Sunday, November 9, 2014

A Background On Scandinavian Prog Rock

By Christa Jarvis


Progressive rock is known to actually be a very interesting and a very well loved sub genre of the core genre rock and roll. Now this sub genre actually originated from the country United Kingdom but quickly spread to other nearby countries too. It was because of this influence that the style Scandinavian prog rock was born and shot into the scene.

Now progressive music is something that stemmed out from a combination of a lot of genres that melted into one rather complicated style. Now the reason as to why it is labeled complicated is simply because there are often a lot of sudden changes in tempo and beat. Because of these sudden changes, listeners would often be given a variety of sounds to listen to in just one song which can be quite appealing.

Now the this sub genre of music is especially popular in the Scandinavian region of Europe. Now for those who do not know, this region is made up of three countries namely Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Included in the list of countries here would also be Finland, Holland, Greenland, Iceland and a few more others.

Now Denmark was one of the pioneering countries in the Scandinavian region. Probably one of the first bands in this field to surface was Steppeulvene which is a band that uses its native language quite often when making songs. Of course there are more bands that came after this like Blue Sun, Alrune Rod, Ache, and actually many more.

One of the very big bands in this music scene was of course the Dutch band Burnin Red Ivanhoe which became popular sometime in 1969. Now they had a rather unique sound in which they combined many genres like rock, jazz, and even rhythm and blues. They were also very known for their heavy use of organs and harmonicas.

In Sweden, this kind of music has also been quite popular as there were many bands who were creating different kinds of rhythm and beats. This kind of music scene became especially popular during the start of the fabulous nineties as this is where rock bands really took off. Although Sweden came into the game later than Denmark, they made really good music that actually rivaled that in Denmark.

Now another country that had become popular in this line of music would of course be the country of Holland. Their innovative bands would often copy the tunes from old folk songs and tried to fuse the it with rock elements. It is for this reason that most of the bands would produce melodic songs that would still have fast changes in tempo and rhythm.

So as one can see, the progressive scene is actually quite a big thing in the region of Scandinavia. Now one should remember that even if this type of music did originate from the United Kingdom, its influence spread to the countries beside it. Of course it was because of this spread that the genre was able to gain a lot of popularity.




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