‘Having A Concert Online Is A Bit Like Having Sex Online’: Sunniva Brynnel The Swedish Folk Artist
The Reportage
“I love playing with my heart, for me, playing with my heart is the biggest thing,” said Sunniva Brynnel the Swedish folk musician about her music who also plays with accordion.
Is there someone learning folk music or someone teaching folk music? Indeed, somehow Sweden sustains its folk music tradition, and it is flourishing albeit not mainstream.
Sunniva shared her experience of how the folk music is learned and taught: “We listen and pass it on to generation to generation. Very informally you come to a fiddler’s house and they play few songs and we record it just like you record me and we go home and we learn these tunes. So we can always connect the tunes to a certain fiddler’s in certain situations. I can remember this tune I learned from this fiddler at this particular time and he was drunk and such and such. It is very situational and relationship-based.”
The Seventh Generation Musician:
Sunniva Brynnel is a seventh generation musician. Her mother played a pivotal role in her musical career who is also a folk singer. She was born in Uddevalla, a town near Gothenburg on the Swedish West Coast. She has established herself as an accordionist, singer, composer, and ‘composer within improvised music, folk music, devotional music and mantra’ music. She has toured in the USA and has recorded and performed in Norway, Denmark, Ireland, England, Slovakia, and France. She shared the stage with artists like Timo Alakotila, Neil Yates, Praful, Peruquois, Dave Douglas, Dónal Clancy, Corey DiMario among others.
“I grew up with my mother as a folk singer, so, when I was as little baby, even in the belly, I would come with her to the festivals, and when she was teaching folk music, and also learning folk music. So, it was always around me, the folk music from the Swedish West Coast in particular,” said Sunniva Brynnel about the beginning of her musical journey that began at the age of five.
Swedish Folk Music: No Policing
The Swedish folk music is inherently rooted in improvisation and exposure to one’s predecessors playing it. It allows the learner to learn and the seeker to appreciate. There are artists who carry the legacy of the folk music. Is it a burden for the current generation of practitioners to pass it on to the next? “I never saw it as a burden because when it is in you, you want to get it out of you, you know, original music,” said Sunniva Brynnel on carrying the legacy of music from her mother and their forefathers and foremothers.
There is a space and scope for constant improvisation in the Swedish folk music that continues to evolve though rooted in its origins. “We have lot of scope for playing around with the music, and composing. So, it is not a burden. If someone said you need to play this repertoire, these tunes, and you have to play this way then I would be ooh … strangled. But I don’t feel this because I can make it my own play. It is allowed, you know. There is no police standing there and saying you cannot do this,” said Sunniva Brynnel.
Music: Nature and Nurture
Sunniva Brynnel’s dedication to music enabled her to receive Albin Hagström Minnesfond’s scholarship for accordionists at the Royal Academy in Stockholm, support from Anders Holger Gustafssons Musikfond and Gull & Stellan Ljungbergs Stiftelse for music studies in Sweden. She studied pop music full time at the age of 18 at Ljungskile FHSK, Sweden. She went on to learn Irish/Gaelic singing and music at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in Dublin, Ireland and jazz at Birka FHSK in Östersund, Sweden. To be able to immerse herself in both jazz and the music of the British Isles, Sunniva then went on to study a BA jazz at Leeds College of Music, England, with composition as her major subject. While studying in England, she composed everything from small sized ensemble works to big band pieces. In the UK, she studied ‘with accordionists such as Karen Tweed, Piero Tucci, Ian Lowthian and Murray Grainger’. She graduated from Leeds College of Music with First Class Honours, and gained a degree in teaching music at the Gothenburg University.
Sunniva Brynnel is an example for learning something that comes naturally and by nurturing, which in her case is the music, music of different genres, and specialising in Swedish folk music. She also graduated with a Masters of Music in Contemporary Improvisation (Academic Honours) from The New England Conservatory where her teachers were Ran Blake, Jason Moran, Jerry Bergonzi, Hankus Netsky, Dominique Eade and Frank Carlberg. She is also a Certified Deep Listening Instructor. Deep Listening is the lifework of American accordionist and composer Pauline Oliveros.
Why Accordion?
Accordion, also known as piano accordion, is a portable musical instrument with a bellows, metal reeds and a keyboard.
An almost similar musical instrument is concertina. It is a small accordion consisting of a closed pleated tube. It is held in hands and played by pressing the ends together to force air past reeds.
Sunniva Brynnel started to learn accordion when she met a guitarist named Calle Jönsson at FHSK. The guitarist had insisted that ‘every folk pianist should also play the accordion’. She bought an accordion, and never looked back. Today, she also writes music for theatre and dance, musician for contact improvisation, taking part in different tantric events and yoga practices. She also mastered the slängpolska. Slängpolska is a Swedish folk dance (two major types), and also refers to folk music tunes.
An Acquired Taste: Folk Music
Are there audience for Swedish folk music? “I think we have to talk about the Swedish folk music interest in Sweden and outside of Sweden because in Sweden there is some interest among young and all but it is not mainstream. It is like an acquired taste. But also outside of Sweden in England and America where I lived there is also a selected scene, more scene that is very interested in Scandinavian and Swedish folk music. So, even if it’s not mainstream you can find these pockets of people who want to dance and you want to play it. And it is quite a lively and heartfelt scene where people really have a passion for it. So, if you can enter those scenes it feels like the whole world is interested in Swedish folk music, you know, though it is not the case, of course,” said Sunnniva Brynnel.
Swedish Folk Music: Evokes the Pastoral and Rural Scenes and More
The undying nature of the Swedish folk music is its rootedness in the bygone era. An era of pastoral and rural life that sustained the folk music; there is an audience for it, who may be nostalgic or longing for it. Moreover, the Swedish folk music represents a diverse aspects of the society.
Sunniva Brynnel explained the substance of the music: “There are few different traditions within the Swedish folk music because we have many different counties and areas in Sweden and they all have slightly different usages. So, in the Midlands where there was lot of herding tradition where people where bringing their cows and goats maybe, different kind of animals to the mountains there we had a herding music traditions with cow horns and certain calling and certain melodies to the cow calling but that tradition doesn’t live in the south of Sweden though. In the south we may have dance tradition and sea-faring tradition. Songs about the sea, songs about the sailors, songs about the sailors wives, they were missing the sailors. So even in Sweden we are a tall country and we have different traditions inside it like lullabies and religious music and herding music, pastoral music, sea-faring music, all of these in one country.”
Life of the Musician during the Coronavirus Pandemic:
Sweden has been under semi-lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. The government has issued social-distancing measures and many recommendations for the people. As a result, the musicians and the audience were also affected.
Sunniva Brynnel explained her situation as a musician in Sweden. “I have been lucky enough to have breakthrough gigs all through this time may be on Zoom, even online and live streaming. But also I realized with quarantine regulations in churches where people sat far away but of course I realize that I am lucky and I also … because there are less gigs now. I also feel it is kind of a celebration when we do get out and play,” she said.
With many professions going online music is no different. How is different to play music for an online audience? “I actually said to someone else … it is a bit like having a concert online is a bit like having sex online. It is not really the same thing. It is much worse. So, it is good because we can do something but it is not the same thing. To be like this (in the midst of audience) and to see people, and to connect to people like this I think that is why we play concerts. We play concerts to listen to music, right, that is the half of it. So, half of it also this meeting (with audience and other artists) and I don’t think that people will want to give that up.”
The world awaits for a medicine for coronavirus. The lockdowns across the world has become a norm, especially the restricted international air travel. As a musician, Sunniva Brynnel reckoned playing via internet is not something musicians want. She said, “I think it is actually quite boring to sit at home and listen. I think people do it to support the artists and I think they do it because there is nothing else we can actually do at the moment. But I don’t think it is sustainable and I don’t think this is something we are looking to do.”
Like football players, musicians also want an audience, a live audience. But until the coronavirus pandemic prevails, online platform is an inevitable option. For a musician like Sunniva Brynnel, with range of genres in her music, she can experiment and improvise both online and offline. And, she is a national treasure of Swedish folk music with transcontinental appeal.
