Once upon a time it took months to get anywhere. We use to meet people from different countries and cultures only by travel, to see them physically by either coming to them or foreigners coming to you, and this usually only transpired through the necessity of trade. Travel was harrowing and long voyages were not cut and dry experiences, but rather extended tours of survival. Dirty port cities and crossroads towns were a heady mix of suspicion, curiosity, and opportunism. I can only imagine an interesting dynamic emanated from the places where disparate people exchanged commodities, a dynamic in which strangers greeted one another far more openly with their wares, foods, and culture than with their actual appearance. Odd faces and skin colors were most likely treated with skepticism.
My guess is that the majority of bonding between strangers started at the dinner table over food (R.I.P. Anthony Bourdain) and then afterwards around a campfire, or in a tent, or in a central gathering place in town, where foreigners congregated with the locals to exchange ideas on music. I can picture it now, seeing some weary traveller taking trips from a ship to the port side, first dispensing of their goods and then making a last trip into the innards of the ship to retrieve an instrument to play that evening. The traveller walks down the creaky planks of the port with a curious looking contraption that the locals puzzle over with awe and enthusiasm. Later on the locals begin playing music and maybe that odd-looking instrument brought along by the traveller is incorporated – poorly and disjointed at first, but then later on in upstart synchronization. Eventually disparate forms of music and instrumentation fuse together and thus begins a new form of musical expression that continues to shift and evolve over time. People of different cultures embrace a new form of music they created together and friendships are born.
Such is the power of music to bring people together. Port cities, trade posts, and crossroads towns have been replaced with airports, and the exchange of art, culture, and ideas is now mostly achieved through the internet. Probably the only two things that have stayed true throughout the course of time are 1) travel is still disgusting and involves dealing with people of dubious hygiene and health and 2) we remain suspicious of people’s appearances until we find common ground through some form of cultural connection. Whether it’s music or movies or television or some other form of artistic expression, we make unlikely friends of strangers usually through a common artistic thread, or in other words, forging a bond through shared artistic interests. Then the wall comes down and we embrace people we once feared for being different – when we come to understand that they are attracted to the same types of art for the same basic human reasons that we are.
We’ve seen some very unlikely bonds form between musicians in the past. To name a few of the cross-cultural connections that jump to mind first, well, who can forget Paul Simon’s uncanny meeting with South African musicians in 1984, which led to the release of the album Graceland (1986), or when Ginger Baker, the wild drummer for Blues-Rock band Cream, teamed-up with Nigerian Funk master Fela Kuti in 1971. What about Frank Sinatra’s collaboration with Bossa Nova/Jazz Samba stalwart Antonio Carlos Jobim in 1967? Or when worlds collided in 1986 with the Aerosmith/Run D.M.C. mash-up of “Walk this Way”. My favorite instance of music crossing boundaries is when a completely opposite culture across the planet co-opts a style of music that you wouldn’t expect that part of the world to embrace. Like when Japan started producing a whole slew of really amazing Hard Rock garage bands in the 90’s and 00’s like the girl group The 5.6.7.8’s or under-the-radar Psych Rock group High Rise (check out the amazing album High Rise II from 1986). It’s very exciting to hear a different part of the world becoming enamored with music that you also love, and then to discover that it’s not just a few outliers out there that have embraced the music, but rather an entire region that has a very strong music scene producing an impressive breadth of music in a genre of music, and with great quality.
We all know the musical hotbed England has been for a long while now. It appears to only be getting more interesting when African, British, Indian, and American musical traditions all get mixed to create some intoxicatingly innovative music like Jai Paul’s Electronic-Pop, or the ever-growing Rap scene in London that had America on notice with Dizzee Rascal in the early 00’s and is still producing with artists like Stormzy and Wiley in subgenres like “Drill” and “Grime”. The whole Jazz scene that is burgeoning there as well as the Electronic-Soul/R&B thing the likes of James Blake and Jamie XX have fostered is a subject for another post, or multiple posts.
This one is about the really surprising home of some of the best Soul music being made today, and it’s got it’s own catchy name and regional epicenter. I found this group The Magnolia after hearing their song “Crossroads” on the hilarious Comedy Central show Detroiters, and as the Internet is oft to do these days, it led me down the proverbial rabbit-hole. After going from link to link to link, I came to a place called “Scandinavian Soul” (scandinaviansoul.com), with it’s own website and streaming channel and newsletter and cool logo. You can check it out here
Scores of talented Soul artists are supported on the site. It’s pretty amazing to see such a fertile community of Soul/R&B sprouting up in Sweden, Norway, and other countries way up there and most importantly, playing music that isn’t fake or disingenuous. The music does have Soul, the vocals are of great quality, almost always heartfelt, and the sounds are innovative as well. Artists like Marie Dahlstrøm and Snoh Aalegra have powerful pipes that contend with any modern American or British R&B singer. Then there are artists that delve deeper into the intrigue that is Electronic Soul. Artists like Saint Cava, Gatewaymusic, and the curiously fun group The Band Called Oh (with their equally fun sounding album “Guerrilla Gardening”) make forays into more eccentric sounds in modern R&B. This site is resoundingly cool and you can tell from the tone and attitude of the writing on the site that all these Scandinavian folk are really excited by this form of music and their future in it. I can see British artists like Jorja Smith, Laura Mvula, and Jessie Ware really inspiring their neighbors across the sea, but who’s to say that there isn’t a whole treasure trove of American R&B artists also inspiring people in these countries?
Getting back to the band The Magnolia – their sound is much more bluesy-Soul than most of the artists on the site. The rebirth of Garage Blues and its further acceptance into mainstream music owes much to The Black Keys. The boys from Ohio have had a tremendous influence on artists across the globe and I hear a lot of that influence in The Magnolia. Their fantastic debut album First Time (2015) is a few years old now, and certainly could be described as “revisionist Blues”, as well as unabashedly referential to the artists like The Black Keys and Jamie Lidell, (who have most likely inspired these guys).
This group seems to take a lot of cues from the exceptional artist Jamie Lidell, who’s album Multiply (2005) is still a benchmark for modern Soul.
The title track “Multiply”
The Magnolia’s album First Time (2015) is sexy and soulful. The album’s title alludes to some of the themes running throughout, including the memory of first loves, first times, and the nostalgia of being young and in love. The lyrics are quite sensual, and are in perfect sync with the vocal stylings. Take a listen to a couple of the stand-out tracks from the album:
“Sexual Voodoo” (yep, it’s got that greasy lubed-up sex feel)
As I continue to contend, it doesn’t matter if a band sounds like another, or if it feels like a retread of something that has come before. To me, the real question is: are they simply imitating or do they really sound like they play this music from the soul? Well, the vocals are simply beyond reproach- really strong soul voice – and I can’t help but say that at the core this is the music they have absorbed and embraced and feel in their bones. Every artist or band have their influences and inspirations, and it just so happens in this day and age that you don’t have to wait for the ship full of travelers to make it to port to become exposed to it. The world is so interconnected, capable of transmitting a vast array of musical forms of expression through the Internet. No genre is safe from being co-opted by foreigners that share the same basic love for the core of the music. An unlikely hotbed of Soul is in Scandinavia, and I hope we hear a lot more from them here in America.
