He was a sponge that picked up all forms of musical expressions and could immediately use them, says author and radio host Kalle Lind.
Povel Ramel was born in 1922 and was rooted in Swedish entertainment music from the 1920s and 30s with operetta and revue music from Central Europe – as well as waltz, hambo, and schottis. At the same time, Ramel was inspired by jazz that emerged in Sweden in the 1920s. Young people began to dance to the music in the big cities and it was seen as a threat by established musicians. Conductor Hjalmar Meissner wrote the debate article "Warning for jazz" in 1921, where he likened the music form to a virus.
There was a racism because jazz came from black people, but also a general contempt where one thought that the USA was vulgar, says Kalle Lind.
Got Swedes to discover blues
Despite the spirit of the times, Povel Ramel's first orchestra Embassy Sextett had its base in Afro-American music and in 1944, when he was 22 years old, Ramel had his major breakthrough with the song "Johanssons boogie woogie-vals".
Already there, he combines Afro-American boogie woogie with Swedish triple time. There, one sees the playfulness and his experimental spirit, that humor arises when one combines two seemingly incompatible things, says Kalle Lind.
Thanks to his privileged background, Povel Ramel could travel to London, Thailand, and the USA, where he explored Chicago and New York.
He came home and made songs like "Gräsänkling blues" from 1951. A blues parody at a time when no one had a relationship to Swedish-language blues – because it did not exist, says Kalle Lind.
Receptive to everything
Even Povel Ramel's eccentric revue comedy had British and American influences. The so-called "crazy humor" was partly a reaction to earlier satirists like Karl Gerhard and Kar de Mumma, but also a product of American humor from films like "The Flying Flea" (1941).
He had a foot firmly anchored in Swedish soil. Both musically and linguistically. He expressed himself in Swedish and renewed the Swedish language in many ways, but he was at the same time enormously open to doo-wop, gospel, calypso, and scat. He was completely prejudice-free and receptive to all kinds of music, says Kalle Lind.
The committee A cultural canon for Sweden has let two expert groups – one for the arts and one for society – agree on 100 works or phenomena that will be included in the Swedish cultural canon that the Tidö parties have initiated. The list was ready already before the summer, according to Dagens Nyheter. In TT's summer series, a number of phenomena are highlighted that are not quite as "Swedish" as we think.
