Edinburgh Napier University

  Jazz from Scandinavia has, over the past fifty years, come to represent a distinct reimagining of the erstwhile American music form. Following the global spread of jazz through the dissemination technologies of the modern age, Scandinavian jazz musicians have progressed their relationship to the genre from respectful imitation of the canon’s American masters to the innovation of personalised conceptions and aesthetics.
The 1970s saw the establishment of Manfred Eicher’s ECM records. The label created the blueprint for what commentators now describe as “Nordic Tone” or “Scandinavian Jazz”. Through recordings and performances by Garbarek, Rypdal, Andersen, Christensen and those that followed, a new, readily identifiable, jazz sound was created that challenged a hitherto American hegemony.
Scotland’s jazz community frequently holds up the success of the Nordic ‘brand’ as a nationally defined exemplar of independent musical spirit. The cultural signposts of ‘fjell and fjord’, snowfields and glaciers, sagas and folklore are abundant in its narrative but do such, somewhat hackneyed, associations give an accurate insight into the musical outlook of Scandinavia’s jazz musicians? The paper responds to this question by looking beyond national identity in shedding light on the complex nature of Nordic tone.