Martin Longley reports from day three of Norway’s Førdefestivalen world music festival.
The final day of the festival had a winding-down character, with fewer concerts following the Saturday peak. In the afternoon, a show by Fargespill, a large group of young refugees and/or immigrants, could have sprinkled liberal saccharine, but the musical direction avoided this possibility, maintaining a quality distillation of various global ethnic styles into a successfully homogenised show that flowed with logic, non-compromise and general good taste.
The styles were shuffled to an excessive degree, but the music still cohered, retaining its core sensibilities throughout the fusion process. The kids were cute, but they were also cool, grasping the essence of their widely-varied heritages, and processing them wisely, singing and dancing with equal grace. Each cultural focus was picked up confidently by the youths from different lands, understood, filtered and re-born into this particular world panoply.
Next, a short bus journey winged a ready-made audience to another well-preserved gathering of wooden farm-huts, where they could experience Norwegian bluegrass, courtesy of the Earlybird Stringband, surely one of the only chances to catch a hardanger fiddle in this kind of line-up. Their approach had a smoother sheen than some of the music’s more rugged American exponents, but their harmonies were pleasing and their good-time extroversion caught the small gathering in the clutches of its spell.
The festival’s final gig was somewhat low-key, with JPP playing in the hotel, to a modest crowd of admirers who had to deal with the rabble holding court on one or two tables to the rear. Perhaps it was easier to ignore these persistent shouters if seated in the rows of chairs down in front of the stage. The nature of JPP’s set demanded a keen concentration on their subtle flourishes, and rapt attention to their between-tune explanations. They gave a strong performance, but this was a curious choice for the festival’s climactic show.
Ultimately, this is a festival that possesses a highly individual character, offering the opportunity to explore the local Norwegian folk music, shuffled with some of the hottest acts on the international scene, all set within the imposing landscape of the western fjord coastline. There were also more than the usual number of imaginative and unusual venue choices, with the chance to explore some of the nearby countryside locations.
