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Written in fRoots issue 229, 2002


MARIA KALANIEMI & TIMO ALAKOTILA
Ambra
Amigo AMCD 749 (2001)

MARKKU LEPISTÖ
Silta
Aito AICD 003 (2002)

ME NAISET
Mastorava
MeNaiset MNCD1 (2001)

VARIOUS
Échos De Finlande
Buda Musique 1984932 (2001)


One might think, since both feature a fine, sensitive accordionist with Swedish connections and the piano and arranging of Timo Alakotila, plus occasional Ostrobothnian chamber strings, that Kalaniemi and Alakotila’s Ambra and Karen Tweed and Alakotila’s May Monday (on which Kalaniemi also appears) might be similar. Indeed there are points where one could flow into the other, but Ambra (amber) evokes a different set of pictures. It’s also far from the zippy, twisting and turning fiddling of Alakotila’s composing and harmonium-playing gig with JPP.
      The prevailing feel is often of the elegantly passionate, swirling shapes of Parisian musette and Argentinian new-tango, while the four joint and individual compositions by Kalaniemi and Alakotila move via hints of the Balkans and elsewhere into further developments of the new Finnish new music of which the pair of them are key representatives. There’s a strong Ostrobothnian traditional pelimanni input, too, with one of the region’s most beautiful tunes, the stately bridal march from Lappfjärd collected from fiddler Torsten Paris, a pair of polkkas by Halsua fiddler Otto Hotakainen, and a minuet and polska from Kortesjärvi fiddler Matti Haudanmaa.
      The two of them, on chromatic button accordion and piano, produce a very complete, sophisticated sound, hesitating and surging with the intuition of listening musicians with a bond of longtime collaboration. The string quartet is used just for part of the final track, Reino Helismaa’s On Yö Ja Tähde Taivahallat, in a richly romantic Alakotila arrangement that parallels the duo’s fluidity, creating a textural peak before retreating to leave them together for the coda.

Markku Lepistö plays chromatic button accordion too, and it’s his main instrument with Värttinä, but for his recent duo album with Petri Hakala and this solo album he concentrated on diatonic one and two-row, and he does likewise for his solo album. Hakala’s here too, on mandolin and cittern, with Värttinä bassist Pekka Lehti, banjoist and guitarist Janne Viksten and others. Silta is inspired by the music of Lepistö’s native region Pohjanmaa (for which 'Ostrobothnia' is the “international English” name, from the Swedish 'Osterbotten'), and it begins with a short snatch of him playing at home in Kuortane 1969, ending with him playing the title track back in the same house in 2001. Six of the ten are his own compositions, the rest traditional polskas, polkkas and a waltz, and to all of them he brings a lively, inventive fluidity and high skill. This, like Ambra, is an album about music not the tools used to make it, and both he and Kalaniemi are prime exponents of the liberation of the squeezing instruments from the four-square brutality of yore into a new world of subtle and sexy.

      Nothing like either of the above is MeNaiset, a female acapella group singing material from, or developed from, the runo-song traditions of the Finno-Ugrian regions of northern Europe. The first seven tracks of Mastorava, recorded in 1999 by a line-up of Anna-Kaisa Liedes, Outi Pulkkinen, Maari Kallberg, Anneli Kont-Rahtola, Maija Karhinen, Eila Hartikainen and Meri Tiitola, are their polyphonic arrangements of traditional lyrics, to the usually narrow-compass melodies, from Ingria, Karelia and Estonia, and of their own compositions or settings. It’s a strong sound, often using strident hard-edged voices; some superficial comparison with Bulgarian vocal groups would be easy, but while there are audible references to those in MeNaiset’s arrangements, the music is essentially Finno-Ugrian, with strong influences from such vocal traditions as those of Estonia’s Setumaa.
      Soon after the release of their debut album in 1995, back when Pia Rask and Sirkka Moström were in the group, MeNaiset met the five-member male acapella group Toorama, which was visiting Finland from the republic of Mordva, south-east of Moscow (not easy to spot CIS republics in the atlas, but as a pointer its capital is Saransk). The two groups sang together, found their music fitted, and subsequently MeNaiset went to Mordva. The second part of Mastorava, recorded in 1997, consists of five Mordvin songs employing that mighty combined vocal sound, beginning with the magnificent Kodamo Moro /Minkä Laulu. As a sound-guide, not any kind of ethnomusicological connection, imagine a sort of muscular, emphatic, rhythmic, goosebump-raising plainsong, a soundtrack for the battle on the ice in Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible.

      Some of Jacques Erwan’s presentations of music and sounds he’s recorded on short trips to various countries do give a feel for the place and its traditions. But, while granted he sets out to record an audio impression rather than a “best of”, his Échos De Finlande is a feeble, unrepresentative collection, the result, it appears, of brief chance encounters on a single quick trip in August 1998 rather than advance planning or time spent.
      Someone carving a reindeer hoof beside a lake, four rather polite Sámi joiks from an ethnomusicology student, Pekka Toivanen playing the tune of a joik on Celtic harp, a Karelian lullaby, some nothing-special accordion, the sound of someone stomping around in a kitchen cooking piirakka, some talking and singing from elderly lamenter Martta Kuikka, two tunes from a below-average pelimanni group, and in an unusually noisy sauna the stereotypical but rarely-occurring slapping with birch-twigs. Back in the bus and on down the road, visiting amongst others the Kaustinen area for some fiddling from Purppuripelimannit, a song from a group of Mauno Järvelä’s teenage fiddle students, kantele from Heimo and Tapani Peltoniemi (playing a Scottish reel), songs from Erkki Rankaviita, Kaisu Försti playing her characteristically lively harmonium and the Kaustinen brass septet, then calling in at Helsinki for a slice of Orthodox choral harmony in the Russian cathedral and the sound of the wind blowing over the tubes of the Sibelius monument.
      On paper it looks like it might be fitfully interesting, and there are quite a few significant musicians on the list, but the good bits could have been better and it rarely captures the spirit or the essence of tradition in contemporary Finland, coming across as a disjointed set of hasty snapshots taken by someone who wasn’t around for the good stuff.


© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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