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Written in fRoots issue 323, 2010


KARDEMIMMIT
Kaisla
Frigg FRIGG00006 (2009)

BRELO
Uusikuu
Ääniä AANIA 10 (2009)

More evidence of the accelerating renaissance in skill, scope and sociability of Finland’s national instrument, the kantele, a form of zither found in various forms around the Baltic. These two groups of singing kantele players from near Helsinki, the all-female quartet Kardemimmit from Espoo and the all-female-but-one octet Brelo from the village of Laukkoski, use only kanteles in their instrumentals and in accompanying their group vocals, and both favour 15-string diatonic instruments with the low end enriched by the silky bass of the bigger 38-stringed chromatic concert kantele.

      Kardemimmit’s 2006 attractive first album was made when they were teenagers, taught by Kaustinen-born kantele player Sanna Huntus, and they’re not much older now, but unlike many very young groups they’ve kept going, and the music and approach, with production and recording this time by Frigg's and JPP’s Antti Järvelä, is maturing. Virtually all the material is their own composition, while derived from runo-song and other Finnish traditions and often using traditional lyrics. There’s a new muscularity and shades of darkness in the playing and vocals, their young-girl voices hardening to stridency; after all, among the subject matter are drunken and dead sweethearts and the Maiden of Death. The interplay of their ringing, chiming kanteles makes a very full accompaniment, slightly augmented on a couple of numbers by touches of saw or throat-singing, and fiddle and banjo pitch in on the energetically celebratory hoedown style closer.
      www.myspace.com/kardemimmit

      The similarly youthful Brelo, whose teacher and producer is Vilma Timonen, use similar kantele and vocal resources, but twice as many of them, the many strings overlapping, strummed and plucked, underpinned by big warm concert kantele bass lines in their smart arrangements of instrumentals and new settings of mainly traditional lyrics with sometimes almost choral (in a good way) harmony and part-singing group vocals.
      The sound of kanteles has changed as makers have developed their designs and whereas previously most of the emphasis was on the big box kanteles and the iconic basic 5-string, in the last decade or so the 15-string has recently risen to prominence, particularly those made by Hannu Koistinen and used by both Brelo and Kardemimmit, which borrow the extended ‘wing’ soundboard from some Estonian kannels and Latvian kokles and are capable of considerable volume and stridency even without the pickups with which they’re often fitted. Other makers, notably Pekka Lovikka in his workshop north of the Arctic Circle, are also innovating, and the result is a choice of instruments far more efficient and flexible than ever before in the kantele’s very long history.
      Plucking, strumming and damping techniques have evolved too, and Brelo use a wide range of them, making a powerful, well integrated and tonally very varied sound very far from the politeness of kantele groups a couple of decades ago. Whereas back in the early to mid 20th century attempts were made to bring the kantele into the classical world, it’s now, through players, techniques and design developments largely from the folk music end of things, that the instrument seems to be really breaking through.
      www.aania.fi


© 2010 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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