Nordic Fusion

When: Sept. 28–30
Where: Cedar Cultural Center, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls., 612-338-2674

It’s not a good time for Nordic musicians touring America. The exchange rate is awful and the bureaucracy associated with getting a visa is trying. Even after the paperwork is processed, players need to travel to the U.S. embassy for a one-question interview—a drag if they’re hundreds of miles away. Even with an appointment, the waits are long, and if everything isn’t perfect, they have to go through the whole process over again.

So it seems odd that for the last nine years, the world’s most esteemed gathering of Nordic folk musicians—traditionalists and innovators alike—has been the Nordic Roots Festival at The Cedar Cultural Center.

“You hear the stories of what they have to go through [to get a visa], and you just ask yourself, ‘Why would anyone do that?’ ” says Cedar executive director Rob Simonds, who founded the festival.

“Mainly, we keep coming back for the fans,” says Arto Järvelä, whose legendary Finnish fiddle ensemble JPP returns this year. “This will be my twenty-second trip to the U.S., and half of the trips have been to the Midwest. Audiences there are very good and knowledgeable.”

“There’s something very special [the musicians] feel from the audiences here—in America in general, but at the Nordic Roots Festival in particular,” Simonds adds. “That’s the number one draw.”

The fans are wild about the musicians as well, selling out shows year after year. Don’t know who Den Fule is? Stop by The Cedar on September 30 and you’ll find some 400 people who’ll explain why the Swedish band’s reunion is better than that of any classic rock act.

This year also marks the first time a U.S. act has headlined an evening concert. Between 1997 and 2001, local musician Ruth MacKenzie’s musical theater work Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden—which fuses Finnish folklore with pan-Scandinavian vocal traditions—saw sold-out runs at the Southern Theater, the Guthrie Lab, and The O’Shaughnessy. A special tenth-anniversary concert of Kalevala opens the festival, bringing such local talents as Peter Ostroushko, Marc Anderson, and Jim Anton back to The Cedar’s stage.

Kalevala’s musical inverse arrives two days later with Finnish singer-songwriter J. Karjalainen’s Lännen–Jukka String Band. The band plays the music of its namesake—a late Finnish banjo player who traveled the southeastern U.S. in the 1920s learning the American folk songs he would later bring home and perform in Finnish.

These are only a few of the artists involved. Across the board, Nordic Roots Festival brings together one of the finest concentrations of musicians you’re likely to see in a Minnesota weekend—including the Finnish-Norwegian fusion of singer–kantele (Finnish harp) player Sinikka Langeland; the twisted rhythms of Sweden’s rising trio [ni:d]; and the Jimi Hendrixes of fiddle music, Harv.

It’s ancient music with a touch of jazz, a little classical, and an old-fashioned dose of rock ’n’ roll.