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Written in fRoots issue 287, 2007


THE AUVO QUARTET
Auvo Kvartetti - The Auvo Quartet
Auvo AUVOCD 01 (2006)

HYPERBOREA
Semmosta
Kansanmusiikki-instituutti KICD 95 (2006)

MARKKU LEPISTÖ
Polku
Aito AICD 008 (2006)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Arctic Paradise – Contemporary Folk Music From Finland, 2007
Finnish Music Information Centre ARCTICCD2007 (2007)

The links between the folk music degree course at Newcastle University and the much longer established folk music department at the Sibelius Academy, Finland’s music university in Helsinki, include regular student exchanges, and these are resulting in productive friendships between musicians, and the formation of bands. The Auvo Quartet is Brit melodeonist Julian Sutton and flutist Tom Oakes, with Finnish singer/fiddler Suvi Oskala and fretted instrument player Roope Aarnio.
      It’s a band with a distinctive, fresh sound, unforcedly excellent playing, finely judged vocals and elegant, free-thinking arrangements, with some twists, such as the spacey whistling sound, perhaps E-bow achieved, in the opening track, a winding 12/8 by Sutton, or the sudden lurch into rhythm-section of the closer, the Finnish traditional song (and, I’d have thought, a strong contender for album title) The Man Made Out Of Honey. This is an album that in blending traditions emerges as something that previously didn’t exist in either country and deserves to be lauded in both.
      All the members contribute compositions, and the rest is traditional. Listening without reading the notes, the overall feel is Finnish, partly because of Oskala’s Finnish fiddling (with Shetland-sounding touches in her wedding waltz composition Auvo) and her Finnish-language vocals, and also because it rarely touches a jig or a reel, and even then in a way far from celtosound; there are songs, polskas, tangos, a schottische, a waltz, and polkas. One of the latter was written by Oakes on the occasion of Newcastle colleague guitarist Ian Stephenson’s study move to Helsinki, a connection which has resulted in another excellent band, the Anglo-Finnish-Danish Baltic Crossing.

      The all-Finnish band Hyperborea, like much in today’s Finnish roots music, is part of the web of musicians and bands of which Sibelius Academy folk music department is a nexus, and like the Auvo Quartet it’s in the top rank. It comprises Piia Kleemola and Paula Susitaival on fiddles, viola, nyckelharpa, kantele and vocals, melodeonist Antti Paalanen and, on cittern, mandolin and vocals, Frigg’s Petri Prauda. Semmosta is its second album, consisting of a scattering of originals plus arrangements of freshly-reactivated traditional material – songs and tunes, most of them from Ostrobothnia, including wedding and drinking marches (hard to imagine how one drinks and marches, but this is Finland), polkas, a schottische, polskas and a couple of waltzes (one of which, from the repertoire of Jalasjärvi fiddler Jaakko Rautanen, shows some similarities to the Waterford Waltz published in 1804 by London-resident Irish uilleann piper O’Farrell).

Markku Lepistö is a Sibelius Academy folk music graduate, and though perhaps not as well known by name as some other Finnish musicians he is one of the country’s most able and tasteful button-accordionists, and as widely travelled as any, particularly since 1998 as a member of Värttinä. He was also a member of the currently dormant bands Pirnales and Progmatics, and plays with klezmer band Doina Klezmer.
      Polku is his second solo album. On it he plays one and two-row melodeons in company with several of the players who were on his first: mandolinist Petri Hakala, Progmatics colleague Jouko Kyhälä (of harmonica band Sväng) on harmonica and harmonium, former Värttinä bassist Pekka Lehti, and banjoist, guitarist and recording engineer Janne Viksten, joined for a couple of tracks by another ex-Progmatic, Värttinä’s Janne Lappalainen, on bouzouki, and nyckelharpa player Lasse Logrén.
      The majority of the tunes are his own compositions, definitely Finnish in accent but not tied to particular traditional or dance-tune forms, and full of interesting rhythmic twists. Whether up-tempo or more lyrical they’re all played at a musical, nothing-to-prove rightness of pace and clean, expressive precision that brings out the melody.
      He describes the album’s material as a journey through the influences on his life since he left Ostrobothnia for the musician’s world-travelling road. He doesn’t specify those influences, but for example the opener, Aosta, seems reminiscent in tune and staccato playing of Basque trikitixa.

      Each year sees the release of a promotional compilation of salient tracks from the current Finnish folk music scene. It’s not only always beautifully designed and packaged but, in conjunction with the book that usually accompanies it makes a most useful overview and information source.
      This year the book has been absorbed into the CD package as a convenient-to-file and substantial silver-titled CD-sized volume. It isn’t available to buy, but genuine seekers should ask the Finnish Music Information Centre for a copy. This year’s CD has tracks from Hyperborea (their previous album), Markku Lepistö, Sväng, Värttinä, JPP, Ville Ojanen, Pauliina Lerche, Timo Väänänen, Suden Aika, Wimme, Troka, Nordic Tree, Petri Hakala and Maria Kalaniemi, and the book has information about many more – there are over two hundred names in the index - as well as instrument and scene overviews and a contact list.
Hear Auvo Quartet tracks at www.myspace.com/theauvoquartet. Aito, run by bassist Pekka Lehti, is at www.aitorecords.com, and the Finnish Music Information Centre’s extensive site, with sound samples, is www.fimic.fi.


© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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