Blacknuss 30th anniversary

Blacknuss is a Swedish classic. A well known band is now celebrating its 30th anniversary and you all are welcome to celebrate it with them! Tag along for a night full of nostalgia and music that lifts your spirits.

If you had taken Polaroid pictures of the boldest nightlife in Stockholm in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you would have seen different worlds even though only a few years had passed between. The black rockers, new wave hipsters and troubadours who were regulars at Stureplans bars and rock’s Mecca Ritz were suddenly hanging out at Fasching on Kungsgatan, and around them a bunch of rascals and cats were eagerly botanising dancing jazz, funk and hip hop. The explanation for the change is spelled Blacknuss; the club of the same name, run by Martin Jonsson and Conny C. Lindström and the band anchored by Jonsson behind the drum kit. Different kinds of black music have always received love in different corners of Sweden since at least the days of Louis Armstrong, but few have made it all come together like the Blacknuss collective.

“Today on this program you will hear gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz. All those are just labels. We know that music is music… All of our people have got a soul, our experience determines the texture, the tastes and the sounds of our soul” – Jesse Jackson

The words above are from Jesse Jackson’s opening speech at the legendary Wattstax festival in Los Angeles in August 1972. Twenty years later, the Blacknuss collective – which over the years came to involve such a grotesquely bold mix of Sweden’s elite artists and musicians active in jazz, soul, rap, r’n’b and dance music; from Titiyo to Stophen Simmonds, Jennifer Brown, ADL, Esbjörn Svensson, Desmond Foster, Christian Falk, Malando Gassama, Lisa Nilsson, Per “Ruskträsk” Johansson, Goran Kajfes and Jonas Kullhammar – was in practice. The core of the gang that held court at Fasching – initially jazz funk at breakneck speed from start to finish – also became the gang that came to tour on musical missionary work, and they had already honed their skills by giving Eric Gadd, Lisa Nilsson and Titiyo svintajt framing around the turn of the eighties and nineties.

“I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard.
flip it – now it’s a daily word” – Rakim

It’s almost hard to grasp how much has changed since before Blacknuss kicked off. Of course, the forces that brought about Blackness were strong, and Sweden had sooner or later learned to dance to a different tune. But the gang that gathered on Thursday nights at the jazz shack on Kungsgatan 63 managed to tie together things we take for granted today on the radio, in clubs and bars, but which were then fragmented. When Martin and Conny approached Fasching, it was a venerable cultural institution with heavy bookings in jazz but without a corresponding or even decent dance floor to back it up; when Blacknuss eventually checked out of having a regular club at Fasching half a decade later, they had taught half of Sweden to dance to soul, disco and r’n’b -and built a bridge between the funk and jazz that golden-era hip hop had sprung from and contemporary black dance music. The name – suggested by Conny, taken from Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s hypnotic 1972 album peppered with jazz covers of soul songs – gave free rein to improvisational play between skilled musicians, inventive producers, messy DJs and boiling floors. Early on, a core group of musicians crystallized; out of the core grew record plans, the plans leading to full-lengths that turned Swedish-recorded versions of odd and sometimes overlooked soul and disco tunes into instant dance-floor starters nationwide. Black dance music is commonplace in Stockholm and Sweden thanks to the team that played on the albums Made in Sweden (1994), Allstars (1996) and 3 (2000). On the compilation album Gold – A Decade Of Soul, Jazz & R’n’B (2004) where the Alchemists couldn’t stop themselves from just compiling old gold but threw in new material.

Selam was born at Fasching in the late 1990s. That the place was open to new ideas and impulses at the time is largely thanks to Blacknut. So we look at it like a child proudly looks at a cool older sibling. Blacknuss’ curiosity and inability to ever let go of music, to play backwards in history and forwards towards the future with black music as a muse is what has given us Sweden’s funkiest gang. WE are happy for that curiosity and that it spoils us with gold. Thanks for the first thirty years Blacknuss, keep on keepin’ on!

Martin Jonsson – drums
Desmond Foster – bass
Chuck Anthony – guitar
Johan Lyander – keyboards
Tore Berglund – saxophone
Mats Äleklint – trombone
Albin Grahn – trumpet
Axel Fagerberg – percussion
Mary N’Diaye – vocals
Prince Prime Mpedzisi – vocals
+ guests

In collaboration with Konserthuset Stockholm

Tickets can be bought on Konserthuset website.

Place: Hötorget, Stockholm
Price: 390 SEK
Date: 18. 09. 2022
Time: 19:00

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