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Written in fRoots issue 319/320, 2009


ESKO JÄRVELÄ
Es&Co
Frigg FRIGG00005 (2009)

TSUUMI SOUND SYSTEM
Growing Up
Tsuumi Sound System TSS001 (2009)

In the last few years Kaustinen and the villages nearby on the Perho river in western central Finland’s have moved from being a locale of strong survival of folk music, particularly fiddling, to the birthplace of a whole new fiddling phenomenon, one that while maintaining very strong roots in its family and village traditions is also an exciting, thrusting modern popular music. One of the most prominent family names in all this down the generations is Järvelä. (As often in rural Ostrobothnia, it’s not just the family name, but also that of their home hamlet, five kilometres upriver from Kaustinen centre).
     The current young generation of the family contains more creative musicians of extraordinary facility – fiddlers, bassists, harmonium-players - than any before it. The ever-dynamic, skin-headed, sleep-eschewing Esko Järvelä is to be found at the heart of much of the newest hot music, including Kaustinen bands Frigg and Tötterssön, and the Finno-Anglo-Danish Baltic Crossing, and as I write this he’s about to replace his father Mauno - himself a huge influence on Kaustinen music as player and teacher of just about every young player - in the mothership fiddle band JPP (Järvelän Pikkupelimannit).
     His fiddling has a brilliant, infectious exuberance, one identifying feature being his embodiment and elevation of the recent Kaustinen tendency to ecstatic swoops high on the top string, and he’s also a very fine and prolific writer of wild, memorable tunes. For his solo album, the felicitously titled Es&Co, he’s joined by a small combo comprising two of Frigg - guitarist Tuomas Logrén and Norwegian fiddler Gjermund Larsen – and for some tracks Swede Nils-Petter Ankarblom on harmonium. Not a big line-up, but remarkably full-sounding. Numerous fiddle albums come my way from the Nordic countries, and while virtually all are impeccably-played and worthwhile documents many aren’t really the stuff of a great through-listen; Es&Co, though, is entirely satisfying and up-cheering, and leapt into my 2009 Critics’ Poll top six.

     Esko is also a member of, and one of the main writers for, another of Finland’s finest, Tsuumi Sound System. A Helsinki-based band that began as the backing for the Tsuumi dance company, TSS has taken on a life of its own with now two albums (plus, as just Tsuumi, 2002’s fine Avoin Kenttä, a collection of their music for dance productions) and a storming live show. Led by accordionist Hannu Kella, the octet – two fiddles, accordion, saxes, piano, harmonium, guitar or cittern, double bass and drums - has a powerful, multifaceted approach to its material, which is all originals rooted in pelimanni dance music but with an increasingly broad palette.
     Growing Up opens with Esko’s energetic Northling, which has such an ingenious approach to rhythm that it had me checking the CD wasn’t skipping (always a good plan to check for that before retiring to the bath to listen to an album), and includes a couple of tracks, in particular Joakim Berghäll’s sax, the big-band style strings and Jani Kivelä’s hot guitar in Kella’s Sicilian Panda, that very successfully incorporate jazz blowing within strong and, as the album’s title suggests, mature arranging structures that keep a firm rein on any noodlesome tendency.

www.myspace.com/esjarvel, www.tsuumisoundsystem.com


© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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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).

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