Mary Klockeman 2989 140th Street East Dundas MN 55019-4305 (507) 645-5875 Work Samples Audio: Det var ei gammel kjerring Gamle Gulbrand Bansull To hear the work samples, Windows Media Player is required. If you do not have it installed, you can download it for free here: Download Windows Media Player

Mary Klockeman Norwegian vocal music Mary's heritage, her love of music, and her degree in Norwegian from Saint Olaf College, led to her interest in kveding, Norwegian traditional folk singing. Kveding takes many forms to portray all facets of life. There are tunes which mimic the fiddle for dancing, lullabies and weaving songs, courting tunes, bridal marches, drinking songs, joking songs, morality songs, chants inspired by Gregorian chant, and cow calls. There also is lalling, a means of communicating across the mountains, which is sometimes compared to yodeling. Mary Klockeman is a native of Dundas, Minnesota, where she grew up on a dairy farm. In keeping with the oral tradition of kveding, all of the Klockemans have learned Norwegian folk songs from Mary. Available: Year-round by appointment; no mileage restrictions Space: Can perform in any sort of space, with or without sound reinforcement, although some rooms require it Fee: $100 to $250 fee is negotiable depending on distance to travel, number of performances, and length of stay required

Additional Information:
Kveding is a style of singing that has evolved over the past few centuries in rural Norway and has roots that go back to Gregorian chant and to the Viking Age. It is part of an older layer of music that survived much better in Norway than in the United States. The reason probably relates to language: As people of Norwegian inheritance in the United States gained fluency in English, Norwegian language singing faded in popularity, but has never disappeared completely.

Mary benefited from hearing Scandinavian folk songs when she was a child. Her Swedish grandmother sang to her in Swedish, and her Norwegian great aunt (her grandfather's sister) sang to her in Norwegian. In February 1976, while a student at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, MN, Mary attended the annual Scandinavian Retreat, where she participated in activities related to Scandinavian culture. It was there that she first heard kveding. Later, she attended a Norwegian Retreat for adults at Skogfjorden, where someone put a cassette of Norwegian folk music in the tape player. The singer was Arve Moen Bergset, a young boy who was famous in Norway for his kveding. Mary was captivated by that music. She started learning the songs on Arve's tapes, slowly learning the old dialects. Later, she took lessons from a grown-up Arve. She traveled to rural Norway to meet the people who sang in the style. Some of these kveders sang as part of their everyday lives, while others were performers. After Tone Jorunn Tveito, a singer from the Telemark district, taught her a cow call that is still being used, Mary decided to try singing one. While getting ready to go rafting, she tried a cow call, and two cows actually came. One nosed into her backpack and ate her sandwich.

While in Norway, Mary learned about Norwegian lullabyes, dance tunes, joke stories and ballads, and lalling, a way of communicating across valleys. One she knows is "I put the baby in the out field and you can pick her up there later." In remote locations where telephones were not handy, one would sing the song in order to tell someone of a responsibility.

You can't really sing the kveding style with instruments. The reason is based in kveding being a free style of singing. One learns ornaments from a teacher, but typically, a singer uses the teacher's ornaments as a basis for one's own ornaments. In actual performance, singers usually improvise melodic ornaments. The result of the improvisational, free approach kveders adopt is that the style is idiosyncratic to individuals. In addition, Mary sings a lot with the Norskefolkedanslaget dance group. Mary dances with the group, and in between dance numbers, Mary will often sing her songs.