Today's global hit marries Scandinavian folk music, jazz, and poetry. The musician is Norwegian. The instrument she plays is Finnish. The World's Ken Bader has today's Global Hit.

Sinikka Langeland plays the kantele. It's a Scandinavian harp with 39 strings.

“My instrument is from Finland, and it has also a system taken from classical pedal harp, so I have some -- not pedals, but something I can take with my hand to change all the strings, so I can play in different keys. It has five octaves, and it has a box, so it's kind of table harp and very, very long sound after sound.”

Most kantele players perform traditional music. They aim for a peaceful, celestial sound. Sinikka Langeland gets something different from her kantele.

“I think that I use much more rhythmical things in it. I'm damping it very much. I really try to find the opposite of the kantele's very normal sound that is very beautiful, and I also try to get the contrast by doing something more dramatic or more fast and more...get some groovy things also.”

Langeland's latest CD is called "Starflowers."It features the poems of the late Norwegian writer, Hans Borli.

Borli was a woodcutter...and his poems evoke his experiences of the Norwegian forests. On "Starflowers," Langeland sets Borli's poetry to music. And she lets that poetry inspire the musical setting. It's as much jazz as it is folk.

“I knew that Hans Borli liked so much jazz music. He was really happy about that. I thought it would be wonderful to work with jazz musicians and have that in mind, that we can also do the improvisations in the poems.”
Sinikka Langeland's next project will find her in the company of a viola player and an organist. They'll perform religious folk songs from Norway, along with works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

For The World, I'm Ken Bader.