Trying to explore Kebnekajse, part three;<\/p>\n
The story diverses depending on whom of Kebnekajse\u2019s members are telling it. As for the year, but it should have been in 1973 (anyhow this episode occurred between the second and the third album).<\/p>\n
Kebnekajse was on tour far up in the north of Sweden, Norrland. Winter, snow and 20 C degrees below zero (according to some). In the middle of nowhere it suddenly started to come smoke from the engine of the bus. (Later they found out that it had come water in the gasoline. The bus had probably frozen during the night when parked in Arvidsjaur.) Anyhow the bus could drive to Glommerstr\u00e4sk \u2013 a metropole that on a map of Sweden is found (if at all) between Arvidsjaur and Skellefte\u00e5, then it stopped. Totally. The bus could not drive any further.<\/p>\n
It is like a scene from a movie; Out of the bus with Stockholm plates come a bunch of really longhaired, bearded musicians. Dressed in big armyfurs and jeans plodding through the snow in search for help. (In this part of Sweden it is far between the houses). The only consolation is that it is daylight (It could have been night; the days are very short up there). In Glommerstr\u00e4sk they find a caf\u00e9. And yes! It is open so they go inside and get into the middle of a funeral party drinking coffee.<\/p>\n
An old man in the company has contacts. He arranges for a post bus to come. The equipment is reloeaded from Kebnekajse\u2019s smaller, grey military bus into the big yellow post coach and they can go on the gig (they do not agree, but probably) in Skellefte\u00e5. The next day some of the members are going to Lycksele, where the post keeps its stock of buses, and they buy a new bus; or rather a similar used bus from the sixties. Pure luxury, thought Kebnekajse, in comparison with the old bus from 1954.<\/p>\n
Between 1972 and 1977 Kebnekajse toured constant. \u201dThe bus was always rolling\u201d, sais Kenny H\u00e5kansson. \u201dWe were like a family, lived and played together. All of the time!\u201d says Hassan Bah. \u201dSome years we played two thirds of the year and had free the other third\u201d, adds Pelle Ekman. \u201dWe travelled three weeks a month \u2013 five days a week. Then we had free a few days. Gurra (Gunnar Andersson) , who had been a truck driver, serviced the bus, Pelle (Ekman) and Mats (Glenng\u00e5rd) made the bookings – then we went off again. It was a five years session,\u201d sais Pelle Lindstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n
The big yellow post stagecoach, the one bought in Lycksele, was arranged with madrasses in the back, a small kitchen, a watercan with a pump in the front. Pelle Ekman; \u201dThere was always a big cauldron with somthing cooking on the stove.\u201d Instruments and amplifiers were kept in the middle.<\/p>\n
Including hitchhikers they used to pick up for shorter rides, they could at times be 15 persons in the bus. Plus, at
\nthe most, four dogs. Kenny: \u201dA vagrant riff-raff.\u201d Mats: \u201dGreatful Dead feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes they slept in the bus. When it was warm in the summer they could stop by a lake, take out their mattresses and sleep on the beach. But most of the time they were invited to people and brought their madrasses and slept on the floor. Mats remembers a community in Hedesunda a little outside Gothenburg. Kebnekajse always slept at their place when playing in or around Gothenburg. \u201dI think we slept only one night at a hotel \u201d, says G\u00f6ran Lagerberg. \u201dIt might have been in Arvika\u201d.<\/p>\n
They played at music forums and festivals, in prisons and in schools. A whole lot of gigs and very low fees. For eleven (!) musicians \u2013 when Kabnekajse was as largest \u2013 they could be paid about 2000 kronor. Or 0 kronor, because it was often support gigs for all sorts of things. \u201dWe had very low rents, from 100 kronor and down. That is why we could do it. The only profitable concerts were a tour in the schools paid for by Rikskonserter (Goverment\u2019s concert org.). It lasted 14 days.\u201d<\/p>\n
This space is not enough also to tell the story of the Swedish Progressive Musical Movement. But a few lines could maybe be necessary (for new Kebnekajse listeners):<\/p>\n
You could say that the movement was born in 1970 at the very first G\u00e4rdetsfest (Sweden\u2019s kind of Woodstock) in Stockholm. Later this alternative and\/or progressive music movement was spread all over Sweden.: it came to include unions of music clubs (which organised concerts, festivals and started music\/culture houses), record companies (among one is Silence and the only one still around), record distribution music papers. When the movement after a couple of years became more and more politicised there was a growing antagonism between the \u201dhigh and fuzzy\u201d and the \u201dpolitical\u201d wings of the movement.<\/p>\n
Kebnekajse were considered \u201dhigh and fuzzy\u201d. When I remind the members of this fact they became as upset today as they were back then. Pelle L: \u201dWe were among the ones that started the whole movement\u201d Kenny: \u201dWe were not on the barricades but we were out touring. \u201dThey are referring to the fact that Kebnekajse was one of the few bands that actually made some money in benefit for the movement. When Kebnekajse played people came. For example, the leading music club in Gothenburg \u2013 Spr\u00e4ngkullen – got 400 new members one night when Kebnekajse was on stage.<\/p>\n
But it was Spr\u00e4ngkullen, the strongest fort for the hardest left wings, that was the hardest critic of Kebnekajse. The political wing of the music movement thought that political and progressive meant the same; socialistic. Kebnekajse played instrumental music \u2013 and therefore the music could not be progressive. The music did not have political lyrics. It was not music for the working class. \u201dMats Glenng\u00e5rd used to play with ABBA\u201d could be the motivation when Kebnekajse were not allowed to play at a club. Another comment: \u201dWe can accept your music but not your audience.\u201d Someone asked Ingemar B\u00f6cker where Kebnekajse had their political roots? He answered: D7.<\/p>\n
Ingemar is the one that \u2013 still \u2013 gets most upset to be called a fuzz head. He describes Kebnekajse as a band where all members were lifted out into the light \u2013 the community backed the individuals.
\nThe instrumental songs that Ingemar composed \u2013 Comanche Spring \u2013 on the second \u201dblue\u201d album, and \u201dballaden om bj\u00f6rnb\u00e4r och n\u00e4rmelon\u201d (The ballad of black berries and net melon\u201d , found on the third and \u201dbrown\u201d album \u2013 could actually be described as programmatic; it is instrumental music with a message.
\n\u201dBlack berries\u201d and \u201dne tmelon\u201d are referring to two kinds of people; the ones growing wild and should be left alone and the ones who need to be taking care of and get help to grow. In between the tunes it could happen that Ingemar started to talk about the poisoning of our environment with the audience. He says, that in a way Kebnekajse was the \u201dstart of the environmental movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is still annoyed of Musikens Makt, the music paper of the movement. In the paper you could read that a female member of a band took a motherhood leave. \u201dBut not one word about that I did the same when I became a father\u201d, he mutters.<\/p>\n
Most of the critics are focusing on the fact that Kebnekajse smoked hash. \u201d Well, we did smoke some \u201dPelle L. In Musikens Makt 4\/73 there is an interview with Kenny, Pelle Ekman and Mats Glenng\u00e5rd made by Tommy Rander and Bertil Goldberg. A large part of the interview is about smoking hash. \u201dWe were na\u00efve\u201d says Pelle E. \u201dWe should not have been talking about it.\u201d After that article it was the end of Kebnekajse\u2019s career on some important clubs. \u201dBut Turid, member in Kebnekajse 1971-74, put a good word for us, she said we were nice guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ingemar: \u201dIt was a fumbling attempt to find another intoxicant than wine or liquor. It was flower power. When you had seen pictures of American military police officers thrashing little girls you did not want to be a part of that kind of society. Hell no! But then it had (=to smoke hash) more serious consequences than people thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenny: \u201d It was for the good and the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
And now we have ended up in the dilemma I always get into when I listen to my favourite groups from the sixties and the seventies. I like the music \u2013 and I will go on doing so \u2013 but at the same time you know that the music never had sounded like that if not the musicians had taken forbidden substances. A true dilemma: should you, could you like the music when you know that the same thing that helped the music sound so good is the same thing that has created a living hell for many musicians around the world?<\/p>\n
The fact that you turned on, did it affect your music?<\/p>\n
\u201dOf course it did\u201d says G\u00f6ran Lagerberg. \u201dThe improvisations could sometimes be long parts where you just played one chord over and over again. Sometimes it started to happen things, but sometimes it was really nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201dOtherwise it had turned out to be something else\u201d, sais Kenny. \u201dIt had turned out more uninteresting, more like Mertit Hemmingsson.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kebnekajse toured so much and gave so many concerts that they never had time to rehearse and maybe they did not even need to. At home in Stockholm they could play for a week at the same place. They tried out new tunes, the concerts were the rehearsals.<\/p>\n
They did not have difficult arrangements. \u201dFirst we played the melody in unison, once or twice,\u201d says Kenny. \u201dThen we played the melody in different parts. After that followed a free part. And then we came back to the melody.\u201d He adds: \u201dWe started to play Swedish folk tunes 1972 and about 1974 they had got their shape. The tunes were formed on stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the booklet to the former \u201dblue\u201d album I wrote that a record is a record and different from a concert \u2013 and this is definitely true when you speak of Kebnekajse. It is something about the length of the tunes \u201dactually the tunes could go on forever\u201d (Kenny). But it is also about the repertoire as a whole.<\/p>\n
For most of us that hung around in the seventies Kebnekajse is stuck in our memory as the band who electrified the Swedish folk music and started to play \u201delectric folk\u201d. But the memory fools us \u2013 that is not the whole truth about Kebnekajse. Some of the rocktunes, mainly from the first album \u201dResa mot ok\u00e4nt m\u00e5l\u201d, were played live also during the folk period. The long instrumental tunes of Ingemar B\u00f6cker, which were shifting between jazz and rock, were also a part of the concerts. Besides, Kebnekajse had an African percussionist Hassan Bah, from Guinea-Conacry. During the travels in the bus he played tapes with his native music and he made Kebnkejase pick up African music.<\/p>\n
All the musical forms mentioned above could be heard on the concerts with Kebnekajse. So in this aspect the so called \u201dbrown\u201d album \u201dIII\u201d is the album that best reflects the repertoire.
\nHere you\u2019ll find, mostly, folk tunes but also an instrumental country tune by Kenny \u201dSt John\u201d and Ingemar\u2019s instrumental ballad of \u201dBlack berries and net melon\u201d, where jazz and rock are glued together by the Swedish folk tone. The album is finished with an African melody \u201dMariam\u00e1!\u201d pointing towards the next album \u201dLjus fr\u00e5n Afrika\u201d (Lights from Africa) (March 1976), with only African melodies. (A really good record that came too early, before the interest in Afro music started to grow in Sweden, and should also be re-issued!)<\/p>\n
I should also mention Anders Lind, who recorded the albums, before I run out of space in this booklet. In my opinion has Anders Lind always been \u2013 and is – the most personal engineer in Sweden. Anders has his own philosophy of sounds. He speaks of \u201dsound purism\u201d, and to \u201dnot record with reverb on the snare drum\u201d, and \u201dto record really dry\u201d. He wants to \u201dcapture the authenticity\u201d. Kebnekajse is fundamentally recorded live in the studio with \u201dvery few overdubs\u201d. The result, as I want to describe it, is that you recognize the band and the music on stage and on record. It is vivid recordings; when I hear Kebnekajse on record I am in the same room as the band.<\/p>\n
When Kebnekajse recorded their fourth album, the above mentioned \u201dLights from Africa\u201d, the group had diminished into five members; Kenny H\u00e5kansson, Pelle Ekman, Thomas Netzler, Mats Glenng\u00e5rd and Hassan Bah. On the fifth album \u201dThe elephant\u201d, the reduction went on; no less than three different drummers played on the record. The musicians had started to go separate ways musically; they had more interest in their own side projects and left the group.<\/p>\n
Pelle Lindstr\u00f6m: \u201dMats and Thomas came dragging with Genesis records. Listen, they said, this is how we should sound.\u201d G\u00f6ran Lagerberg had got his ears on Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock and got interested in jazz rock and fusion. Those of the members who considered the band as part of the movement in the seventies were not overwhelmingly happy when EMA, the big concert agent started to make the bookings for the band.<\/p>\n
The album \u201dElefanten\u201d (The elephant) (recorded in the winter of 1976-77) has three instrumental tunes by Kenny and two by Mats but only one traditional Swedish folk tune. The music is pointing backwards towards the first edition of Kebnekajse, and even further back to Mecki Mark Men, Baby Grandmothers and T-Boones, the bands that Kebnekajse was born from.<\/p>\n
After \u201dThe elephant\u201d Kenny H\u00e5kansson also left the band, and instead he made a solo album \u201dSpringlekar och g\u00e5ngl\u00e5tar\u201d (1978). And by that Kebnekajse ceased to exist, I dare to say. Of course it is rude to write, as I did also in the booklet to the first album \u201dResa mot ok\u00e4nt m\u00e5l\u201d (A journey to destination unknown), that Kenny is the brain, heart and soul of Kebnekajse. But the fact is that when other members disappeared, the music still sounded like Kebnekajse. Even on the afro album you could clearly hear that it is Kebnekajse playing.<\/p>\n
But without Kenny H\u00e5kansson\u2019s very special way of playing the guitar, without his soft and warm guitartone, his very \u201dSwedish tone\u201d, that I thought I heard way back in 1964-65 when Kenny played in the popband T-Bones, the music of Kebnekajse became silent.<\/p>\n
Mats Glenng\u00e5rd, Thomas Netzler and Hassan Bah started a new and last edition of Kebnekajse (with Per Lejring, piano, moog and Pelle Holm, drums) and they recorded an album \u201dVi drar vidare\u201d (1978) with symphonic Genesis inspired music. The band is Kebnekajse by name but not by music. As Mats puts it: \u201d It was a start to something that hardly was Kebnekajse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bengt Eriksson
\nThe text is a mixture of what his own eyes and ears remembers from the time and conversations with the members of Kebnekajse and other hear sayings.<\/p>\n
Members around the time of the third \u201dbrown\u201d album \u201dIII\u201d:
\nKenny H\u00e5kansson, electric guitar and vocal, has after Kebnekajse been a member of rockreggae band \u201dDag Vag\u201d (under his artist name Beno Zeno), Bill\u2019s Boogie Band and Lisa Ekdahl. He has also recorded albums in his own name f ex \u201d2177 meters above sea level\u201d (the title referrs to the height of the mountain Kebnekajse) and \u201dHj\u00e4rtats g\u00e5tbok\u201d (musical interpretations of poems by Swedish poets) and has also produced for some other arrtists. The young rockers of Dia Psalma have hired Kenny as a session musician.<\/p>\n
Pelle Ekman, drums, made a single with the (hard)rock band \u201dDyngrak\u201d and plays today covers as a hobby in
\nthe band \u201dTomas and the tomatoes\u201d.<\/p>\n
G\u00f6ran Lagerberg, bass, has after Kebnekajse been a member in Egba, later in Bolon Bata and Grymlings. After the time with Kebnekajse also a session musican with Ahmady Jarr, Hawkey Franz\u00e9n and Eldkvarn. Is today a memebr of a jazzband and has a trio together with Stefan Ringbom and Anders Forslund (The Mascots and Fria Proteatern).<\/p>\n
Mats Glenng\u00e5rd, violin, guitar and mandoline, made his second solo album and continued as a session musician with Cornelis Vreeswijk, Fred \u00c5kerstr\u00f6m, ABBA, Janne Schaffer, Adolfsson & Falk, Ulf Lundell and Eldkvarn. Has lately been playing some Irish music with the group Green.<\/p>\n
Thomas Netzler, bass, was a member of Happy Boys Band\/Bush Band. (Also Rolf Scherrer, guitarist in the first edition of Kebnekajse was a member of Happy Boys Band). Also participates on the single with Dyngrak.<\/p>\n
Pelle Lindstr\u00f6m, vocal, harmonica, fiddle, has made an solo album and been a singer in Urban Turban. Is now playing in many groups in different surroundings \u2013 as Wentus Blues Band, Leksands tunes and firends, Hay-Dukes and Lindstr\u00f6m\u2019s unmodern threesome. Also participating in the local theatre written by his father Rune Lindstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n
Gunnar Andersson, drums, died before the third album was recorded.<\/p>\n
Ingemar B\u00f6cker, guitar, has during his career played with different tupes of groups as Rock-Boris, telefon Paisa, Christer Boustedt, Bernt Rosengren, Emil Irwing, Svensson\u2019s Peace and Nanni Porres. Is today a member of the jazz club Syds (South) house band and are sometimes playing with the poet Einar Heckscher (former member of Telefon Paisa).<\/p>\n
Hassan Bah, congas, timbales, congoma (African thumb piano), bell and vocals, started the group Happy Boys Band, and has later been active in Finland with Hasse Wallis\u2019 group Afro Line and Piirpauke. Is playing on records with Cornelis Vreetwijk, Johnny Dyani, Zifa and Eric Bibb.<\/p>\n
Translated by Eva Wilke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trying to explore Kebnekajse, part three; The story diverses depending on whom of Kebnekajse\u2019s members are telling it. As for the year, but it should have been in 1973 (anyhow this episode occurred between the second and the third album)…. Read more<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":1045,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2537","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2537\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silence.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}