Dagens Nyheter 110723
By: PO TIDHOLM
MUSIC
Benny Andersson Band
Scene: People’s Park, Örnsköldsvik
It´s one of those nights when nothing can be lifted out of context. What is what is difficult to determine. Benny Andersson and his big band has set their scene on a slope above Ornskoldsvik, making the whole bay, city and Domsjö factories constitute the fund for the concert.
It´s a warm and beautiful evening – the threat of rain turned out to be false – the smoke rises straight up from the tall factory chimneys, an amusement park sparkles on the water and the rusty buildings reflected in the water outside the transhipment quays. In this province people have worked hard, but when the strenuous week was over they listened to precisely the kind of utility and entertainment music that Benny Andersson has chosen to play this evening.
A large tent is raised above the stage, Swedish flags fly at the top of the tent poles and in front of the stage a green-painted dance floor is built, with colored lanterns. Everything is generous: the band is large, the repertoire broad and the night long: the band plays for over three and a half hours.
It´s not the first time I see an evening performance with BAB, and I can feel a kind of shift in my interest, from distanced professionalism to participation. It could be age, but also a result of Benny Andersson’s ability to find a way to his listeners. The fact is that I’m almost the only one to be born in the 70s in this audience. Most are more than twice as old as I am, which is a shame. There is much to discover, for a BAB concert is like a music lesson.
Benny Andersson Band moves back and forth in the twentieth century and prefers to happily stay in the seam where tradition and modernity collided and new music emerged alongside the old. BAB mixes schottische, polka, waltzes, pop music, classic and traditional songs. It’s high and low, nice and ugly, it’s music made for the working people’s weekend entertainment.
All embossed, of course, by Benny Andersson’s special musicality. He has such a high level you can have without being academic or exclusive. Much of the music he writes is quite weird, but because he is who he is – a kind of representative of the masses – it’s still genuine. Andersson is a contemporary national romantic, but with a popular support Peter Wilhelmson-Berger could only dream of.
Of course it´s a brilliant evening. Musicality flows and Tommy Körberg and Helen Sjöholm excels with their voices. Körberg finds the presence in the magnificent “Jag hör…” There are many and abrupt changes, and the people on the dance floor may just as often stand by and watch as dance when the band plays one of Benny Andersson’s strange theme songs in homemade freestyle.
Then it becomes a folk music festival as Orsa Musicians get space. And stone slab pop by Jules Sylvain, followed by polka and the surreal pop by Kristina Lugn. It´s sprawling, yet strangely cohesive.