- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 210, 2000


BURLAKAT
Tšastuška
Burlakat BUR1-99 (1999)

The village of Rääkkylä in Karelia is the home not only of a folk festival but of a distinctive sound in modern Finnish roots music, often characterised by fast accordeon playing and edgy, energetic group female vocals. The most famous band with Rääkkylä origins is Värttinä, but over the past few years others of promise, notably Mimmit, have been emerging. Now with this impressive Timo Alakotila-produced debut album destined to make new Rääkkylä waves comes Burlakat, a six piece of female vocals, chromatic and diatonic accordeon, fiddle, guitar, mandolin, kanteles and bass, including, here singing and playing fiddle, Mimmit’s Pauliina Luukkanen.
      The opening Russian-sounding Finnish Gypsy song might suggest for a moment that we’re in for a rousing female version of the Red Army Ensemble, but by track two we’re definitely in Finno-Ugrian runo-song territory, with instrumental lines interweaving around vocal harmonies and syncopated rhythm. A reki-song features banjo, Sirkka Moström delivers a slow song of love or shallow avarice - “my new love is better because he has a gold watch” - over guest Jukka Korhonen’s chiming electric and acoustic guitars, and what unfolds is a varied and interesting set of traditional material newly interpreted, with lively and serene solo and ensemble vocals, swung accordeonistics, drifting kanteles and occasional Balkan rhythmic influences, finishing with a clutch of the tšastuškas, Russian short songs sung in Karelia, that give the album its title.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

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

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
Helsinki's Digelius Music record shop is a great source of Finnish roots and other albums.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -