Last week I participated in a TV documentary about an old Swedish folk song, popular as “Ack Värmeland du sköna”. This song has through history turned into lots of other songs, like the national anthem for Israel; Hatikva, the symphony Vltava/Moldau by Bedrich Smetana and the jazz standard Dear old Stockholm by Stan Getz. The producer Sotfilm learned that the song is “owned” and has to be paid for to Stan Getz, even though it is a folk song from the seventeenth century, and therefore free to use. I think this is very strange. Can an artist steal a song like this? Is this equivalent to file sharing? I sing the original in the documentary called Östgötavisan.
Compare for yourself
Monica Zetterlund singing Värmlandsvisan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX_seHJgTFk
Donald Byrd playing Dear old Stockholm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDq_bl0JstE
Vltava by Bedrich Smetana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8G9qHNS68s
Israel’s national anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biQtrQpyJGo
The TV documentary, Swedish TV2, K-special:
http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=1110789
(I sing the original at 34 minutes, it is streaming so you can fast forward there)
About Dear old Stockholm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Old_Stockholm
Värmlandsvisan lyrics in english: http://www.esther-ofarim.de/ackg.htm
Stan Getz needs to grow up. (And legally you cannot own something that is public domain, however Stan Getz might be entitled ownership of the arrangement he made. Furthermore it is commonplace to simply change the key if you want to use someoneelses arrangement.)