'Harpas in the House: Skoglund & Anderzon

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HOW'S YOUR WEEKEND shaping up? Table-salt margaritas and Old El Paso? There are people having a better time, right down the street.

The house-concert scene is thriving, but you need the secret password. Two weeks ago, it got you in at Casa Lars and Becky, where The Old 78's threw down "Indian War Whoop," acoustic music as God intended it — high energy, close quarters, no P.A.

The Folklore Society of Greater Washington is also handling a Saturday concert at a fiddler's home in Takoma Park (seating capacity: 45). Elin Skoglund and Edward Anderzon, adepts of the Swedish keyed fiddle, will be concluding their second U.S. tour there.

The nyckelharpa is not your granddad's sawbox.

"To start with," said Skoglund, "it's bigger, and you play it on your lap, almost like a guitar. And it has keys to shorten the strings ... and it has sympathetic strings ... you don't play them directly with the bow. They are tuned one for each pitch, so it makes the sound much softer and it amplifies it in an acoustic way."

The result is eerily spacious, as though the instrument carries with it its own reverberant, invisible cathedral.

In Uppland and Sodermanland, the regions north and south of Stockholm, from which Elin & Edward draw much of their repertoire, the instrument was used for dances, marches and ceremonies — weddings and such.

"Most tunes we play, they originate from the early 19th century, but the nyckelharpa music has been around since the 1100s. We don't know exactly how they played then, but there have been some paintings in the churches with angels playing the nyckelharpas," Skoglund explained. "Of course, the devil plays the violin."

He doesn't touch the nyckelharpa?

"Never. Just angels."

» Private residence, Takoma Park; Sat., 8 p.m. (reservations held until 7:50 p.m.); $15 suggested donation; for reservations and directions, call 270-799-3909. (Takoma)

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo courtesy Christie Burns