By Mette Sanggaard Schultz
It is a rainy Saturday in August, and there is a marathon singing event in Svendborg Assembly Hall. Showers come and go, as people continue lustily singing for 12 hours in the hall. New singers keep arriving off the street with wet anoraks and shaking umbrellas, while others go back out into the town to continue their errands after spending varying lengths of time in the hall. Twelve hosts take it in turns to introduce the songs, picking a theme and a set of songs they have chosen themselves. The one thing all the songs have in common is that they are included in the 18th edition of the Folk High School Songbook.
There are 184 songs on the programme, the pianist proclaims with scarcely concealed pride before the first host is presented. Clutching cardboard cups of coffee, we sing our way through the section dealing with morning songs. Among the rows of chairs there are people of all shapes and sizes. There are those with grey hair and glasses – but there are also families sitting with small children and cooler bags and colouring books. Some of those present have formed groups and clearly know each other. Others have come by themselves and are enjoying the songs from the back rows. A couple of sixth form boys have ensconced themselves at the centre of the room, hoping to hold out for the full 12 hours. The event is open to anyone, and the only common denominator among those taking part seems to be the desire to sing together.
I stand at the back of the hall and think that this is what the Folk High School Songbook can do. It can take people who don’t know each other and unite them in the closeness of the moment in a poetic context rich with history and culture. It can bring together young and old and give us the sense of belonging in each other’s company – regardless of the reason or the locus of our meeting.
What can tradition embrace?
My thoughts are also occupied by the heated debate in the media about the new song “Ramadan in Copenhagen”, whose authors and composers want to have included in the 19th edition of the Folk High School Songbook in 2020. I broach the subject briefly with my neighbour in an interval as we wait for the next host.
The debate centres around the relation between tradition and renewal, for can a song that describes the festival of another religion be linked to the tradition that has brought us together in Svendborg’s assembly hall? This is a tradition that, with Grundtvig, originally took a Christian view of life as its starting point. We started the day with Ingemann’s morning song “Gud ske tak og lov” (Give thanks and praise to God).
I send a knowing glance at my neighbour and think that this tradition has already become vastly broader – far more so than many people in their fervent agitation seem to remember.
Mette Sanggaard Schultz
We are well into the third hour, when the local theatre director presents Poul Henningsen’s “I dit korte liv” (In your brief life). And suddenly we are singing with gusto: “Alle som påstår, der findes mer, gir os veksler uden underskrift” (And if you’re claiming there’s more than this life, give me a cheque that is signed and blank). With no reservations at all. I send a knowing glance at my neighbour and think that this tradition has already become vastly broader – far more so than many people in their fervent agitation seem to remember. Just as they have probably forgotten the wave of protest that arose when Poul Henningsen’s song was first admitted into the songbook.
The tradition cannot be defined by simple parameters. It is not monophonic but highly polyphonic.
The Folk High School Songbook and social change
Working with the 19th edition of the songbook, thoughts about tradition and renewal have been the focus of many discussions on the committee. In fact, part of its mandate is to find a balance between the two. And to ensure that the tradition should continue to be characterised by songs with existential and philosophical resonance, by popular preferences, by songs linked to the folk high school tradition and by seasonal songs with a lyrical approach to nature. It also mentions the desirability of having contributions from other cultures that have come to Denmark, and it emphasises that globalisation is a factor that has to be reflected in the songbook.
The Folk High School Songbook reflects changes in society, and in the first section of the book we can already hear the crowing of the cock and the clatter of milk churns. But we also find ourselves eating ryebread and cheese with our coffee, looking at shiny morning buses and travelling over slimline suspension bridges. We meet human life as it has shaped itself for those of us living in Denmark at different times and in different places. A renewal of the tradition has to relate to the time we now live in and incorporate new views and forms of life, which can stand side by side with old ones.
It seems to me that we on the committee have to take account of things as they actually are and not only of things that, seen from a subjective or political vantagepoint, ought to be. For example, isn’t it natural for us to sing about life in a family where parents have separated, which is a reality for many Danes today, even though we would not exactly celebrate divorce as a feature of modern life?
Selection
In the assembly hall we are now singing Hans Christian Andersen’s “I Danmark er jeg født” (In Denmark I was born), and this reminds me that, when it first arose, the tradition of singing folk high school songs had an ideological (political) purpose, namely to create links between citizens and the new nation state – to forge them into a people.
The songs of the Folk High School Songbook do not only reflect our culture and our sense of ourselves. No, they also play a part in creating and developing them. They do not simply portray the progress of history; they also actively shape it. This makes renewal also a delicate and potentially controversial matter, which can suddenly arouse the interest of all Danish media, not to mention some international media, too.
The question of tradition and renewal have to simultaneously address what is and what ought to be. The task of renewing a tradition has to have both a descriptive and a normative purpose.
The songs of the Folk High School Songbook do not only reflect our culture and our sense of ourselves. No, they also play a part in creating and developing them.
Mette Sanggaard Schultz
The same goes for the selection of songs. Just like language itself, the song tradition lives its own diversified life. In working towards a new edition of the Folk High School Songbook, we take usage into account, but the selection in itself does not come down to popular preference. It is not a matter of finding out which 600 songs are the most popular. On the contrary, the songbook is curated by a committee set up for the purpose, which is expected to actively influence the tradition by focusing on the maintenance of both poetic and musical quality. And with a suitable regard for popular usage. Behind this, there is an elitist agenda, which derives from the wish to feed the nation’s people with quality. In this sense, our work is normative, and we are very conscious of selecting songs we feel ought to be sung.
Relevance and context
During a break, one of the sixth formers asks me whether it is not difficult to choose those songs that have to be excluded. I assure him that this is the most difficult thing. I cannot go into this in any depth before the singing once again resumes in the hall. “Den danske sang er en ung blond pige” (Our Danish song is a young blonde maiden) rings round the room providing a clear commentary to our interval chat.
This iconic song has also been at the centre of a media furore. A female teacher with an ethnic background that was not Danish had complained about the choice of this particular song at an internal meeting at her teaching establishment, because she felt as though she was not included in it. The attention generated by this case was not as a result of the complaint itself but because the school’s management had subsequently presented her with their apologies.
Textual analysis ought to be able to convince most people that the case rests on a misunderstanding, since the ‘young blonde maiden’ is being used as a metaphor for the Danish song, not as a definition of Danishness. Nevertheless, it provided an opportunity to remind people that songs have to be understood in their historical context.
However, even though all songs can make sense in a historical context, some songs still have to be excluded, if the book is not to become overlong. So why not this song, which apparently no longer speaks to everyone? Someone, at least, felt herself not included in the singing ‘we’ – and this led others to apologise, presumably because the aim of the communal singing was precisely to create cohesion in the group.
It is unlikely that the song will be dropped. It is still used and loved by many people, and a song’s lack of relevance shows itself primarily in practice, in the fact that we no longer sing it. This, then, is the most important criteria when a song is to be excluded. To use a judgement based on principle to remove from the tradition songs that are frequently used would be seriously controversial. The task of finding songs that have to be omitted is, then, less of a normative exercise.
Renewal of form and content
The task of renewing The Folk High School Songbook involves the development of new communal songs. Seminars are held with invited artists, who are not necessarily already part of the tradition for communal singing but who work to create new forms, both textually and musically. This is an active attempt to shape the tradition to take communal singing into pastures new. Pastures where it would not necessarily get to on its own.
“Ramadan in Copenhagen” is a song that developed out of one of these seminars. Another is “Lille mand” (Little man), written by the poets Peter Laugesen and Janus Kodal to music by the jazz saxophonist Hans Ulrik. Its jazzy idiom in particular is a break with tradition and challenges our idea of what can be used as a communal song.
Seminars are held with invited artists, who are not necessarily already part of the tradition for communal singing but who work to create new forms, both textually and musically.
Mette Sanggaard Schultz
This was a song that I had the nerve to propose as a host last time the annual ‘Marathon Song’ event was held. Afterwards, I received a handwritten letter from an elderly woman, who expressed in meticulous script a clear message. We had no need of songs such as “Little man” in the next edition of the songbook. My mother agreed. The song was impossible to sing. The funny thing is that children at efterskole and young people at folk high schools have no difficulty getting their tongues around it.
Renewal is not only about content. Our task is also to push the limits of the form – not with all 600 songs, but maybe with six.
What is new and what is significant
Loads of communal songs are written within the framework of the current tradition. Songs that resemble those we know in their content and their form. In working to renew the tradition, new songs are not adopted simply because they are new. On the contrary, our focus is either on songs that say something new in a significant way or those that say something significant in a new way. There ought to be a genuine renewal of content or form – not just an unthinking continuance of the tradition.
When I leave the assembly hall, the sun has gone down. The moist feel of rain still hangs around street corners, just as the notes of the day’s many songs continue to haunt my ears. With renewed energy, I return home and on the way, I think how difficult it is to hit the balance between tradition and renewal. Nevertheless, we will soon have made the attempt. And, in all likelihood, we will only have managed to hit it if one half of the population screams about too much renewal while the other half blames us for keeping too tightly to tradition.
Most of all, however, I want to hold onto the hope that the people of Svendborg who have song in their hearts, whatever their age or origin, may continue to meet and sing together in their assembly hall.