Something that I find completely inexplicable is the “World Music” section at most CD stores.
Usually, it’s like fifty different copies of The Old Guys Hawaiian Guitar Ensemble Plays Seventy Minutes’ Worth of “Mele Kalikimaka”, some really old pan-flute albums, and maybe if you’re lucky a Putumayo sampler or two. Never, in even one of the dozens, possibly hundreds of record stores I’ve been in over the years, has it had even one Annbjørg Lien album, which is why I had to buy all three of her albums that I have (Felefeber, Baba Yaga, and Aliens Alive) online, after a friend of mine accidentally discovered one of her CDs in the public library.
This is frustrating to me, because Lien is sort of like the Jimi Hendrix of the Hardanger fiddle, if Hendrix set fewer instruments on fire, and instead made soft, emotional fireside music with a lot of drones. I’ve listened to a lot of “Nordic Contemporary” or whatever you want to call it, and Lien’s work is easily the best and, in its quiet way, most virtuosic, that I’ve heard. Heck, Felefeber made my top 10 albums list back in 2006. I’m sure she’s less obscure in Norway, but she certainly ought to be as famous stateside as, say, Yanni. I’m positive she could put on a better PBS special than him. And she’d look less like Captain Hook.
Note: Day 5 was Annbjørg Lien to Anton Bruckner
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