SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

LEARN ABOUT SWEDEN

Sweden’s anti-commercial music movement that took on politics and Eurovision

You might think there were celebrations in Stockholm when it hosted the Eurovision Song Contest back in 1975. But the event also sparked protests and a debate about commercialisation so heated that the next year, Sweden didn't participate at all.

Sweden's anti-commercial music movement that took on politics and Eurovision
Nationalteatern in 1981. Photo: Lars Jakobssom/TT

The reason was Progg, a rebellion against commercial music that threw up bands such as Nationalteatern, the Hoola Bandoola Band, and Blå Tåget. 

What was progg? 

Progg, short for den progressiva musikrörelsen or ‘the Progressive Music Movement”, was a reaction to the heavily commercialised British and American-influenced pop and rock which swamped Sweden from the mid-1960s.

It is generally dated back to two free, illegal festivals held on Stockholm park Gärdet in 1970, which were inspired by Woodstock in the US, and by the Almstriden (Elm War), in the summer of 1971, when hippies occupied part of Kungsträdgården, a central square with a small park in Stockholm to prevent a group of 13 elm trees being cut down.

Stylistically, progg blended together elements of garage rock and roll, Swedish folk, cabaret, jazz, blues, and protest songs. Like punk a decade later, it had a DIY ethos, prizing expression above musical skill. 

The meant that some of the bands, particularly the less famous ones, were fairly rough around the edges, at least judging by the performances at the protests against Eurovision in the film Vi har vår egen sång (We have our own song). 

In the documentary about the Hoola Bandoola Band, the Scanian blues, roots and reggae musician Peps Persson, who was on the edge of the progg movement, captured what many bands lacked, when asked what he thought about them in their heyday. 

“I thought they had really great lyrics, but I didn’t think they ‘swung’,” he says.

What happened at Eurovision? 

A biting and sardonic song by the Gothenburg progger Ulf Dageby, sums up the mood in its title: Doing the omoralisk Schlager-festivalern, or “doing the immoral Schlager festival”, ‘schlager’ referring to the simple, catchy songs beloved of the festival.

Going by the name of Sillstryparn (“the herring strangler”), Dageby, part of the band Nationalteatern, lays into ABBA and Eurovision as little better than tools of capitalism, criticising their songs for their lack of political messages.

Och här kommer ABBA i kläder av plast/Lika döda som sillkonserver. (“And here comes ABBA in plastic clothes, as dead as preserved herring”), goes one memorable line. 

Och världens melodi, förtryck och slaveri/Vad fan rör det våra artister? (“And the world’s melody, oppression and slavery, our artists don’t give a damn about that”.)

De ställer upp på allt, de tar det smörigt kallt/I fascisternas feta ister  (“They’re willing to do everything, they take it greasily cold in the fascists’ fat lard”). 

How big was progg? 

Progg never rivalled pop, punk or synth music for popularity, but in its day Musikens Makt, progg’s house magazine, was arguably Sweden’s dominant music magazine, the equivalent of the UK’s New Musical Express (NME). 

Progg bands such as Nationalteatern and Blå Tåget are, moreover, now regarded as part of Swedish rock history.

But because one of the main requirements to be progg was to sing in Swedish and refuse deals with international labels, almost no one outside of the country has ever heard of them. 

In 2000, the Lukas Moodysson film Together, about a Swedish commune in 1975, celebrated some of the big progg bands, with the soundtrack featuring Nationalteatern, Marie Selander and Turid Lundqvist, as well as commercial pop music from ABBA and Ted Gärdestad. 

How did politics come into it? 

The biggest labels, Nacksving, Silence and MNW, were all highly politically engaged, only releasing bands that expressed the ‘correct’ left-wing ideas.

The singer-songwriter Ulf Lundell, for instance, was rejected by both MNW and Silence, while the Kebnekajse, which was signed to Silence, received considerable criticism for the lack of left-wing ideas expressed in their songs, and eventually signed with the commercial company Mercury Records. 

Nackswing, based in Gothenburg, was one of the most ideological labels, releasing records by Nationalteatern, Motvind, and other local bands. 

Even more far-left was Proletärkultur, a record label owned by KPML(r), a Swedish communist party centred on Gothenburg, whose roster including the band Knutna nävar (Clenched Fists). 

Progg songs often feature people in factories in a similar way to Swedish Arbetarlitteratur, (“Proletarian Literature”), which also had a renaissance in the 1970s. 

Classics are Nationalteatern’s Hanna från Arlöv, (“Hanna from Arlöv”), where a working-class woman’s protest in a laundry teaches the, presumably less working-class, narrator of the value of standing up for his or her rights, Strejken på SAAB, “The Strike at SAAB”, by Fria Proteatern, or Är du lönsam lille vän, “Are you profitable, little friend?” by the band Gläns Över Sjö och Stränd. 

Songs can also express political ideas in fantasy, with songs like Blå Tåget’s På Väg till Koppargruvan, (“On the way to the copper mine), which features a man driving to his shift who get hi-jacked by a tailless fox, and a skinless bear, which then takes him to a posh hotel, where they together assassinate the politicians and businessmen conspiring to further destroy their environment. 

What happened to progg? 

Clashes between the hard-left and the more hippie-inspired elements of progg hit the movement hard in the late 1970s, and by the early to mid-1980s, it had become deeply unfashionable and was eclipsed by a wave of punk and synth bands. 

But Swedish punk bands shared progg’s DIY approach, and perhaps the most loved song of Sweden’s most loved punk band, “Staten och kapitalet” (State and the capital), is a cover of the Blå Tåget’s “Den ena handen vet vad den andra gör“, “One hand knows what the other is doing”. 

Getting on for 50 years since Progg’s heyday, bands like Nationalteatern, and Hoola Bandoola band member Mikael Wiehe, are like any other ageing rockers performing their golden oldies across Sweden. 

Finally, as Sweden’s contribution to global music increasingly seems to be about super-producers like Max Martin creating identikit hits for the big US stars, it’s easy to start longing for a bit of anti-commercial rebellion. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

SWEDISH HISTORY

OPINION: Why are racists in Sweden angry at history?

Swedish broadcaster SVT recently aired the first episode of its high-profile new series on Swedish history and racists aren't happy about it, The Local's Paul O'Mahony discovers.

OPINION: Why are racists in Sweden angry at history?

On Sunday night I sat down with my family and watched the first episode of Historien om Sverige (“the history of Sweden”), public broadcaster SVT’s big-budget series chronicling 15,000 years of Swedish history.

As the ice age retreated, the show explains, hunter-gatherers made their way north and established the first communities in the territory now known as Sweden.

As discovered by scientists around a decade ago, they were most likely dark-skinned and blue-eyed. Accordingly, this is how they are depicted in the show.

A thought flickers: the legions of online racists won’t like this one bit. Before even checking, I can hazard a decent guess at the caustic subtext in the online forums where racists lurk:

How dare they come up here and take our jobs before we even had jobs for them to take!

All of which is confirmed when I go on to Flashback, the anything-goes Swedish forum where bigots find their tribe.

A thread on the new series drips with the sarcasm-laden diatribes of countless “friends of Sweden”, ever wary of the enemy within, never pausing to consider they might be it.

How can SVT cast Africans as Swedes? Why all this woke, trans-friendly, feminist, left-wing propaganda?

And those are the more gentle comments. Every new page seems worse than the last in this vortex of crud (you’re welcome, heavy metal band name seekers). There are 1,700 comments in the thread I’m reading.

SURVEY:

I rush for the exit but soon hold my nose again and enter the entity formerly known as Twitter. A search for Historien om Sverige reveals another racist broth, though this one is not quite as spicy as Flashback’s.

Time to check Facebook, the festering mire of radicalisation that sucks in uncles and mothers and the second cousin you once thought you knew. And yes, angry aging gentlemen of the internet are also busy peppering Metaland with their hot takes and crap memes.

Algorithmic radicalisation is real. We can inoculate our minds with science but resistance is tough at a time when racists have become emboldened the world over and reason is in decline. The lines drawn against bigotry in our schools, parliaments and places of worship have become blurred as opportunist politicians undermine their worth. That’s as true in Sweden as it is elsewhere. 

It’s exhausting, but we do need to keep fighting these corrosive forces. Confront them in our daily lives. Don’t let ignorance and xenophobia go unchecked.

LISTEN: Why is Sweden scared to talk about racism?

a dark-skinned girl with dark hair and blue eyes

A still image from the series Historien om Sverige. Photo: SVT

So what does the science say on Sweden’s first inhabitants? Archaeology professor Jan Apel explains:

“The two groups that came to Scandinavia were originally genetically quite different, and displayed distinct physical appearances. The people from the south had blue eyes and relatively dark skin. The people from the northeast, on the other hand, had a variation of eye colours and pale skin.

“Originally, humans are a species from warmer climates closer to the equator and we mainly cope with challenging environments with specific behaviour and technology. This includes making fires, clothes and specialised hunting equipment. However, in the long term there is also potential for adaptation through genetic changes.

“For example, we found that genetic variants associated with light skin and eye pigmentation were carried, on average, in greater frequency among Scandinavian hunter gatherers than their ancestors from other parts of Europe. Scientists believe that light skin pigmentation helps people better absorb sunlight and synthesise vitamin D from it.”

My advice to the racist trolls: step out of the dark corners of the internet and into the light. Together we can synthesise some vitamin D and carve out time for real-life conversations. We all came into this world screaming, but we don’t have to stay shrill all our lives.

SHOW COMMENTS