“From Dalarna to The Orient”: Falun Folk Music Festival

Abstract

This article discusses the Swedish festival Falun Folk Music Festival (FFF) and makes use of interviews with key organisers, readings of festival brochures, and other material. I begin with a look at the intentions, motivations and negotiations of the organisers leading up to the first festival in 1986, and from there I discuss the way FFF contributed to a change in Swedish folk music discourse towards logics of professionalisation and cosmopolitanism. FFF negotiated between professionals and amateurs, traditionalists and experimentalists. This paved the way for a vast palette of musical traditions, soon to be called “world music”, to reach a Swedish audience. I argue that the cosmopolitanism of FFF, rather than being the main ideological goal of the organisers, worked as a means to an end, namely the professionalisation and artistic recognition of Swedish folk traditions. It also seems to have made the festival relevant in the cultural policy climate of the time.