There are occurrences that make you feel at home, but not nationalistically at home in a nation or a country (the distinction between nation and country can be studied in Thomas Lundén’s book Språkens landskap i Europa [The Landscapes of the Languages of Europe]), but rather in a neighborhood or in an area, and because of that - because of the feeling of closeness to the close (to cattle and trees and rivers and forests and familiar horizons) -; the feeling of domiciliary rights in the grander scope; in our Universe and in our… Life!

There are also voices that talk directly to our inner being; the naked and honest core of our existence; voices that vibrate in complete unison with the best tendencies of ourselves.
There are rare, very rare, occasions, when these two important atmospheres merge in one single surge of energy… and today I listen to a music that makes me feel at home in the Universe and to a voice that vibrates in unison with my soul and ensures me that love is everywhere; the human voice of Eva Tjörnebo carried by the instrumental voices of Viskompaniet.

This CD fell into my mail slot just a few minutes ago, and I hear it for the first time as I write, but I’m immediately carried home, like the old fiddler in Dan Andersson’s swaying and marching En spelmans jordafärd (The Death March of a Fiddler), who was carried a long day’s march through the forests and across the meadows by a sad bunch of farm hands and lumberjacks who got increasingly drunk as the hot day passed on the way to the burial site, while the flowers and the trees and the whispering winds talked about the deceased musician – but as he was carried towards his bardo and towards new life through death, I am carried back into the sunniest forest meadow of this present life by the comforting and beautiful vibrations of Eva Tjörnebo’s voice and words, strengthened and contoured by her musicians in the folk music group Viskompaniet.

A wondrous aspect of this unexpected gift through the mail is the fact that Eva Tjörnebo lives right in the heartland of my own native area, in Lid, Södermanland, Sweden, near the district of Lake Båven, where the ancient spirits have talked to me on many a silent canoe trip between the coniferous islands in light midsummer nights, with friends, with my wife, with my son or when I’ve glided across the mirror of the mysterious lake by myself. Eva Tjörnebo expresses these spiritual nature experiences through her voice and through her songs, and I am amazed at how rich life can feel.

This is, however, not my first musical rendezvous with this gifted artists and her likewise blessed musicians. Klara stjärnor (Clear Stars) is the group’s third CD; the former two also eyebrow raisers that went straight to the hearts of the public. The first CD came in 1994 under the title Å längtat haver jag (And I have Yearned…) Tongång AWCD-3, while the follow-up – …och liksom vinden fri (…And As the Wind Free) (Tongång AWCD-28) reached the stores in 1998, both unparalleled in their special idiom.

The CDs – this latest one no exception – contain Swedish folk songs of different brands, different landscapes, different ages and of wildly varying atmospheres and tempi shifting from slow, soaring accounts of desolation to up-tempo dervish dances of jubilance, but they’re all permeated with that special heartwarming intensity which is Eva Tjörnebo’s; that glowing, vibrant closeness and human benevolence that cannot be faked, but which rises true and clear out of all the songs Eva does, be they sad songs of love lost, jubilant praises of a love present or humorous accounts of country life of days past. The absolute truth of good intent and a love for the material is evident throughout, making these Tjörnebo issues especially valuable. She only does what she is; i.e., she is not trying to put on a style or adhere to any trends; her intense spirit carries through all the songs and her musicians know their treasure and follow sensitively, providing an elastic musicality through which the singer moves in dancing gestures of vocal interpretations. When she sings a cappella, like in Om dagen är du städs för mig, it is a sublime exhibition of vocal purity, walking the fragility of line.

The sense of lightness and relaxation that you may experience in this music has to do with the simplicity with which Eva Tjörnebo dances, sails, flies through her songs. There is never any trace of exertion or strain in her voice or appearance, but always this ease with which her artistry shines. Through this her true significance as a singer is revealed, for ease in great art is never anything but a sign of true and deep artistry, honest in its childish and timeless maturity.

However, make no mistake; there are relentless and dangerous undercurrents in her art too! The songs are nothing but mirrored life, embellished with beauty of expression, so the danger and the relentlessness are quite appropriate ingredients! I’m talking about heavily erotic atmospheres and I’m talking about a frantic stubbornness, coming together in this frail female figure in the midst of a flowering Swedish pastoral.
In Eva Tjörnebo’s voice and songs I discover the obviousness of life that breaks asphalt and concrete with fragile stalks feeding on oxygen and photons! A forceful fountain of irresistible life wells forth in this slender woman and her songs!
The erotic aspect, fresh, demanding, steaming, craving for its immediate fulfillment, is nowhere more obvious than in one song on her last album – ...och liksom vinden fri (…And As the Wind Free) – in the song Bara ideliga älskog (Only Perpetual Lovemaking), which rises on a steady beat, gradually adding instruments and persuasion, the beat gliding over into a hypnotic, repetitious state not unlike the otherworldly feeling of the music of the Dancing Dervishes of Istanbul or the shamanistic healing music of the Gnaua musicians of Marrakech, or for that matter of the completely unselfish, ego-ridded yoik of Nils Mattias Andersson in The Reindeer Herd On Oulavuolie, even though it really is a polska (reel) and dance game from the north-eastern section of Södermanland, Sweden. It drives me nuts, as I put the CD player on repeat and let the atmosphere grow dense and thick and hypnotic as I use the tune as trance music to propel myself into realms of dimensions beyond… Wow!
The combination of keyed fiddles, Jew’s harps and Eva’s insisting voice makes this piece completely addictive!

There are a couple of tunes on the new CD that also bring on this certain hypnotic trance atmosphere, like Pannan i ugnen (The Pot in the Owen). When I think of it, it appears to me that this feeling is also a Medieval feeling of cool walls around castles and riders through the night, small villages, smoke rising – and lots of love and lots of magic, in a period of history when the spiritual aspect was integrated with the physical aspect and vice versa, when God and physical love – and death! - were truly intertwined.

A tune on Klara stjärnor (Clear Stars) that takes your whole being by the hand and leads you into beauty and serenity and… contemplation… is Sommarvals (Summer Waltz) with it’s utilization of bagpipes and guitar and bass, the bagpipes – played by Pär Furå - carrying the melody in a wonderful melancholic way of playing that in fact shows you the roaring seas at the foot of the rugged cliffs of the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Ireland or Scotland, with a sad soul of a Swede inherent in the musical expression. The song was written by Ale Möller, but Pär Furå has it after renowned bagpiper Per Gudmundsson. An instrumental gem on this magnificent CD!

Other songs sung by Eva Tjörnebo on this CD rise in a meandering, circling fashion of beauty that, pro forma, reminds me of early experiences from my youth of Pete Seeger’s interpretation of Barbara Allen, in which the briar out of boy’s grave and the rose out of the girl’s grave grew and grew up the castle wall, unto the top, where they met in a lovers’ knot.

I have cried and I have laughed in this music, and nothing in it has left me indifferent. It has made me, once again, realize how many strong feelings I have, and how love is a realistic alternative, and perhaps the only alternative, and I write this review in a kind of happy rage… Thank you, Eva Tjörnebo and Viskompaniet for making my blood flow strongly!