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Written in Folk Roots issue 151/152, 1996

ME NAISET
Me Naiset
Kansanmusiikki-instituutti KICD 37 (1995)

During the Finnish folk music revival (or rather, not so much revival as continuation, exploration, re-affirmation and expansion) the emphasis has been largely on instrumental music.
      But Me Naiset (“Us Women”) is specifically a vocal group, and its debut album is a signpost in the current development of Finnish and Finno-Ugrian music.
      Some of the eight members - Anna-Kaisa Liedes for example - have already had vocal impact in other contexts; others, such as Tallari’s newest member Pia Rask, are in the process of emerging as leading vocalists. During the group’s three-year existence each member, perhaps emboldened by the support of the ensemble, has developed her own strength and individuality; as other projects form, fuse and develop there’ll be more to be heard from Outi Pulkkinen, Anita Lehtola, Sirkka and Eila Kosonen, Maari Kallberg and Anneli Kont too.
      The soloist-chorus structure of much of the material, the majority of it from areas just outside current Finnish political boundaries but with close linguistic and traditional connections - Ingria (the Finno-Ugrian region around St. Petersburg) and Setumaa (SE Estonia) - highlights these individual voices, which then weave together to make a strong, grainy ensemble sound, sometimes powerfully insistent, sometimes silkily caressing.
      Much Finnish folk song, and that of other European traditions, springs from the stories, observations and experiences of women, developed and transmitted as they were working or making the most of shared time as they rested from work - “Come, girls, to the Midsummer bonfire; we seldom see one another, so let us dance now” - a mother bids farewell as her daughter sets out into the world, a girls’ boy-taunting song, a lament for a dead mother, a cheatin’ song, a politician husband who’s never home, Aino chooses drowning in preference to marriage to ancient Väinämöinen (this one new-made from the Kanteletar by Eila Kosonen), lying fishermen swear blood in the sea is that of a pike, not a brother, and the theme every tradition has a version of - “Sweet sisters, better to lie on bare willow planks than beside a bad husband”.
      Many of these songs have a long history; some have never died, some rested awhile in collections, but Me Naiset is no historical restoration project - in a country of costumed formal choirs some of which are strongly linked to folk traditions but which produce relatively few strong, personally expressive individual singers it represents a way of singing together without submerging the individual, and, particularly if it incorporates the improvisational aspect of Finnish folk music, points a way forward. And if new songs arise, what will they be about?


© 1995 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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