Folk is an album by the Swedish jazz group Oddjob, released in 2015. The project is based on archival recordings of traditional Swedish pastoral music, which the band reworked and arranged into seven compositions.
Note: This review was originally published in 2015 on Archaicpop.com, before the launch of Bestofjazz.org. At the time, the editorial line covered a broader range of music beyond jazz.
Oddjob
Folk
(Caprice Records)
In 1965, some of Sweden’s leading jazz musicians were commissioned to arrange traditional Swedish music for a radio program. For the occasion, they were given access to archival recordings, rare documents of folk and pastoral music.
Fifty years later, Oddjob revisits those same archives at the Swedish Center for Folk Music. In the spring of 2015, the band recorded seven compositions, all based on these early recordings. The result is what you hear on this aptly titled album, Folk.
Oddjob is made up of Göran Kajfes, Per Johansson, Daniel Karlsson, Peter Forss and Janne Robertson. It is an engaging group; if you have children, they might even have discovered it before you through Jazzoo, a project equivalent to Peter and the Wolf for jazz
Folk No.6 may stand out as the strongest piece on the album. It is probably not the one that grabs you immediately on a first listen, but over time, it reveals itself differently. It captures best the tensions between past and present, between the instruments themselves, and a piano that moves restlessly between these worlds and timelines, trying to connect them.
What draws us in is precisely that unstable connection: something chaotic at first, gradually finding its shape.
Discover next: Jazz in Sweden – 21st Century
Folk
Per Johansson: alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, alto flute; Göran Kajfes: trumpet, modular synthesizer; Daniel Karlsson: grand piano, Crumar organ; Peter Forss: double bass; Janne Robertson: drums
Folk // Caprice Records — CAP 21880 // Released October 16, 2015