The Voice of the Collective — the Newer Song Category

In the essay Kåksånger. En analys av en fängelsetradition från 1970 [Prison Songs. An analysis of a Prison Tradition] Elisabeth Skarpe writes that it is clear that the traditional prison songs are dying out.

“The first information we received suggested that the songs which existed were but the remains of an old tradition. The older singers maintain that they learned most of their songs when they were young, the younger singers that they have learned from their comrades.” (Skarpe 1970:8)

Skarpe forwards several reasons for the decline of the genre; modern developments in the criminal treatment system, access to radio and TV in prison and the spread of pop music. Skarpe senses, at the same time, tendencies towards a new development of the genre. There is a nascent interest, she writes: “several singers were youths who enjoyed singing, and amongst other songs they had begun to show an interest in collecting prison songs”. What she sees is the beginning of a political awakening which also comprises a view of prison culture as one of many of society’s subcultures of which is important to take note of. In a way, she was herself a part of the creation of the genre that she studied.

Svenskt visarkiv’s interest in prison songs, starting with Bertil Sundin’s collection project in the 1960s, was a part of the new way of looking at folk culture in those days. Gunnar Ternhag has said in an interview that an important reason for him to set out to record prison songs was his wish to broaden the folk music concept. The interest was shown by collectors — and, in time, a broader public — helped to create new openings for prison songs, even outside the prisons. The type of prison songs that here are called the Voice of the Collective differs in several ways from the older category of songs. Here, increased use of “prison lingo” can be seen, where the language denotes group affiliation — but it is also a part of what can be regarded as a deliberate exoticising process, using language to paint prison culture as exciting and different. Many songs are written in an openly offhand, defiant tone — in stark contrast to the older category of “sweet” songs, in which subservience and regret were more typical. The subject of the song often speaks directly of his/her life and crimes, in many cases not without a measure of pride.

In the Voice of the Collective, we do not find euphemisms that portray a crime as a breach of one of God’s Commandments. This might, of course, be a question of religion no longer having such a prominent role in society — which in turn meant that people, in general, were less certain of what the various Commandments stood for. Feelings of regret — so typical of the older category of songs — are hard to find here. Themes of loneliness and suffering are also hard to find. Perhaps the most prominent difference is that the songs express more social and political consciousness. Some songs directly criticise the prisons, the idea of punishment, and also to a certain extent the society which has created and maintained the legal and punishment systems. This change in the repertoire was of course manifest to the singers themselves. In a 1971 interview, Gunnar Ternhag asks the informant if he thinks that there is any difference between the repertoire he learned in the early 1960s and the one they sang in prisons in the early 1970s.

GT: Do you think that the songs you heard and learned to sing in 1963 differ from the ones you have perhaps heard in recent years?

Oh, yes. They do.

GT: What’s the difference? How would you characterise it?

The ones that are sung now, they have become much more conscious. They are about… they have a far more — how should I put it? — concrete content. The ones which were sung then were a little more like “poor me” and that. Or “poor us”. Of course, they must have tried in their own way to tell it like it was. But they had no points of reference… it was so tough that next to nobody knew how things were for the inmates in those days. Like it is now — eh? They had to try to do something a little more romanticised. Now it is more straight talking.

The informant is conscious of how the repertoire has changed. He makes several observations that directly concern the messages of the songs. He sees a clear change in the perspective of texts — from an exposition filled with complaints and appeals for pity to a more concrete description of maladministration. Another important difference between the older category of songs and the newer is that many of the newer songs have their own melodies, whilst the older songs were often sung to a “well-known melody”. This means that the structure of texts becomes freer — but also that it is harder to transmit and spread the songs since someone who wants to learn a song must also learn its melody. Song texts set to music according to the recipe “to a well-known melody” have a greater chance to survive and to be spread to wider circles as long as the melody continues to be well-known.