A PLAY WITH TRADITIONS // BUDSTIKKE // ORIGIN
ORIGIN
A feature of folk music traditions is that individual composers are not named. The collective is what is highlighted. Often, even natural forces or magical creatures are named as the origin of the music. A folk song may have originated from a singing girl appearing in dreams up in the hills, or a slått was learnt from the devil.
'The well-known music researcher Erwin Felber states in his work ‘Die Musik in den Märchen und Myten der verschiedenen Völker’ that ‘the supernatural is the utmost creational origin of music, the first element is not the melodic, but the magical’. Old Gjermund Skaar from Kvam said this in another way: ‘There was music in the play of Isak Jarane, but it was also something more, it was mysticism’. The music and origin of the music belonged to the unconcious and hidden. The fiddler was in many ways viewed as a witch master, and his slåtterwere troll magic that he had learnt from the under earth people.' (Bjørndal and Alver, 1966, p. 153, my translation).