David Ritschard

David Ritschard comes from the heart of Swedish ‘Folkhem’, a word that cannot be directly translated into English, but is best described as ‘the home of the many’; the bus driver, the nurses, the accountant, the preschool teacher, the home of the many bravely making the world go around – the blueberries.

It is a home that has gotten very little attention in the public eye when sensational news and click baits have dominated, as if the blueberries weren’t interesting enough to report about unless it’s within the form of tragedy. Now David Ritschard is giving them a voice and something to relate to. This is no ordinary movement of an artist; this is a tribe.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. David himself doesn’t appear like the ordinary blueberry; it is more like an image taken out of a never made Quentin Tarantino Urban Cowboy movie.

A flamboyant second hand fur coat, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots tell us that David isn’t from anywhere near Sweden and its law of Jante, that demands , no one should draw attention to themselves, yet it all makes such perfect sense.

Never have bluegrass and country been so credible and so far from its  cultural core, yet when watching David perform, it seems like he has been channeling the essence of the genre from its beginnings. It comes from the very heart of the man himself, and you can feel it. You don’t have to be convinced; all you have to do is listen.

David and his fellow musicians dance with the very soul of Nashville, the folkhem and country music. It seems as natural as putting butter on bread, as leaves blowing in the wind, and as snow falling on a cold January morning. It is clear that David’s daily life experiences are shaping the output of his music to the point where everyone finds a little bit of themselves in it, and it goes to show when people sing their hearts out when watching David on stage. The symbiosis between his life partner and fiddler Nalle has developed into something with a life of its own. It is clear that when David takes the stage, he is not the only highlight of the night.

David Ritschard is not the hero we asked for, not the hero we thought we wanted, but the hero we needed. Here is a man that pours his heart and soul out into the open just the way his heroes have done over the last decades, and I’m very sure if they saw him, they would find a little bit of David Ritschard within themselves as well.

What David doesn’t know yet is that David himself is changing society with his music and performance, for he is no longer an ordinary blueberry, he is the involuntarily crowned blueberry king representing the folkhem in the sharp staged lights of society. David is you, me, the bus driver, the nurse, the people on night shift, the people trying to make ends meet. He is the very reflection of the ordinary, in his own unorthodox way, by just being himself. A beautiful, charming blueberry with a heart big enough to cover the distance between Stockholm and Nashville.