Biography
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Born
30 August 1940 (age 83)
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Born In
Åre Municipality, Jämtland, Sweden
Born 30 August 1940, Merit Hemmingson is a Swedish organist, composer and singer. She became nationally known in the late 1960s for her modern pop arrangements of Swedish folk music.
Already in the mid-1950s, Merit Hemmingson played piano in various jazz-influenced dance orchestras in Jämtland. After graduating from wargentinskolan in Östersund, she moved to Stockholm in 1959 and played there often at Nalen. After a trip to the United States, she formed her own quintet, Merit H. and her Girl Stars, with four African-American female musicians who came back to Sweden.
By the mid-1960s, she switched entirely to Hammond organ and led the Orchestra of Meritones. In 1971, the album Huvva! – Swedish folk music on beat was released, where she mixed Swedish folk music with rock music and her own wordless humming. The album received a lot of attention and was followed by Trollskog (1972) and Bergtagen (1974), her trilogy in Swedish folk music. During the same period, the album Det for två vita duvor (1973) was recorded in Vikens kapell, Frostviken parish, in collaboration with Beppe Wolgers. During the 1970s, she wrote music for a number of TV films. She was on the jury for Melodifestivalen 1972.
Over the years, she has collaborated with Gloria Lundell, harp, and Maritza Horn, vocals, in the album Orgel, harpa och horn (1983), Anita Strandell and pan flutist Dana Dragomir. In the autumn of 2002, she entered Svensktoppen with "Ack du min längtan" with Ola Magnell at the microphone, and the compilation album Merit – Queen Of Swedish Hammond Folk Groove was released in 2005.
In total, she has released nineteen albums since 1967. Most famous are Huvva! – Swedish folk music on beat, Trollskog – more Swedish folk music on beat and Bergtagen, all three of which became gold records. Her most famous single recording is probably Gammal jämtland brudmarsch from the album Huvva!, an epoch-making new version of Jämtlandssången at the time. Gammal jämtland brudmarsch was re-recorded on the album Bergtagen and ended up at Tio i topp.
She got a boost in the 2000s when her folk music records were noticed and became available again. On her latest albums, she has collaborated with percussionists Ola Hultgren (since 2018 Ola Winkler) and producer Tobias Fröberg. The album Merit, which came out in 2016, is the first album with its own songs.
In 2017, she was inducted into the Swedish Music Hall of Fame.
In 2019, Hemmingson received one of Sweden's major artist grants, the half-million-krona Gannevik Scholarship. The aim is to support artistry that can be expected to have a major impact on cultural heritage. The justification read:
"Few musicians have the ability to be avant-garde and folksy at the same time. This requires a tone of its own and a unique trust in the audience. She has been gifted with both. During the 1960s, Nalen was her home, where she formed quintet with African-American jazz musicians, as well as women – for the time extremely startling. But the real pioneering was born with the great crush: Hammond B3. By interpreting existing folk music on such a foreign instrument as the Hammond organ, she brought our cultural heritage to life. With her modern arrangements, she made available a musical tradition that had been lying fallow for the general public."
Merit Hemmingson used to live for a number of years in Dalarna, but now lives (2011) in Visby.
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