A couple of centuries or more ago, the great-grandfather of his great-grandfather, i.e. six generations removed, decided to move away from the stifling confines of a life in a miller’s family in a rural corner of Denmark and walk all the way to Copenhagen and then across the border to Sweden, where the family tree grew its new branches. He began by using Kauchuk fruit to make rubber padding on the jackets of sailors, to make them waterproof. This innovation gave him business, success and a new life.
Arild Staffan Moller, the great, great, great and so on, grandson of this miller, the surname coming out of the family’s ancient profession, known in the world as Ale Moller, was an addition to this family tree and brought with him the spirit of adaptation, innovation and assimilation, mainly of cultures. He is one of the biggest names in Scandinavian music with an area of influence that extends beyond music in the realm of cultures and civilisations where he makes music the tool of togetherness.
On his second visit to Goa, where he performed at the World Peace Music Festival, Sur Jahan, Moller is as much a cultural ambassador as a performer and composer par excellence, a maestro who plays instruments like the bouzouki, mandola, accordion, flute, shawm, dulcimer, harp and harmonica, with as much ease as he partners one of the universe’s greatest musicians, Youssou N’ Dour of Senegal, as his artistic advisor. Moller, among other things, fine tunes and tweaks N Dour’s approach to live performances outside his ‘kingdom’ of Senegal and has recently collaborated on music projects in Europe and elsewhere.
Such is Ale Moller’s reach. Governments in Scandinavian countries seek him out and universities ask him to teach and advise. While music is always the essence, the core is all about embracing, adopting local cultures of the present and connecting it with the past. Hence Moller is both, a museum as well as a laboratory of local music- local to the land he lives and performs in, with people from different cultures, who now live and work in Sweden. That is the music of the new Sweden and it has linkages with the music of the past.
He draws from the past but he lives in the real. The music of the past is as traditional as the music of the present, “as long as there is a connect,” he says during a freewheeling breakfast conversation at the International Centre Goa, Dona Paula, the venue of Sur Jahan. “Folk music is interesting when it is defining and giving shape in our own time. It should be old and new at the same time. Old is not necessarily traditional. But traditional is in contact with the old. But if we insist that folk music should be old, we would be killing it.” His daughter’s involvement in his band is important. She constantly looks at modernising folk music, which too is traditional.
Moller also highlights how governments in Scandinavian countries are investing to keep research, development and creation of new talent in music alive, as an investment in culture. He reveals that “90% of the budget for music in Sweden is spent on classical music.” He is aware and understands, though, that other genres like pop, “which has success, attention and media (support)” are an adaptation of music to suit the media and the new audience.
What remains constant for Ale Moller is the purity of the reason why he has a life of music, which is to speak the language of the heart that just words and conversations cannot achieve. And he does this by actively teaming up with other folks who have now made Stockholm home. Mamadou Sene, one of Senegal’s well known musicians, is from a remote village in the country where there is no electricity till now. “Each week a man travels on a bike through the sand with a battery to Mamadou’s ancestral village, to charge the only mobile phone in the village, used by all. This is today, 2020.”
Mamadou moved to Sweden, began life again as a musician in the tube station and caught Moller’s attention, post which, he is an integral member of Moller’s band and his work.
To Moller, Mamadou is as Swedish and as traditional as him. They are both local and produce music that is from Sweden. This is a significant deviant from a phrase called ‘cross cultures’. Ale Moller makes all cultures local culture, intrinsic to contemporary times.
This is all the more necessary because of what Moller said right in the beginning of the conversation. The music of the past was sung by shepherds, who sang with their hearts as they grazed their sheep. These days, farms have been replaced by factories and there are no shepherds anymore. So there are no shepherd songs anymore. But there can be a connect with those times and those songs by those who sing and compose in the present.”
This is how yesterday and today meet for a connected as well as a traditional tomorrow.
