page_title: Evert Taube
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Evert Taube / Career
caption_attribution_description: Statue of Evert Taube at Järntorget, Gamla stan, Stockholm.
context_page_description: Axel Evert Taube was a Swedish author, artist, composer and singer. He is widely regarded as one of Sweden's most respected musicians and the foremost troubadour of the Swedish ballad tradition in the 20th century.
context_section_description: Having spent two years (1907–1909) sailing around the Red Sea, Ceylon and South Africa, Taube began his career as a singer-songwriter and collector of sailors' songs, and on Christmas Eve 1908, on board the Norwegian ship SS Bergen headed for Spain, he performed "Turalleri, piken fra Hamburg".
  Following a five-year stay (1910–1915) in Argentina, he developed an interest in Latin American music and introduced the Argentinian tango to Sweden in the twenties. Contrary to widespread perceptions, Taube did not work as a gaucho (cowboy) on the Pampas but as a foreman supervising workers who were digging canals designed to prevent flooding on the vast plains.
  He is perhaps best known as a depictor of the idyllic, with motifs from the Swedish archipelagoes and from the Mediterranean, from a perspective every Swedish four-week holiday tourist could recognize. But he also wrote the most hitting anti-fascist anti-war poem in the Swedish language, "Målaren och Maria Pia", about the Italian war in Abyssinia, from the late 30s, as well as the anthem of the budding environmental movement in the 70s, "Änglamark" (originally written for the successful 1971 Hasse & Tage film The Apple War).
  Among Taube's most famous songs are "Calle Schewens vals", "Min älskling (du är som en ros)", "Dans på Sunnanö", "Brevet Från Lillan", "Flickan i Havanna", "Änglamark", "Sjösala vals", "Fritiof och Carmencita", "Så skimrande var aldrig havet" and "Så länge skutan kan gå".
  In 1976 he released an album of songs (on SR Records) about and by Sweden's 18th century bard, Carl Michael Bellman, performing 9 of Bellman's Fredman's Epistles including the ever popular Vila vid denna källa, Ulla! min Ulla! säj, får jag dig bjuda, and Solen glimmar blank och trind.
  Taube has been translated into English by Helen Asbury, Paul Britten Austin, Emily Melcher  and others. His songs have been recorded in English by Roger Whittaker, Sven-Bertil Taube, Martin Best, Roger Hinchliffe  and Emily Melcher.
caption: 1985 statue of Evert Taube at Järntorget in Stockholm.
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