Recordings

Sundin’s and Skarpe’s collection

Bertil Sundin (1924–2010) was contacted by Ulf Peder Olrog and the Svenskt visarkiv in the early 1960s and asked if he could help the archive to collect prison songs. Olrog was inspired by the Danish book Prinser og vagabonder [Princes and Vagabonds] which was published by the author Anders Enevig in collaboration with Dansk folkemindesamling in Copenhagen. In the late 1950s Enevig had recorded and documented dossers, tramps, travellers and others in the Copenhagen area. The Svenskt visarkiv was interested in carrying out a similar project and chose to document song traditions in Swedish prisons.

Bertil Sundin, who later became a professor of music pedagogy at Lund University, worked in those days in Sweden’s correctional treatment system whilst at the same time working as a PhD student in pedagogy. Sundin began his work on the project by asking personnel and inmates in various prisons about prison songs. This led in time to him coming into contact with people who knew of and sung prison songs. Between 1965 and 1967 Sundin recorded five reel-to-reel tapes with prison songs and interviews with transmitters of the tradition. He complemented this work in 1969 when he and one of his students, Elisabeth Skarpe (1947–1992), made three more documentations at the Hall prison outside Södertälje and at the Norrköping institution.

Sundin and Skarpe recorded in total 46 songs with eight male singers. Sundin himself did not process or analyse this material, but Elisabeth Skarpe’s final essay for her bachelor’s degree in pedagogics, Kåksånger. En analys av en fängelsetradition [Prison Songs. An analysis of a Prison Tradition] was based on these recordings.

Skarpe relates that searching for informants was like being a detective. Sundin asked the prison staff at an early stage, but they were as a rule unaware of the existence of the tradition. This lends weight to Goffman’s portrayal of total institutions — two distinct social and cultural worlds develop in parallel, with little mutual cultural contact and comprehension. Every informant sang, as a rule just a few songs when recording but could in return advise of others in the same genre.

Ternhag’s collection

In 1971 and 1972 Gunnar Ternhag (born in 1948) made recordings in prisons for Svenskt visarkiv. Since 1970, Ternhag had taken part in the documentation activities of the archive, working with many different projects. In the spring of 1971, he was appointed to an extended temporary position at Svenskt visarkiv. Ternhag did four recording operations, in total around 50 songs plus interviews. In 1973 he recorded community singing in the assembly hall of the Hinseberg women’s prison.

Ternhag states in an interview that there was a certain amount of interest in prison songs at the Svenskt visarkiv. Bertil Sundin’s recordings were there — and not least Elisabeth Skarpe’s work — and both helped to keep alive an interest in prison songs. But there was also a will to document genres other than those that the Svenskt visarkiv traditionally paid attention to.

“I can only say that, generally speaking, my ambition at the time was to broaden what was regarded as folk music. We should remember that this was a period when we had to fight for folk music and its status. So I thought that we must have a much broader definition of what belonged there. And so it was a question of children’s things and buskers. So we should view it in that context.”

Ternhag’s ambition was in other words to broaden Svenskt visarkiv’s field, and perhaps in a way to challenge the whole way that folk music was looked upon. In the early 1970s, there were heated debates concerning Sweden’s correctional treatment system. Organisations like KRUM [The National League for the Humanising of the Correctional Treatment System] and FFCO [The Central Organisation of the Union of Prisoners] strove for the interests of prisoners and a humanising of the correctional treatment system. In the autumn of 1970, a hunger strike began at the Österåker prison, north of Stockholm. The strike spread to other prisons, and soon over 2000 prisoners were on hunger strike to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the system. In 1971 an inquiry, Kriminalvårdsberedningen [The Correctional Treatment Commission] was launched to devise a plan for reform of the system. This inquiry led to a new law on correctional treatment in 1974. This was an important factor behind the second of the Svenskt visarkiv’s recording projects. Many people within the correctional treatment system advocated more liberal methods. One was the director of the Hall prison, Gunnar Engström, who had assumed his position in 1970. Thanks to him, Ternhag was able to come into contact with inmates who made music. At Hall, Ternhag and Bo Rehnberg from the Swedish Broadcasting Company met two main informants, one of whom was Lennart “Konvaljen” Johansson. These two were responsible for the main body of songs recorded by Ternhag. Ternhag later used Konvaljen to help him find contacts when he visited Hinseberg women’s prison in 1973.

This method — using informants as “go-betweens” — was not uncommon in the Svenskt visarkiv’s recording projects. When making her recording trips the collector Märta Ramsten often asked, for example, members of folk musicians’ organisations to help her to get in touch with local traditional musicians in various parts of the country. When Konvaljen was with Ternhag for recording sessions, his presence helped Ternhag to make contact with inmates more quickly and gave them greater confidence in the collectors. Prisons imply, of course, a particularly special recording situation, and many inmates felt uncomfortable about being recorded. One might also, bearing in mind the sometimes virulent debate about correctional treatment in those days, assume a degree of suspicion on the part of inmates concerning a state-owned institution like the Svenskt visarkiv. This method — using inmates as “go-betweens” — was used by the abovenamed John and Alan Lomax when recording prison songs in the Southern states of the USA.

Iron Head’s major duty while travelling with Lomax was to perform Leadbelly’s original function — acting as a go-between with black musicians and demonstrating the kind of songs Lomax was looking for. Lomax apparently had no illusions about making him a “star” in the Leadbelly fashion, for while Iron Head was an able musician with a large repertoire, he lacked Leadbelly’s flair for performance as well as Leadbelly’s ambition. Moreover, Iron Head’s publicity value as a mere burglar could scarcely match that of a convicted murderer.

Recordings

Det var på våren femtiosex
Inspelad på Långholmen 1965
Text: Tony Granqvist
Melodireferens: Jag är ingen näktergal

The song Jag är ingen näktergal [I am no nightingale] was composed for a Swedish film 1930 [Kronans kavaljerer]. The melody was written by Valdemar Dalquist to a text by Nils Ferlin

 

Jag är en yngling från Söders höjder
Inspelad på Kriminalvårdsanstalten Hall, 1971
Lennart ”Konvaljen” Johansson
Text: Trad.
Melodireferens: Apladalsvisan

Apladalsvisan was originally presented at a Christmas bazaar in 1897. The text by Algot Fogelberg and Arvid Lindström was written with a traditional melody.

 

Porrblaskan/Kvinnodrömmar
Inspelad på Kriminalvårdsanstalten Hall, 1971.
Text och musik: Lennart ”Konvaljen” Johansson.

“Kvinnodrömmar” [Dreams of Women] and “Porrblaskan” [Porno Rag]. Sung in conjunction with discussions of the distorted view of women, rife among male inmates. Melodically, the song is typical of the repertoire of the period — a bluesy melody with a chord progression redolent of swing music.

 

Snaran
Kriminalvårdsanstalten Hall, 1971.
Text och musik: Lennart ”Konvaljen” Johansson och Liane.

Snaran [The Noose] is one of Lennart ”Konvaljen” Johanssons most well-known songs. The lyrics are typical for the political prison songs of the 1970s.

“What do I care if they lock my door?
If society gets its revenge.
I have borne manifold burcens before,
in life’s darkest branch.”

 

I ett dunkelt näste uti staden
Kriminalvårdsanstalten i Gävle 1965.
Text: trad.
Melodireferens: Var jag går i skogar, berg och dalar.

Var jag går i skogar, berg och dalar [Where I go in forests, mountains and valleys] is a church hymn by Carl Olof Rosenius from 1847.

 

Har du sett Härlandas gråa murar?
Långholmen 1967.
Text: trad.
Melodireferens: Alpens ros.

Alpens ros [The Rose of the Alps] is one of Sweden’s most spread broadside melody. It has its origin in Central Europe and was introduced in Sweden by Wilhelmina Hoffman, who made her living as a street musician in Stockholm. The first known edition was printed in Stockholm in 1871.

 

Visst känns det bittert
Långholmen 1967.
Text: trad.
Melodi: trad.

A particular category consists of songs in the Swedish Romani language. These songs have older origins and are found among the earlier recordings. One of these songs is “Sjun pre miro sjavoar” [Listen To Me Lads]. In his book För vad sorg och smärta [Such Sorrow, Such Pain], Thom Lundberg tells of how prisons and prison environments were a part of life for many travellers: many of them were forced, on account of exclusion and stigmatisation, to live on the margins of society whether they liked it or not. Many were sentenced for vagrancy and petty thefts — and ended up in a vicious circle of recurrent prison stretches. The melodies became popular in prisons.

 

“Vad sorg och vad smärta” [Such Sorrow, Such Pain] is one of the most widespread songs in the older category of prison songs. Four versions of the song are found in the recordings made between 1965 and 1971 by the Svenskt visarkiv in Swedish prisons. The versions differ a little from one another, with small variations in the words and the number of verses — as is usual in the folk song tradition. One of the informants called it a “true” clink song, and it is clear that it was generally regarded as common and old. The melody is of a type typical of the older clink songs — triple time, major melodics and descending melody. This translation is not word-for-word, but a free interpretation — an attempt to capture the meaning and atmosphere of the original.

 

Sjun pre miro tjavoar
Inspelad på Kriminalvårdsanstalten Hall, 1971.
Lennart ”Konvaljen” Johansson.

Sjun pre miro tjavoar is a very widespread song among Swedish and Norwegian travelers.

 

Vad sorg och vad smärta
Kriminalvårdsanstalten i Gävle 1965.
Text: trad.
Musik: trad.

Vad sorg och vad smärta is typical of the older category of songs. Characteristic is that the crime seems to have been caused by various external circumstances that were more or less outside the narrator’s (criminal’s) power and influence. From that perspective, the poem testifies to a kind of fateful fate or possibly that the crime took place by chance.

 

Stefan Sundströms tolkningar

In 2015, the project Utanförskapets röster was presented in three programs for Swedish Radio P2, with three one-hour programs each on blind songs, unemployment songs and chanting songs. For the programs, various singers and musicians were asked to perform songs that were used as examples in each song genre. One of the singers who was hired to compose songs was Stefan Sundström.

The idea was that Sundström’s somewhat rough singing style would be excellent for this particular genre. Sundström himself expressed it as if he “made old men”, that is, his interpretations not only included the song itself but were a kind of portrayal of the convict behind the song – a worn person who sang with great empathy about his life.

Jag är en yngling från Söders höjder

 

Min släkt den har ju så fina anor

 

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