I can just hear the Faithful “Daily Vault” Readers now. “Duke,”
\nthey’re thinking, “the Celtic stuff was bearable. The bluegrass,
\nthat was scary. But now –
\n
\nbut now<\/b>
\n<\/i> – you’re doing Norwegian traditional music?”<\/p>\n
Damn straight, kids. Norway’s Annbjorg Lien is the best new
\nvoice on the fiddle I’ve heard in a long time. Discovering
\nher on her new CD
\nBaba Yaga<\/i> was like the first time I heard Ashley MacIsaac:
\nbrash, sensual, and completely novel yet capable of playing in a
\ntraditional fashion. She’s fast as lightning and slow as treacle,
\nplays like an angel having a good time on Saturday night, and is
\ndefinitely worth the effort to seek out.<\/p>\n
The technical term for what Lien plays is hardanger fiddle,
\nwhich appears to be the traditional folk fiddle style of
\nNorway.
\n(Unfortunately, through all the websites I wandered through
\nfor this
\nreview, I never could get that term defined. Anyone knows for
\nsure, send me email.) She is also a trained classical violinist,
\nhas won multiple Scandinavian titles in folk music performance, and
\nwith the band she is a part of, Bukkene Bruse, played at the
\nclosing
\nceremonies of the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. She’s a
\ncelebrity in Norway. With playing like this, she should be a
\nstar here.<\/p>\n
While I hate to draw parallels, the musical resemblance to
\nMacIsaac is strong. She is both an excellent traditional
\nfiddle player and a musical experimenter, drawing on Celtic, Middle
\nEastern, and other influences from outside Scandinavia on
\nBaba Yaga<\/i>. Her music has almost a chameleon-like variance in
\nintensity; from almost playful on “Old Larry” to heavy and
\nportentous on “January”, she shows the full spectrum of emotion
\ninherent in her violin. At times, her technique is so physical as
\nto almost turn the fiddle into a percussion instrument, and leaving
\nthe ‘string sound’ on the recording was a smart move. It’s as if
\nshe was right there playing for you.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of good tracks on
\nBaba Yaga<\/i>; it’s hard to pick a
\nfew out for special notice. The title track is excellent,
\nwith its bizarre throat-singing intro; “Ritual” is melodic and
\nbright, elegant in its stateliness; “Inoque”, a result of Bukkene
\nBruse playing in
\nMozambique for Save The Children, is an odd yet wonderful
\ninterweaving of midnight sun and African skies; and
\n“Wackidoo” is a Norwegian hoedown, suitable for kicking up one’s
\nheels and having a good old time. My favorite, however, has to be
\n“Loki”. I’ve never heard a piece of music capture so well the split
\nnature of the Trickster and Betrayer of the Aesir.<\/p>\n
\nBaba Yaga<\/i> is one of the best traditional music CDs I’ve
\nheard
\nthis year. It has opened me up to a whole world I didn’t even
\nknow
\nexisted. (Great,
\nmore<\/i> CDs to buy.) Music is universal and the fiddle even
\nmore so, and Annbjorg Lien is on her way to being a master of
\nboth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7646],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-39540","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-annbjorg-lien","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39540"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}