Home » Jazz Musicians » Bengt Berger
Bengt Berger
Special Musician Bengt Berger was born in 1942. Started playing drums at age 20. Studied tablas and pakhawaj for late Pandith Taranath since 1964. Studied mridangam for late Vindwan P.S. Devarajan since 1968. Has accompanied major Indian musicians. Studied and played Xylophones, Ewe- and Brong-Ahafu- drumming in Ghana for two years in the mid-seventies. Played jazz and improvised music in Arbete & Fritid, Rena Rama, Ett Minne För Livet, Spjärnsvallet, Arkimedes Badkar and worked with Don Cherry for years. Initiator and leader of Bitter Funeral Beer Band, Chapter 7, Old School, Berger-Knutsson-Spering (collectively), BENT and Beche’s Brew. Has written music for a number of plays, a movie and has created a visible concert, “Van Huygens’s Principle” where four musicians did a wordless play. Was recently involved in a major research project about words and rythm in theatre. Teaches non-european music. Composer. Founded and runs the Country & Eastern label, specializing in high quality ethnic and contemporary music, archival and newly recorded. Since 2020 working on Cool Funeral Beer with 20+ musicians to continue and finish the 40 year old Bitter Funeral Beer suite leading up to a 3 day funeral celebration. Four public rehearsals have occured so far in Copenhagen, Umeå and Stockholm. A release of the music for the first day was released in December 2022, The Creation of the Final Ancestor Shrine.
Awards
Kungliga Medaljen för Tonkonstens Främjande recieved from the king of Sweden in 2022
Gear
Ko-Gyil xylophone, Tabla, mridangam, ghanaian drums, traps
Tags
Bengt Berger / Jonas Knutsson / Christian Spering / Max Schultz: Blue Blue
by Eyal Hareuveni
The Swedish trio of drummer Bengt Berger, saxophonist Jonas Knutsson and bassist Christian Spering has been working for 19 years, often hosting different musicians-friends. This versatile trio aesthetics blended natural elements of modern jazz with East-Asian and West-African rhythms and Swedish folk music. The trio was voted as the Swedish jazz group of the year more than ten times, but only recently decided to expand its format to a quartet, adding jazz guitarist Max Schultz, a favorite guest musician of ...
read moreBengt Berger: Beches Brew BIG + BAG
by Eyal Hareuveni
Swedish master drummer and bandleader Bengt Berger calls his own label Country & Eastern, a title that suggests a fresh mix of new modes of expression and impulses from some of the great musical traditions of the world. Berger claims that this label provides the best Al Dente music, and when it comes to his nine-piece Beches Brew BIG, an obvious reference to Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970), he is absolutely right. The Beches Brew ...
read moreBengt Berger: Beches Brew
by Raul d'Gama Rose
There is vorticist movement in percussion colorist Bengt Berger's music. Like a whirling fluid mass slingshot around the world--although anchored in the broad folks forms of Swedish music--it sucks in the dancing and chanting, moaning and prancing rhythmic Hindustani and Carnatic music of India and West Africa, especially that of Ghana. And it is all here on Beches Brew, one of the most spectacular records to come out of Europe in 2009. The music is sophisticated and lurid, downright earthy ...
read moreRaul da Gama in World Music Report: https://worldmusicreport.com/featured/bengt-berger-the-epic-of-cool-funeral-beer/
Jazz Journal by Michael Tucker from October 2021, Bengt Berger: folk-jazz pioneer
Primary Instrument
Percussion
Credentials/Background
Special drumming on traps. West african Ewe- Brong-Ahafu and Lo-Dagaa drums and xylophones Indian tabla Indian mridangam