Johanna Bölja Hertzberg • vocals

Johanna Bölja Hertzberg is a singer rooted in the folk music of Hälsingland. She started playing the fiddle at an early age and discovered the traditional vocal music in her teens. Johanna has toured as lead singer with Hulling, with members Jens Engelbrecht (mandola, guitar), Ola Hertzberg (nyckelharpa), Dan Sjöberg (fiddle) and Patrik Lindberg (percussion). Hulling recorded two celebrated albums, ”Hulling” and ”Hårdhajen” in the late 1990s.

Johanna has studied traditional singing at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm with teachers such as Gunnel Mauritzson, Sanna Kurko-Suoni and Susanne Rosenberg. She has a degree in both performance and teaching of traditional singing and is an appreciated teacher at weekend courses in singing and kulning, the traditional Swedish herding call technique.

Johanna has a repertoire of songs from mostly Hälsingland and Gästrikland, but also from other parts of Sweden and Swedish speaking communities in Estonia and the Ukraine. She enjoys tralling, a wordless singing style for the dance floor, both solo and accompanied by a fiddle. Katarina Lundstedt from Hassela, Hälsingland, has served as an important role model and source of inspiration.

In the summer of 2005, Johanna released the CD, ”Kärleksvisor och ryska satelliter” (Love songs and Russian satellites). Together with three other singers from Hälsingland, Kersti Ståbi, Emma Härdelin and Katarina Hallberg, she presents vocal music from Hälsingland.