Live Music in Gävle

Few Swedish cities of Gävle's size can claim a musical lineage stretching from Joe Hill, the protest songwriter born here in 1879 whose songs shaped the American labor movement, to a contemporary underground electronic scene anchored by Lamour Records, a label founded in the city in 2008. That range is the point. Gävle's live infrastructure matches its ambition, with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1912, performing in a purpose-built concert hall that opened in 1998, while Musikhuset Gävle hosts everything from jazz and blues jams to modern rock in a converted former sailors' church. The city's punk scene has a particularly strong local identity, and COMEDIA's compilation "45 Postcards from Gävle" documents four decades of indie output from bands formed right here. This is a city that produces music rather than simply hosting it.