Everyone has a variety of things that affect how they experience a
show and thus later report about it. Most of the time one doesn't hear
about these things, but I'm going to go ahead and state mine. First, I
have gone to a few Nordic folk music concerts in the states (including
the whole of one Nordic Roots Fest and single evenings a couple of
times since then), but this is my first concert in a Nordic country.
Secondly, I'm in Norway right now as a Scandinavian Studies major
writing a senior thesis on Nordic folk music from a sociological
perspective, so my observations have as much to do with that project
as a general appreciation of the concert itself.

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It is one thing to go to a Nordic music concert in the states, and
completely another to go in a Nordic country. I'm not knocking the NR
Fest. I love it. I'm just saying that it is different. There is a
different set of cultural reference points. I think it is pretty safe
to say that an American audience wouldn't have gotten the jokes about
Norwegian dialects that Harv was telling. In the dialects. They won't
necessarily know the song that the band sung, but from what my friends
tell me, all Norwegians know. I'm not talking expert audiences here.
People who have gone to festivals over here, studied Norwegian for
several years or perhaps decades, lived here. I mean the general
American audience that just happens to have a taste for Nordic folk
music. And bands definitely joke at NRF. They are (I'm thinking mostly
of Väsen right now) hilarious. I'm just saying that the jokes and the
experience are different. I completely did not get most of them, but
the rest of the audience was very engaged and entertained, creating a
very pleasant environment. The audience was also younger, on average,
than I had expected. I'm not completely sure why I expected the
audience to be a little older than it was, but well over half of them
were between 20 and 30. I think this demographic is great.

I have seen Harv twice before, both times at NRF, the first time being
their first performance at the festival. They've grown up. Harv was
not always my favorite band, though I did think they were pretty cool
(partly having to do with them being young) from the first
performance. The band was obviously having fun last night, and the bar
was rather small (Bø is a small town after all) so there was a feeling
of intimacy; limited separation between the band and the audience.
They stepped over their monitors to exit the stage. For this reason, I
didn't expect the audience to demand two encores, much less did I
expect them to get both encores. The first encore was with Ånon
Egeland. I have no explination why (maybe someone else knows?), but I
certainly enjoyed it. I've always felt that for a good audience a
single encore is a courteous. Two encores, well that's a generous
band. The one thing I found a little strange, the band was selling
NorthSide cds. Which is fine, really, because I'd like NorthSide to
get as much cd sales as they can, but as I understand it, NorthSide
re-releases cds put out on Nordic record labels, so I don't really get
why the band would be selling NorthSide cds in Norway. Over all? A
very enjoyable show, with an enthusiastic audience. I've very much
looking forward to Frigg in November.

hilsen,
Kjersti Signe