Schlager (English: "Hit-songs", Finnish: "Iskelmä") as a musical genre is a covert Northern and Central European phenomenon. You won't run into it unless you're looking for it, nor will you recognize it if you don't know what you're listening to. Although it is essentially folk-pop of the mid 20th century, modern artists still reproduce the sound en masse. Even my generation has learned to appreciate this style, first composed for our grandparents. Naturally, when word of a dedicated schlager night reached me, I had to go see the action for myself. Without realizing it, I came to the schlager night with extremely high expectations. Usually as crushing disappointments go, the ones you can't see coming hit you the hardest.
Firstly, the main event was happening on a night club dance floor with a DJ doing his Swedish House Mafia thing. This forced me to recall schlager nights in Finland: there is never a full dance floor, not to mention an uncrowded bar. The dusky atmosphere of a Helsinki corner bar had been replaced with energetic people who shared in a spirit of excitement and genuine happiness. I observed no reclusive drunks in dark corner tables, yelling at fellow customers or forcing themselves into conversations to tell about how they once played with a now dead schlager artist in the 80's.
This can be overlooked though. As we have established before, Sweden is a real country in the sense that its residents aren't infused with an inherent hatred of sociability and can stomach prolonged interaction with their countrymen. However, what really shocked me was the music mix. The purity of the timeless schalger classics was frequently penetrated with regular ordinary pop-songs! Here we were having a customary folk-pop binge and without warning, Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer or The Proclaimers' I Would Walk 500 Miles would puncture the Nordic bubble like an eardrum at a One Direction concert. I was appalled by the poor playlist oversight. In Finland, the drunk corner recluses would have dragged the DJ out the back door for daring to inject some cosmopolitanism into their national romantic misery.
Then it hit me harder than a musician's dying career. This wasn't about the schlager itself, but what schlager was being used for. The greater part of the music was still Swedish schlager, which would mean the commonplace pop music spliced into the playlist was being elevated to the same astral plane of existence with these cultural icons. Seeing the entire dance floor perform its mass karaoke rendition of all of these songs made me realize the more sinister plan going on underneath: Sweden is trying to naturalize the schlager genre and extend the definition to cover all cheesy pop in the world.
Think about it for a minute: they've ruled the Eurovision song contest ever since Abba graced the stage. The Eurovision created Abba's global fame and Abba thusly defined the tone of the competition for decades. However, now that the former Soviet block is gaining in Eurovision victories, the kingdom's cultural inquisitors have to work overtime to retain their glory. The only way to do this effectively is to assimilate all other genres under the umbrella you have exclusive dominance over. My final doubts were expelled when a New Swedish Acquaintance insisted to me that Lordi, Finland's one Eurovision victor, also represented the schlager genre.
Figure 10. Or maybe the Swedes really think this is our native folk costume (Source: www.iltalehti.fi).
If there is any ambiguity after this flawless analysis, we only need to look at Sweden's most iconic schlager song, featured in the Eurovision contest of 2000. The song is called "When Spirits are Calling my Name" (När Vindarna Viskar Mitt Namn) perfomed by Roger Pontare. The song was written about the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia, but has since become synonymous with Swedish national pride. To clarify, this was indeed a Swedish man, singing a song in English about the Sami people to the tune of a German musical genre.
The lyrics of the towards the end were particularly revealing:
So bring me the power, I'll be the king of my own land and the seas/
I've got a way to go, let me fight with my body and soul/
This isn't just vocal nationalism, this is an anthem to war. Never mind Putin flexing and posing shirtless against bear carcasses, the real fear is in Finland's western neighbor. Sweden is out to extend its cultural empire by far more sophisticated methods than any other nation has at its disposal. The rest of us who take schlager for granted probably won't even notice it creeping in. Yet once this becomes accepted mainstream in the USA and their industries start reproducing the Swedish values on a massive scale, the rest of Europe can kiss their Eurovision dreams goodbye forever...
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