If you’ve ever asked the question “What IS Norwegian fiddling anyway?” this recording is your answer. Tron Steffen Westberg’s Bortover all vei… is just the fiddle, thank you. He is a masterful spellemann and if you listen straight through the recording without stopping you will certainly be under a spell!
There is something very particular about the sound of a solo fiddle. It has been said that the fiddle is the most human sounding of all instruments. (I don’t know WHO said it, but I’ve heard the comment many times.) Perhaps that is why, with an accomplished player like Westberg, the sound seems to enter the bloodstream, not just the ears, and permeates the body with vibrations in much the same way a meditating chant will.
Because there are no other instruments, and only three cuts with other fiddlers (including Magne Hangom and Jan Frostvoll), I have approached this recording more as a meditation than anything else. Westberg is extremely consistent with his volume level and the kind of attack he has on the strings. There is a lack of dynamics, but don’t take that as a negative comment in this instance. Instead this approach acts as a vehicle for entering a state of trance. With my American ears, I am still learning and absorbing the rhythmic and melodic complexities of Nordic music, and so I hear a sameness to these tunes that a Norwegian might not. But that’s where the idea of a trance comes in — the way a ritual with African drummers will go on until the dancers have reached a different state of consciousness, or like the whirling dervishes. It’s a cleansing, rich experience.
If you’re not into trances and take a more academic approach to music then this album is a wonderful package of fiddling folklore. I feel a burning passion from Westberg to preserve these traditional tunes as the players before him have. He is careful to provide historical notes on the music and musicians that every aspiring young Norwegian fiddler and folklorist should know.
All in all, Bortover all vei ... is another great addition to the library of Nordic recordings that have come out in the last few years.
(2L Records, 2003)
