I don’t know why folk dancing should depress me so, but it does. Perhaps the lingering aftereffects of the emotional damage inflicted at a nyckelharpa festival in Dalarna one endless hot June afternoon in 1976. No 14 year old should be forced to suffer so—though I expect I’ll subject my son to some equivalent trauma. Even the Benny Hill-like punchline here is sapped of its humor by the plodding, dutiful, dazed, endorphin-depleting performance so common to my forebears. And it’s Midsommar! No Seasonal Affect Disorder to blame! What does it say about My People that they perform a lobotomized dirge like this on the longest brightest day of the year and yet are positively giddy at 4:30 am on the darkest of mornings for Lucia Day?
– Tom Fredrickson is the proprietor of the unparalleled music blog, Lost Wax Method.
