Biography
Olov Johansson and Mikael Marin started playing together as
teenagers around 1980. During the early 1980's they would regularly
visit Curt and Ivar Tallroth and Eric Sahlström, older musicians who
lived nearby in the Uppland region, where they would play and learn
traditional music from them. In this way they became a link in the
living tradition that Swedish folk music has enjoyed through the
centuries.
In 1989, at a music
gathering in Røros, Norway, Olov met Roger Tallroth and asked if he
would like to try to jam on nyckelharpa and guitar for a bit. Roger
declined, intent at that moment on taking a shower. Fortunately, the
shower was occupied, so Roger returned with his guitar, and they played
for the rest of the day and far into the night. Among the witnesses to
this fateful jam session was Olle Paulsson, who thought it was the best
music he had ever heard, and made a promise to start a record label if
they were willing to be recorded for a CD (and thus Drone Music was
born).
The following summer Olov
became World Champion of both the modern chromatic and older historical
nyckelharpas at the first-ever Nyckelharpa World Championships at
Österbybruk, Sweden. The added momentum for the first CD recording,
which was entitled "Olov Johansson: Väsen." Väsen is a Swedish word with
many meanings: spirit, noise, a living being, essence among the most
prominent. It was originally meant to just be an album title, but soon
people were calling to book the band "Väsen" and the name stuck.
Initially some
traditionalists (or something else, it wasn't many at all) in the
Swedish folkmusic community showed some resistance to Väsen. While Olov
and Mikael were playing fairly straightforward folkmusic duets, Roger's
guitar definitely provided a different twist on Swedish traditional
music. Yet it's exactly the guitar chordings and rhythms that also
attracted an entirely new audience, and the band's popularity gradually
grew, along with their international reputation.
In 1994, with two more
studio albums under their belt ("Vilda Väsen" on Drone and "Essence" on
the French Auvidis/Ethnic label), Väsen were asked to participate on a
project of Swedish rock musician Mats Wester called "Nordman," which
featured rock music and lyrics but with arrangements and playing by
Väsen. The first Nordman CD was a huge hit in Sweden, and the band
embarks on two tours and records a second Nordman CD, playing in front
of audiences of up to 25,000 people. On the first Nordman tour they meet
drummer André Ferrari and eventually experiment with a drums-and-bass
version of Väsen. Ultimately, they settle on André playing hand
percussion, and the band officially becomes a quartet in 1996.
In 1997 the quartet goes
into the studio and records "Varldens Väsen" ("Whirled" in North
America). Tours of Norway, Denmark, Finland, Italy, France, the United
States and Canada follow, as does a Swedish Grammy and two appearances
on the national radio program "A Prairie Home Companion" in the U.S. In
1999 the band releases their sixth CD, "Gront."
Meanwhile the members of the
band were getting older, having babies and facing the challenges of
being a musician in the modern age. A widespread U.S. tour in September
2001 had to be scrapped after 9/11. Although the tour was rescheduled
for 2002, André's reluctance to tour and economics forced the band to
decide to come over as the original trio. The success and pleasure of
playing a new set of trio material culminated in new recordings."From: http://www.vasen.se/English/Biography.html