An emerging talent in contemporary Swedish folk music.
Sara Parkman has found a way of embracing Swedish traditions in thoughtful and unexpected ways. The strong melodies and huge cinematic moments in her source material has made the violinist, singer and composer a breakout star on the contemporary Swedish folk music scene.
Her music can be heard pulsating through the foggy depths of nordic forests during nocturnal rave parties, but it also contains moments of stark intimacy, where the sounds of the acoustic instruments and the human voice is all that matters. During her performance at Blå in March, we were completely blown away by the power of her voice, her stage presence and the emotional thrust of her music. The very next day, we contacted Sara Parkman about returning to Oslo World.
Parkman made her debut with Sara Parkmans Skog in 2016, and was awarded the prize for “Artist of the year” at the Folk & Världsmusikgalan, a Swedish celebration of global traditional music. Several albums and distinctions followed which includes nominations at the Swedish Grammy, the biggest Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter’s Culture Prize, as well as her albums Matriarkerna (2017) and Vesper (2019).
In 2022, the album Eros, agape, phila dropped. The three different words for love found in Ancient Greek are a vantage point for musical explorations of desire, tenderness, friendship and familial love. This album, as well as on the 2023 release Funeral Folk, which is a collaboration with Maria w Horn, Parkman comes across as a cultural omnivore, looking outside the tradition, finding inspiration in everything from biblical texts to comic books and TV shows, high art, kitsch and pop music. Huge contrasts, but in Sara Parkman's music, there is always a strong sense of hope in the emotional and stylistic maelstrom.
