#5.) Now we go back to the main search page. Searching on “utøvernavn” with “@” gives a list of 468 people with the same columns as when using “Tradisjonsområde.” This does include the vanligfele players names, and is a good way to get access to this information.
#6.) Using “Slåttenavn” as search type (try the generic tune-name “Springar”) gives the now familiar:
“Nr; Bind; Side; Navn; Kilde; Etter; Trad; Ant var”
Some Extras:
On most pages, there are links in tiny blue print along the top of the page. Here's a quick and dirty explanation of them.
“Hva kan søkes?” - “What can be searched for?” - you know that now.
“Søke på felestille” — “Search on fiddle-tuning,” search for tunes according to the fiddle tuning used. Here it states: “Click on the fiddle-tuning to see a list of transcriptions. (The first two don't work.)” This is because the first two tunings are the most common in both the vanligfele and hardingfele repertoires, and would return almost the entire database. This search method returns both hardingfele and vanligfele tunes.
“Bla i bøkene” — Browse the hardingfele volumes by page number. At present, there's no similar way to browse the vanligfele volumes.
“Kommer snart” — “Coming soon,” The promised English version isn't here yet, and is one of the reasons for this article. (Tellef apologizes. There have been job related delays. No apologies are necessary. It's an extraordinary amount of work to scan in the transcriptions and type all the existing fields, decide what to put in currently empty fields, plus do the translating and other work involved.) The other stuff here is a description of what’s not finished in the vanligfele pages.

How to tell vanligfele tunes from hardingfele tunes just by looking at the listing:
Since you can't ask the database to list all the vanligfele tunes, finding them can be an interesting exercise.
1) If the listing has a “Bind” column, look to see if it's an “hf” or a “vf”.
2) If the listing includes the “Prn” (person-number): Vanligfele players are assigned numbers above 2000, while people who play hardingfele are assigned numbers under 1000.
3) Hardingfele tune names are in all capital letters, while vanligfele tunes have initial caps only.
Finding vanligfele slåtter:
The vanligfele section is not yet complete. The best way I've found to access tunes there is to do a “@” search on utøvernavn and look at the Prns. Or, if you already know the name (and their spelling) of what you want, you can use that.


In the printed volumes, tunes are ordered by type. There are only a few types. The hardingfele volumes contain springars and gangars (halling and rull are in this category). Gangars are divided into 6/8 gangars and 2/4 gangars. The “ordinary” fiddle volumes contain springleik (sometimes named as springar or springdans), halling (analogous to gangars in the hardingfele volumes) and marches. Because there are so few types, and a search would return so many results, a tune-type search was not implemented. §

Table I — Tune-types in each of the volumes

Announcements

AmeriKappleik

Northfield, Minn.
& neighboring area
July 22 - 27, 2003

Celebrate the 20th anniversary of founding of theHardanger Fiddle Association of America

Webpage: <www.hfaa.org/amerikappleik>
email: <amerikappleik@hfaa.org>

snailmail: AmeriKappleik, HFAA, POBox 23046, Richfield, MN 55423-0046

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The Hardanger Fiddle Association of America
announces
AmerikaSlåttar
a competition in composition forHardingfele

Composition categories range from Traditional to Jazz & Beyond
Receipt Deadline: May 1, 2003
Info: <www.hfaa.org/>
Address questions to <amerikaslattar@hfaa.org>

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Scandia Camp Mendocino
June 14 - 21, 2003
at the Mendocino Woodlandson California’s North Coast

From Valdres in Norway
DancersKnut Aastad Bråten & Anne Kjellfrid Nøbben
Hardingfele playersTore Bolstad & Jan Beitohaugen Granli

From Sweden
Musicians
Cajsa Ekstav, fiddle, nyckelharpa, & vocal
Anders Hällström, fiddle & accordion
Agneta Wiberg-Hällström, fiddle & vocal

American Music Staff Sarah Kirton, hardingfele Peter Michaelson, fiddle

contact: Scandia Camp Mendocino, 393 Gravatt Drive, Berkeley, CA 94705;
Kay Loughman email <kayloughman@attglobal.net> (510) 841-7428 (Pacific time)
Roo Lester email <DancingRoo@aol.com> (630) 920-0159 (Central time)

see also the Fall 2002 issue of NCS News <http://members.aol.com/jglittle/ncs.html>

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Nordahl Grieg Leikarring og Spelemannslag
with
Noregs Ungdomslag

Announce Two Events:

Teacher Training Workshop
Offering certification thru Noregs Ungdomslag
6–11 April, 2003
songdans, gammeldans/runddans, bygdedans & turdans (rekkedans, contradans, etc.).

Camp Norge Folkedans Stevne
11–13 April 2003

Teachers/musicians:
Dance: Rune Bjerke & Signe Marie Hernes
Fiddler: Torill Aasegg
Hardingfele & Seljefløyte: Toby Weinberg
Accordion: Bill Likens

at Camp Norge
near Alta, California.
(btwn Auburn & Truckee on Interstate 80)

See calendar for practical details

American Scandinavian Music Sites:

The Northern California Spelmanslag:
<members.aol.com/jglittle/ncs.html>

Nordahl Grieg Leikarring & Spelemannslag
<www.ngls.net>

The American Nyckelharpa Association:
<www.nyckelharpa.org>

Bruce Sagan’s Scandinavian Web Site:
<www.math.msu.edu/~sagan/Folk/sources.html>

The Hardangar Fiddle Association of America
<www.hfaa.org/>

The Skandia Folkdance Society (Seattle):
<www.Skandia-Folkdance.org>

About the Calendar