Arts & Entertainment
Mixing of Cultures: Learning Swedish Tunes
Ryan and Ken Koons are Common Ground Veterans, but fairly new to the Swedish music scene. Hear some of the collaborations they've performed with natives Olga Prokuina and Göran Olsson.
What do a Russian teenager, a graduate student in ethnomusicology, his father, and a 55-year-old Swedish native have in common?
Answer: Common Ground on the Hill.
Three years ago, Olga Prokuina, 15, Ryan and Ken Koons, and Göran Olsson met at the camp at McDaniel College and since have been playing traditional Jämtland music, which is Olsson’s home region of Sweden.
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“We follow [Olsson],” Ryan Koons said. “He is the traditional Jämtland tradition bearer.”
The Koons, with their background in Celtic and traditional folk styles, advanced quickly in learning the music, but with Ryan attending UCLA, their practices have dwindled from once a month to only the holidays.
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But the foursome returns to Common Ground every year to immerse themselves in Jämtland music and those who appreciate it.
“This experience here is exceptional, it’s absolutely something outside normal life,” Olsson said.
Olsson also said, and the other members of the group agreed, that music on some level is something everyone should experience.
“It’s my yoga,” he said. “If I’m coming home from a long day of work, and I take up my fiddle, the stress melts away.”
Prokuina suggested playing in the dark.
“You hear the music better, then you’re not distracted by everything that’s going on,” she said. “You close your eyes and just listen to what you’re playing, you’re not really paying attention to anything else but your music.”
