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Wolfgang Meyering
Malbrook (Westpark Music)
$17.99
German multi-instrumentalist and composer Meyering brings together an ensemble of German and Nordic musicians to produce a unique recording, an exploration of the links between 'low' German and Scandinavian language and music. While this sounds like a scholarly approach, the music is anything but; it is a dark, raw, raucous clash of hurdy-gurdies, bagpipes, percussion, mandolas, horns, jewsharp, harps, voices, flutes and more. Musicians include Ralf Gehler, Merit Zloch, Kerstin Blodig, Jo Meyer and the Ådin family.
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Listen:
Mauder kum dal
Aulkendanz
Dat Mest
| "If you are interested in Northern European traditional music or disappearing cultures or powerful deliveries on traditional instruments you won't go wrong with this record. If you are not, it's still worth giving Wolfgang Meyering and his bag of eccentric tunes a try. You'll be swept along and feel once again that it's really in what is called "world music" that some of the most exciting sound of our times is produced." - Nondas Kitsos, RootsWorld (read the complete review and listen to a song) |
The record label says:
It all started when Wolfgang Meyering and three fellow musicians were invited to play at a wedding in Mundal on Norway's Fjaelandsfjord. On the way they visited colleagues in Bohuslän, at the border between Sweden and Norway. It was there that Wolfgang Meyering realised for the first time the similarities between the Swedish language and the dialect of the region where he was born in northern Germany, close to the border to the Netherlands.
The north of Germany and southern Scandinavia have for centuries shared a common heritage based on extensive ties of trade, knowledge and culture. This cross-fertilisation reached its fullest flower in the late mediaeval era, at the time of the Hanseatic League, a confederation of trading cities in northern Europe). In that period Low German was the most important language of commerce in Northern Europe. It had a strong influence on the Scandinavian languages nearly fifty per cent of the words in modern Swedish have a Low German origin. There was also a strong cultural exchange between Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia. Many lyrics and melodies, as well as other cultural products dating from the late Middle Ages, are similar in both regions.
This was the starting point for the project "Malbrook". Wolfgang Meyering had already been playing songs and music from northern Germany as both a musician and a radio journalist for more than 25 years. He chose traditional or original music mostly from northern Germany - songs about murder, jealousy and death, off-beat children's songs in polka style and a suite of three 'Schotsken' (a dance that is called Schottis in Sweden and Norway). The tunes were recorded with musicians from southern Sweden (from the group Hemållt) and with musicians from northern Germany with Scandinavian experience using a wide variety of instruments - mandola, mandolin, hurdy gurdy, German and Swedish bagpipe, Bohemian/German harp, flutes, fiddles, percussion, loops, sound samples and more. And so this tribute to Wolfgang Meyering's Low German heritage acquired a distinctly Scandanavian flavour.
Malbrook, in Low German, means something like "dance devil", one who dances with wild abandon. Malbrook also is a well-known traditional melody in Northern Europe; the spelling may vary.
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