It is usually silly to talk about "the greatest artist of all" or "absolute geniuses" in art, as the perception of literature, music and art are so personal. However, if someone were to claim that the four greatest artists all categories were for example William Shakespeare, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pablo Picasso and Povel Ramel, I would have a hard time finding any arguments against Povel's place in that list.
Povel is an excellent example of how a great artist can be constricted to relative obscurity in the world, as the tool he uses to express himself is a fairly unknown language. Rowan Atkinson, Mike Myers, John Cleese and 大山 (Dàshān) are able to make audiences of more than a billion laugh in English or Chinese. Povel reached less than 10 million Swedes.
His music was great, his shows and films very amusing. But his verbal virtuosity was unmatched as far as I can tell.
It has been said that it is worth it to learn Russian in order to experience Pushkin's (Александра Сергеевича Пушкина) poetry in original. Likewise, it is worth it to learn Swedish just in order to experience Povel Ramel.
It is really a sad day, or as Povel himself put it:
Laj dadaj dadaj uti den korpsvarta natt
dajda hm de dystra toner dm daj di daj...
No comments:
Post a Comment