Trettonhelgskurser
Jan. 8th, 2012 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaThis weekend, while many of my friends across the Known World attended 12th Night Coronations in one Kingdom or another I attended a very different sort of event: Trettonhelgskurser (which Google Translate says means "Twelfth Night Courses", even though "tretton" is 13), a weekend of classes sponsored by the Svenska Folkdansringen (Swedish Folk Dance Ring). Unlike many SCA events which are based around attending many different classes in many different subjects, these courses were each designed to run the full weekend. One could either take the class in dance, or in singing folk songs, or in playing music, or in woodworking, or in costumes for folk dance. However, even though most of us would have been interested in more than one class, each class ran for the full weekend, so we could only take one.
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lord_kjar and I decided to go with the folk song class, in part because I need more help with singing than with dance, and in part because of my quest to learn Swedish, one song at a time. I think this class helped with that.
Two full days of class time was enough for us to learn eight songs. Now, when I say "learn eight songs", I mean that for each song we learned the words and melody plus one, or more often several, alternate tunes for the song. Not like in a choir, where people are grouped according to which range they sing in, and each group learns a tune that combine nicely. Nope, in Swedish folk singing *everyone* learns each tune for a given song, and then we divide up and sing multiple parts at once, and then we may switch which groups sing which version of the tune, or, perhaps, some individuals will switch groups.
With luck I will make time to translate each of these songs and share them here, since it has been quite a while since I did an entry for the "learn Swedish one song at a time" series.
I will share one of them now, because the translation is easy:
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Så länge träskorna vara
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Så länge träskorna vara
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Vi dansar till månen stiger
Eller till musiken tiger
Vi dansar till månen stiger
Eller till musiken tiger
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Eller till musiken tiger
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Eller till musiken tiger
Which, more or less, means (subtracting the repeats)
"We shall dance with Sara, so long as the wooden shoes (still) exist (plus nonsense syllables for the chorous), we dance till the moon rises, or the music goes slient (and repeat the nonsense)."
Hopefully I will have a link to the tune up soon--when that happens I will edit it. If you want to hear it before that happens poke me.
How else was this event different from the SCA events I have attended?
The weekend started with a social folk dance session on Friday evening, which was well attended. We happily danced for several hours, and could have danced longer, but we knew we had an early wake up on Saturday, so we went home soon after 22:00. Met, and danced with some of the folk who had come up from Umeå for the weekend. They (and visitors from other areas, too, stayed on site, but we went home each night, because it was only a 20 minute drive for us). Saturday morning started with a gathering of the entire group in the auditorium. I am not certain what all of the announcements were about, because my Swedish isn't that good yet, but I was able to understand the part where they announced how many people had come from a distance, and where. However, I think that was more because when the first group (16 people from Umeå) stood up I recognized several of them, so was able to understand the spoken words from the context. As a result when the final group was announced (our local folk dance organization--35 of us attending) I knew to stand up with the rest, without anyone having to prompt me.
After that meeting, which was totally unlike Court at an SCA event, though it fulfills the same function, we scattered to our various class rooms. Our class consisted of 18 students (many of whom I recognize from our local folk music and dance group) and the teacher, who came up from Stockholm for the event. Her teaching method was to first sing the melody through once, then repeat it one line at a time, followed by us singing it back to her before moving on to the next line. After that she would then speak the words so that those of us who were taking notes could write them down. Because I am working from a language handicap she let me copy the text down from her (hand-written) book.
After we wrote down the words to the song we would sing it together a number of times, sometimes she would stop and repeat a tricky bit so that we could get the notes and timing. Occasionally she would specify the tune by singing the numbers of the notes, so we could tell when there was a large jump, and when a small one. Yup, numbers, not letters. The step between 1 and 2 is the same as the distance between A and B, but the numbers imply that one can pick any starting note one is comfortable with, and then do the rest of the song in the pattern--there isn't any preconceived notion as to what notes must be used.
Once we could sing the melody correctly she would then teach us the "andrastamma" (second voice or second tune). For some songs there would be several different tunes. We learned seven of the songs on Saturday. Class ran all day long, with two short breaks (mid morning and mid afternoon) and two long breaks (lunch and dinner). The meals were in the on-site cafeteria, and were perfectly edible, but not as suited to my taste as I would have made for myself were I home. In the evening, after classes were over, we all gathered back in the auditorium, where each class did a short presentation of what we had been doing. We sang two of ours songs, of course, and the dancers danced a song, while the woodworkers displayed their projects in progress. That meeting ended with the musicians playing, and they continued to play for a couple of hours as a bunch of us danced. Not surprisingly, the people who had been in the dance class all day didn't stay for much of the evening dancing, but those of us who had been doing other things delighted in the opportunity.
lord_kjar and I had intended to leave early, but they kept playing one good tune after another, so we were amongst the last six dancers. Even so we still went home before 23:00, since today's class started even earlier. Today we learned one new song, a few new variations in tunes to yesterday's songs, and practiced all of them, in some various configurations of who sang which part.
The lunch break today was longer than yesterday, because their was a mandatory excursion--a 25 minute walk-quiz combination. They had created pieces of paper with pictures of folk dancers and questions about them, ranging from "where does this costume come from?" to "which costume is not Norwegian?" and everything in between. People tended to do the walk in small groups and to discuss their opinions on the questions. Much to my delight, I was able to answer some of the questions, and when I checked afterwards I of the ones I could remember what I had answered (they were all multiple choice, with three answers to choose from each) I got 9 of them correct (out of 14); not bad for only one year in the country and still needing help to understand the questions at all.
After lunch class continued till 15:00, followed by one last gathering of the full group (and another performance of two more of our songs) as the closing ceremony. Even with stopping to chat with friends a bit before going we were still home on time to bakelord_kjar a birthday cake (tomorrow is his birthday, but I won't be home).
Oops, I just looked at the clock, it is later than I had hoped--I still need to read my 1000 and do my yoga, and I have to drive to Boliden for work in the morning (1.5 hour drive). I will be there till Thursday evening, when I return home so that I can attend my exam to get new hearing aids on Friday. Then next week I will head back there for the first half of the week, then home to pack and get ready for the Scotland trip.
lord_kjar and I decided to go with the folk song class, in part because I need more help with singing than with dance, and in part because of my quest to learn Swedish, one song at a time. I think this class helped with that.Two full days of class time was enough for us to learn eight songs. Now, when I say "learn eight songs", I mean that for each song we learned the words and melody plus one, or more often several, alternate tunes for the song. Not like in a choir, where people are grouped according to which range they sing in, and each group learns a tune that combine nicely. Nope, in Swedish folk singing *everyone* learns each tune for a given song, and then we divide up and sing multiple parts at once, and then we may switch which groups sing which version of the tune, or, perhaps, some individuals will switch groups.
With luck I will make time to translate each of these songs and share them here, since it has been quite a while since I did an entry for the "learn Swedish one song at a time" series.
I will share one of them now, because the translation is easy:
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Så länge träskorna vara
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Så länge träskorna vara
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Vi ska dansa med Sara
Vi dansar till månen stiger
Eller till musiken tiger
Vi dansar till månen stiger
Eller till musiken tiger
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Eller till musiken tiger
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Jam ta di du di deja dadido
Eller till musiken tiger
Which, more or less, means (subtracting the repeats)
"We shall dance with Sara, so long as the wooden shoes (still) exist (plus nonsense syllables for the chorous), we dance till the moon rises, or the music goes slient (and repeat the nonsense)."
Hopefully I will have a link to the tune up soon--when that happens I will edit it. If you want to hear it before that happens poke me.
How else was this event different from the SCA events I have attended?
The weekend started with a social folk dance session on Friday evening, which was well attended. We happily danced for several hours, and could have danced longer, but we knew we had an early wake up on Saturday, so we went home soon after 22:00. Met, and danced with some of the folk who had come up from Umeå for the weekend. They (and visitors from other areas, too, stayed on site, but we went home each night, because it was only a 20 minute drive for us). Saturday morning started with a gathering of the entire group in the auditorium. I am not certain what all of the announcements were about, because my Swedish isn't that good yet, but I was able to understand the part where they announced how many people had come from a distance, and where. However, I think that was more because when the first group (16 people from Umeå) stood up I recognized several of them, so was able to understand the spoken words from the context. As a result when the final group was announced (our local folk dance organization--35 of us attending) I knew to stand up with the rest, without anyone having to prompt me.
After that meeting, which was totally unlike Court at an SCA event, though it fulfills the same function, we scattered to our various class rooms. Our class consisted of 18 students (many of whom I recognize from our local folk music and dance group) and the teacher, who came up from Stockholm for the event. Her teaching method was to first sing the melody through once, then repeat it one line at a time, followed by us singing it back to her before moving on to the next line. After that she would then speak the words so that those of us who were taking notes could write them down. Because I am working from a language handicap she let me copy the text down from her (hand-written) book.
After we wrote down the words to the song we would sing it together a number of times, sometimes she would stop and repeat a tricky bit so that we could get the notes and timing. Occasionally she would specify the tune by singing the numbers of the notes, so we could tell when there was a large jump, and when a small one. Yup, numbers, not letters. The step between 1 and 2 is the same as the distance between A and B, but the numbers imply that one can pick any starting note one is comfortable with, and then do the rest of the song in the pattern--there isn't any preconceived notion as to what notes must be used.
Once we could sing the melody correctly she would then teach us the "andrastamma" (second voice or second tune). For some songs there would be several different tunes. We learned seven of the songs on Saturday. Class ran all day long, with two short breaks (mid morning and mid afternoon) and two long breaks (lunch and dinner). The meals were in the on-site cafeteria, and were perfectly edible, but not as suited to my taste as I would have made for myself were I home. In the evening, after classes were over, we all gathered back in the auditorium, where each class did a short presentation of what we had been doing. We sang two of ours songs, of course, and the dancers danced a song, while the woodworkers displayed their projects in progress. That meeting ended with the musicians playing, and they continued to play for a couple of hours as a bunch of us danced. Not surprisingly, the people who had been in the dance class all day didn't stay for much of the evening dancing, but those of us who had been doing other things delighted in the opportunity.
lord_kjar and I had intended to leave early, but they kept playing one good tune after another, so we were amongst the last six dancers. Even so we still went home before 23:00, since today's class started even earlier. Today we learned one new song, a few new variations in tunes to yesterday's songs, and practiced all of them, in some various configurations of who sang which part.The lunch break today was longer than yesterday, because their was a mandatory excursion--a 25 minute walk-quiz combination. They had created pieces of paper with pictures of folk dancers and questions about them, ranging from "where does this costume come from?" to "which costume is not Norwegian?" and everything in between. People tended to do the walk in small groups and to discuss their opinions on the questions. Much to my delight, I was able to answer some of the questions, and when I checked afterwards I of the ones I could remember what I had answered (they were all multiple choice, with three answers to choose from each) I got 9 of them correct (out of 14); not bad for only one year in the country and still needing help to understand the questions at all.
After lunch class continued till 15:00, followed by one last gathering of the full group (and another performance of two more of our songs) as the closing ceremony. Even with stopping to chat with friends a bit before going we were still home on time to bake
lord_kjar a birthday cake (tomorrow is his birthday, but I won't be home).Oops, I just looked at the clock, it is later than I had hoped--I still need to read my 1000 and do my yoga, and I have to drive to Boliden for work in the morning (1.5 hour drive). I will be there till Thursday evening, when I return home so that I can attend my exam to get new hearing aids on Friday. Then next week I will head back there for the first half of the week, then home to pack and get ready for the Scotland trip.
