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God bless the place where everything meets and where things are themselves, but also something else. The world stands both on difference and on what is common. And this is something that music, always, reminds us of.
That music travels.
For instance, how is it possible that an Italian ballad "Il testamento dell'avvelenato" moves to Celtic lands becoming "Lord Randal" and then crosses to the States where a certain Bob Dylan transforms it into "Hard rain gonna's fall"?
Oh, it is possible, very possible.. After all, wasn’t it the Lord himself who said: “go and mix yourselves”?
So, in the nineties, people mixed a lot. Maybe it was a trend, but it was nice to tune into imaginary radio and hear screeching guitars accompany a muezzin’s song, or listen to “Margit og Targiei Risvollo,” track three of this magical album.
Here, things mix a lot.
Imagine something between Indian raga, cold European electronics, and timeless folk.
Something that flows the same way and grows without ever growing.
And, in that something, imagine here and there sounds like fireflies in the night, or like pinpoints... and percussion that digs deep... and incongruous saxophones in the distance.
And a female voice, crystal clear yet very dark, singing in an abstruse language.
And a refrain you learn to recognize since, in the sixteen minutes from start to finish (which then, what start, what finish?), it repeats often. Sixteen minutes? Yes, sixteen minutes...
Sixteen minutes that pass in a flash...
Anyway, the voice is that of Agnes Buen Garnas, and Agnes Buen Garnas is a wonderful name, you'll agree.
And it was precisely the name that made me buy the album. The name, but also that subtitle: "Medieval songs from Norway." Because that was the period when I started to fall in love with folk.
And Jan Garbarek? Oh Jan Garbarek was just a vague memory buried under the stacks of tapes that my favorite music dealer made for me. Just a few tracks on a nice mixed C90. A sort of reflective ambient jazz, from what I remembered.
Anyway, Agnes, a Norwegian folk singer, coming from one of those beautiful families of musicians who are custodians of an entire tradition, in 1987 sends Jan a tape with old ballads sung without accompaniment.
And Jan, immediately struck by it, studies its implicit rhythms and infinite possibilities for a year, noting Balkan and Levantine influences, besides some aspects of the melody that seemed to be non-European. In short, what we said at the beginning: music travels and things mix.
Then, gradually, comes a first embryonic idea of what the album should be: severity and hardness together with floating lightness. That is, opposing concepts that end up walking the same path by virtue of their connection with the wild. Perhaps it's the discovery of warm water, that folk ballads have always been just that: the hardness of reality and the connection with the magical.
And, in any case, the study of folk leads Garbarek to be folk by other means.
The use of unorthodox instruments (electronic percussions, synthesizers, saxophones) leads him out of time with the things of his time. To be suspended, in the company of the faithful Agnes, halfway across the bridge that links two worlds. The result takes your breath away: a sort of continuous enchanting hypnosis and the sensation of having magic only two steps away from you.
Fabulous refrains like "tiril lirill lilill, augien min" over silvery sounds... suspended ambient jazz accompanied by rhythmic machines... numbers in the style of Nico, or Dead can dance, over unsettling martial drums... celestialness accompanied by noisy and infernal avant-garde...and, over everything, the voice of Agnes Buen Garnas....
Go, go and mix yourselves...
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