Blowing up a storm

For forty years they have been seen everywhere, in every situation. Or heard, rather. Playing well is not important for ”LiTHe Blås” – having fun is. All the time.

“This is a band you join, but never leave,” says Henrik Engström, tenor saxophonist who has been blowing strong since 2006 (and who can be seen in the final picture in this article).

There is nothing about leaving in the 1973 constitution of LiTHe Blås (the Wind Corps of Linköping Faculty of Science and Engineering). When the students of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, following good union procedure, decided to start up a big band, they were thinking of 20 musicians. Tops.
Now there are 636 names on the membership rolls.

“Active band members can’t number more than 50 – exactly the number that can fit on a bus after we have taken a few seats out to make room for the bar,” Engström says.

The old folks drain away to their own section, LiTHE Grås, but they are allowed to join whatever they want, like Sunday rehearsals or playing at union dinners, and they love doing that.
A little while ago LiTHe Blås celebrated their 40th year with a big party in Kårallen and an anniversary concert with full orchestra on stage. So, 500 celebrated; half of them were old members and a fair number fished out their instruments. The joint was jumpin’!

What is it that keeps this ”institution”, LiTHe Blås so vibrant?
“We’re so weird that no-one can help stopping to listen for a while. We are active during rush week; people see how much fun the band members have and that entices them into joining."

LiTHe Blås has never had any trouble attracting members. This is due in part to the fact that the band does not require an audition, just a creatively written application, containing something completely off the wall. Handwritten? Preferably. Cool drawings? Yes please, perhaps a biscuit stuck to the letter…
And those who do not play an instrument can join BlåsYran, the dance troupe.

“We keep the applications – all of them. That’s a lot of binders over the years,” says Engström, who for a number of years has been the society’s “literary expert”.

LiTHe Blås is a musical society whose constitution does not have a single word on musical quality. Traditionally they do not even tune their instruments when they start a show. Neither do they plan in advance what they are going to play or what jokes or banter they might use. A few suitcases full of junk, suitable props, usually inspire the humour.

“We want to have fun and we want people to see we are having fun. There has to be some pep and spirit to it, gags and intelligent humour.”

Oh!? Intelligent?
"Yes … a bit sleazy, a bit dirty, a bit gross,” Engström explains.

If you have seen Blåset use a jug of beer as a collective toothbrush glass (oh yes the foaming toothpaste gets spat out into the glass and passed round) and blow up a condom to the bursting point with a trumpet, you will not forget it any time soon.

The eminent dance troupe also has a habit of etching themselves in the audience’s memory. Choreographed, and for the most part proper group dancing, but in all else the same rules apply as for the music. No auditions, a lot of ambition and heaps of fun. 

“Whenever, Wherever, However” is the LiTHe Blås motto. But they do sound good, and there have been countless recordings over the years, from cassettes to the current DVD. Fittingly in this anniversary year they released their latest, “LiTHe Blås stjälper ofta stor jazz” (LiTHe Blås knocks over big-time jazz).

Perhaps this is the result of some diligent rehearsing after all. Every Sunday evening those who want to gather in Musicum, the music centre in C-building on Campus Valla. The repertoire is neatly stored in folders and those who do not read music listen to recordings. Blåsyran, who have been rehearsing in a nearby corridor, then join them for an hour. They come up with their gags and stunts during evenings in Herrgårn, the student bar.

“You make your best friends in LiTHe Blås. We hang out with each other the whole time so the atmosphere in the band is fantastic. That comes in handy during performances too.”

For the last 30 years, the active band has headed off every June for a few weeks on a bus tour of Europe. (LiTHe Grås go on their own tour with their own bus to offset their lack of tour activity.)

“These are unforgettable trips. There are three or four travel organisers who arrange everything, the rest of us don’t know anything till we need to. We don’t know where we are going, what currency we need, if we will need summer or winter clothes.”

A set up that usually leads to lots of unexpected adventures. Buses that break down, overnight stays of a 50-man troupe on top of a mountain in the Alps – or in gym halls.
Certain oom-pah festivals have become a must, for example in Tübingen, where every year the band gets to stay in the Verbindung in exchange for giving the whole place a good clean.

“And we are exceedingly good at cleaning up after ourselves,” says Engström, before he trots out the whole story of the German exchange student who used to hang out with LiTHe Blås and then made a grand promise to sort out accommodation in Tübingen.

“Just as we were about to turn up she was sitting in a bar, feeling desperate; A 50 person Swedish student big band arriving and they aren’t going to have anywhere to sleep! Another customer in the bar came right up with the solution: the can stay in our Verbindung!”

This is a German form of accommodation where students live for free, often in elegant buildings or castles. Later when they get a job they pay for the next generation of students who live there.

They have won the odd competition here and there by dint of their inimitable spirit on stage.
At the Dutch festival De Bemmelse Dweildag, where around a thousand musicians compete in “mop music” (Dweilmuziek), LiTHe Blås got the first consolation prize for best show. A whole roast pig, Engström relates as he brings up the tour diary on his iPhone.

LiTHE Blås has – what else? – a well-documented website so it was easy to get right in touch with the travel organisers from the 2003 tour:
“We couldn’t understand what the MC was saying, not until they started bellowing out LiTHe Blås at the top off their voices, but we had apparently won the whole competition without even realising we were in it. So of course we ran back, played one last little ditty and took with us the first prize, which was a display with loads of plastic birds! Neat, eh? In the evening we ate piglet with the other long-distance guests, including Glasblåsarna from Uppsala. And we did an impromptu show for the camp-site guests before we slept in the tents for a second night.”

It is anecdotes like this that make a band want to keep blowing up a storm for a few decades more.

Text: Gunilla Pravitz
Photo: LiTHe Blås, Göran Billeson, David Einar, Gunilla Pravitz