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Written in fRoots issue 277, 2006


KARI HEINILÄ
Mosaique
Celene CELCD-002 (2005)

HANNU LEHTORANTA
Taivaallinen Kuu
Folk Music Institute KICD 92 (2005)

TIMO VÄÄNÄNEN
Musiikkia
Maanite MAA 01 (2005)

KANTELETRIO
Puinen Sydän / Wooden Heart
Inkoon Musiikki IMU-CD 054 (2005)

PAULIINA SYRJÄLÄ
Monet Nävöt
Own label PAUCD 01 (2005)

Kari Heinilä, in other contexts a well-known Finnish sax player, has become a master of ney and Macedonian, Bulgarian and Turkish kavals, with the perfect breathy, throaty, airy tone and fine soaring subtlety that makes these end-blown instruments the royalty of the flute world. Finland is an unexpected birthplace for such an exquisite player of such non-Nordic instruments, but with Mosaique he’s quietly emerged as world-class, and with excellent taste in material too; no showing off, no jazz, no fusioning, just shapely, melodic playing. Most of this set of tunes are his own compositions, in the various traditions of his instruments, played solo or well accompanied by ud, bouzouki, daff or darabuka. Sparse and beautiful.

      Hannu Lehtoranta is Finnish and blows things too, particularly the Finnish traditional birchbark-wrapped wooden whistle, which sounds like a breathy recorder. Over the past thirty years he’s led bands and projects of varying acceptance combining the sounds and themes of Finnish tradition with improvisation and often a degree of wackiness. Taivaallinen Kuu sees him gathering contrasting images and views, including a meeting of Kalevalaic and Kenyan music involving Kimmo Pohjonen on gogo-marimba, a growly collage treatment of an erotic poem, a 1930s recording of a runo-epic singer telling a fairy-tale, transplanted to Nairobi, medieval Finnish church music, a duet with Martti Pokela on 5-string kantele.
      It’s a very personal odyssey, in the company of co-producer and fellow instrumental explorer Arto Kakko and others, that doesn’t fit neatly into any compartment, even ones of good/not good; no pretension, just exploration and interestedness.

      The kantele is Finland’s national instrument, but there’s a variety of designs, from the primal 5-string to the elaborated chromatic concert kantele with over thirty strings. The latter was designed for the chromatic needs of an envisioned Finnish classical kantele music, and while to a small extent that still exists, most of the recent creative kantele work has been done by musicians associated with folk music. The aforementioned Martti Pokela, who nowadays rarely plays in public – the Lehtoranta duet is an exception – has been a big influence bridging the classical, folk music and improvising worlds. Timo Väänänen, like many of today’s players, studied with Pokela, and has collaborated with him in some of his recent work. Väänänen is also the leading exponent of the impressive, curvaceous electric concert kantele made by Hannu Koistinen, and Musiikkia is his second album devoted to it.
      He’s a skilful and elegant player, and the rather obvious and fizzy processing, loops and smoke of his early electric kantele work never seemed to suit. Here the loops and sounds are more subtle and sophisticated, but it still seems more ambient and groove-oriented than melodic. (Yes, OK, it’s music made for a dance and music concert series called “Faces Of Väinämöinen”, but it was considered strong enough on its own to be released on CD). Surely the original main point of effectively amplifying a kantele, which acoustically has a finely transparent, pure ring with long sustain that’s hard to amplify or even record effectively without destroying its nature, was to allow it to be used live with other louder instruments, to take advantage of its ringing tones and the richness of its bass end. With these soundscapes, pleasant as they might be, it seems that we’re still in the trade-fair demo phase, awaiting the potential contrasts and directedness of its real integration into wider music.

      Toivo Alaspää from Veteli, now in his seventies, is today’s prime exponent of the kantele tradition of the Perho river valley in Ostrobothnia, which uses a many-stringed diatonic box kantele, like a concert kantele but without the chromatic pitch benders. In Puinen Sydän - Wooden Heart he leads a kantele trio with Timo Väänänen and Matti Kontio. In music that’s slightly evocative of a silver-string version of Alpine oompah, the repertoire is four-square tunes from the Ostrobothnian dance canon, plus Tennessee Waltz, Auld Lang Syne and, yes, the title tune is that Germano-Elvic Wooden Heart. This is folk music, after all.

      Pauliina Syrjälä plays what’s known as a Saarijärvi kantele, which looks like one of the older form of Perho river valley kanteles with a rounded stern but with only about twenty strings. It has a specific technique: instead of just plucking with the fingers, it’s picked, traditionally with a match-stick held in one hand, while the fingers of the other hand are used both to damp unwanted strings and also to pluck. There are only about four wound bass strings, and they’re more widely separated than the others to make it easier to hit them with the matchstick as it darts down to the bottom end while maintaining the melody at the top. The brisk and intricate style had nearly died out; Syrjälä, who lived in England for a while some years ago and is now head of Kaustinen’s folk music college, is one of the very few to specialise in it, and she’s taking it to new heights.
      All the six tracks on her album are single takes, mostly her own compositions, based on improvisation but strongly structured, with just one traditional section. Using traditional and innovative techniques she gets a remarkable range of strong, exciting sounds out of the instrument, rippling clusters, ringing harmonics, abrasive chopping, koto-like bent notes, scratching, clicking and wonderfully deep chiming bass. Beautifully recorded by Taito Hoffrén, it’s so multi-layered and full-sounding it’s hard to believe there’s no double-tracking or editing. Not only is this one of the very few recordings featuring Saarijärvi kantele, it’s one of the most interesting and impressive kantele recordings available.


© 2006 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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