Jan Johansson – Jazz på svenska

1964 • Megafon

Time to visit an old classic today. I use the word "classic" in a loose sense—from what I understand, if you're not actually from Sweden, odds are good you've never heard of Jan Johansson or his music, but in that country he was very popular. And for good reason, too; it's a bit of a shame that this album hasn't really caught on outside Sweden, because it's really quite good.

Jazz from outside of the United States is unfortunately something I'm not very familiar with yet; after all, the U.S. is where it started, why should jazz from halfway across the globe be any better? Well, there are quite a few reasons. In true Swedish style, the music is quite stripped-down and folky compared to most American jazz: you get a piano jauntily playing along accompanied by an upright bass, and that's about it. No drums, no saxophones, no brass, but honestly none of that would improve the record one bit. Its minimalist style is perfect for the tunes, creating a very personal, warm atmosphere, and adding anything else would ruin that.

Also showing its European heritage is a significant classical influence that is pretty unique. The keyboards play in a sort of Baroque-cum-impressionism style—at least, you probably wouldn't find it too weird to hear a few of these songs played with a harpsichord instead of piano. Aside from the occasional swing rhythms and walking bass, it's pretty hard to call it jazz at points.

The album's weak point, and probably the main thing keeping it from finding a bigger audience, is that what I've described above is pretty much all you get—in twelve songs (sixteen in the remastered reissue) there isn't much variety at all. Each song has the same instrumentation and similar style; the melodies are basically the only thing distinguishing each piece. If one really enjoys the style, then it will constistently satisfy; it's sink or swim. For me, it's definitely a swimmer, although admittedly it makes better background music for that reason and it can be difficult to sit down and listen to it straight through without getting distracted by other things.

Regardless, it's still a very beautiful album, a great piece to show off the diversity of jazz (and classical!) and another way to show that Sweden has some of the most consistently great music of any other country (as if you needed another reason).

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