A Musical Inferno at the Swedish American Museum

Hissing bulbs of fairy lights hung above tables full of eager listeners, short phrases and friendly conversations were exchanged in Swedish among the audience as an acoustic guitar’s shrill strings were carefully tuned. A bustling crowd gathered on the Swedish American Museum’s backyard lawn Sept. 26, patiently waiting for late-arrivers to settle in.

A small portable screen lit up with “Helvetet Tur och Retur,” or “To Hell and Back” — the theme of the night’s concert. It starred Columbia College Professor Petter Wahlbäck and guitar accompaniment from local musician John Behling.

The concert guided the listener through an auditory adventure, marked first with mirth and drinking songs, then a sudden descent to a place of mourning, war and tragedy, ending with a playful performance of the lyrical adventures of sailors and prostitutes. 

Wahlbäck, who was born and raised in Sweden, immigrated to the United States in the 90s to study music composition at Columbia College. In his youth, he said he was immersed in Swedish folk music broadcasted on radio and television but rebelled against it.

“As a 25-year-old, I was not very interested in folk music or the older traditions of Swedish music,” Wahlbäck said. “It was more rock and pop.”

However, after the birth of his first child and many years removed from his home country, he said his interest in Swedish folk as a genre was revived from a desire to share and embrace his culture.

“As you get older, nostalgia starts creeping in and you want to give this to younger generations as well,” Wahlbäck said. “And since I have a kid now, the first thing I want to do is give this to him.”

Wahlbäck enrolled his son at the Swedish American Museum’s preschool program, which offers cultural and language support for young children, fostering Swedish culture in the next generation of Andersonville’s youth, according to the museum’s website. 

Wahlbäck teaches at the museum, incorporating traditional music into the program’s cultural curriculum. Thus, he said his concert series of folk tunes was born from a love for performance and cultural education. 

“I want people who have lived here for a long time to have some Swedish connections,” Wahlbäck said. “I want them to hear these songs in a live setting.”

The concert opened with selections from Fredmans epistlar — a series of 82 drinking songs and lyrical poems by famous 18th century Swedish poet and musician Carl Michael Bellman. The songs narrate the lives of the artist’s friends and contemporaries — some only semi-fictional, according to Wahlbäck.

Other notable features, including Gustaf Fröding’s “Det var dans bort I vägen (There Was Dancing in the Road)” and Lille Bror Söderlundh’s “Hur ska jag få veta (How Shall I Know?),” evoked images of summer, flowers and dancing. 

Rowing along his musical catabasis, Wahlbäck’s transition to more somber and heavy themes was marked with Sönderlandh’s “Den vackraste visan (the Most Beautiful Dream),” a song commemorating World War I and the loss of young men whose potential and lives were cut short by violence. 

“Österns röda ros (The Red Rose of the East)” by the Swedish post-punk band Imperiet continued this trend of dirge-like, morose lyrics, offering reflections on war and heartbreak. His performance of the traditional “Hårgalåten (The Harga Song)” confronted listeners with the fiddle-playing devil himself.

Belmman’s “Epistel no. 81” and Evert Taube’s “Balladen om briggen Blue Bird av Hull (The Ballad of the brig Blue Bird by Hull)” concluded Wahlbäck’s walk through hell, meditating on death, decay, shipwreck and loss. Taube’s ballad was among the most sentimental for Wahlbäck in the night’s line-up — an observation evidenced by his impassioned voice and pensive demeanor. 

Wahlbäck, as the night’s proverbial Virgil, guided the listener through the trek back from his inferno with a series of Evert Taube works accompanied by Behling. 

Narrative drinking songs about Fritiof Andersson — a fictional Swedish sailor who sails across Argentina — recounted his adventures in “Flickan från Havana (The Girl from Havana),” “Samborombón” and “Tango i Nizza (Tango in Nice).”

 The epic music cycle blended Swedish and Spanish musical styles, creating a unique combination between cultures whose spheres aren’t usually so intimately syncretized. The shift in style also accompanied a shift in mood, bringing the audience out of a heavier mental state into a lighter, more frivolous feeling.

Wahlbäck’s last piece, “Pepita dansar Tamborito i Panama (Pepita dances the Tamborito in Panama),” invited listeners to join in the chorus. The playful lyrics — “Tamborito, tamborito, tamborito in Panama-a-a-a-a” — brought the audience together after a nearly two-hour descent to hell and back.
“Even in sadness there is a lot of beauty,” Wahlbäck said. “I think there are so many things in the world that are so scary at this point. I want people to come together and disconnect from that for a while and connect with each other — feel that connectedness, that humanity.”