Thursday, June 04, 2009

Norway's Own Social Club - ¡Ay Caramba!

Noruega, Land Of Latin Rhythms.
Maybe this years Eurovision winner Fairytale by Alexander Rybak doesn't set your salsa* limbs in motion straight away and neither does any of the other Norwegian entries, but Hovedøen Social Club do a good job in bringing some latin flavours to the Norwegian classics.


Their latest (2nd) album ¡Ay Caramba! is a collection of songs in Norwegian in various Latin American music styles. And there's three Eurocovers, so I'm happy.

Voi Voi, Norway's first entry from 1960 (Nora Brockstedt) get a sizzling salsa makeover.
Romeo, Ketil Stokkans 1986 entry is a slice of merengue you can't sit still to and Lykken Er (1971, Hanne Krogh) is an off-beat bossa samba jazz exercise that goes a bit out of control halfway (in an artistic way of course).

You can listen to all tracks of the album (and the previous one) in the musicplayer at http://www.hovedoen.no/. The album is for sale at CD-ON and other Nordic sources and also digital at http://www.musikkonline.no/. (C&C records CCD039).

The Hovedøen website is in Norwegian and English



* And if not salsa, I think there's a good ole country version hidden in Fairytale somewhere too, get to work Country coverbands.

1 comment:

grN said...

Hello there!

I don't know if you already know, but in 1996 an EP with eurocovers performed by The Janh Teigen Experience was released in Norway.

"Are You Teigened?" tracklist:
MELODI A: Intet nytt under solen
MELODI B: Abanibe
MELODI C: Vi gratulerer
MELODI D: Djengis Kahn

The tracks are "numbered" as the entries usual were in the early national finals. "Vi gratulerer" is a norwegian version of "Congratulations" which has been done earlier by the trio Kirsti Sparboe, Arne Bendiksen og Oddvar Sanne at least. The EP-performer's name after Jahn Teigen is probably misspelled due to copyrights.