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Written in fRoots issue 323, 2010


HENRIKSSON-KLEEMOLA-PRAUDA
RindaNickola
Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department SibKaCD085 (2009)

POLKA CHICKS
Polka Chicks
Ääniä AANIA-12 (2009)

LUNA NOVA
Luna
Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department LUNACD100 (2009)

RindaNickola is a novel and productive approach to tunes, largely Finnish polskas, mostly from the collection of Samuel Rinta-Nikkola in his 1809 manuscript book. Piia Kleemola, of Hyperborea and the fiddle-dancing Silmu, here plays baroque violin, Frigg and Hyperborea’s Petri Prauda cittern and occasional bagpipes, and Marianna Henriksson harpsichord. Their finely structured developments and expansions of the tunes are often baroque-sounding, but they play with trad-musician spring and energy rather than the image of ornamental classicism that the term ‘baroque’ can evoke today.
www.siba.fi/kansanmusiikki, www.myspace.com/henrikssonkleemolaprauda

      The Polka Chicks are Kukka Lehto, Suvi Oskala and Teija Niku, playing fiddles, mandolin and button accordion and vocally harmonising. Despite the name, only three tracks of their debut album feature polkas; the other instrumentals are variously schottis, mazurka or waltz, made by other musicians in the tradition or new-composed. They play well, with wit and lightness of touch; there’s no shortage of Finnish bands playing dance tunes, but what distinguishes this trio is the interjection of songs, drawing on tradition and on the attractive writing of fiddler and mandolinist Kukka Lehto.
www.aania.fi, www.myspace.com/thepolkachicks

     Kukka is also now the fiddler with the reactivated Luna Nova. Formed by ex-Hedningarna singer Tellu Turkka with pianist Timo Alakotila, fiddler Ville Kangas, mandolinist/fiddler Mika Virkkala, Petri Hakala on octave mandolin and Timo Myllykangas on bass, it did some gigs earlier this decade but didn’t get round to recording an album. For its delayed debut Luna the band has a new line-up, with Kukka, saxist Risto Salmi and Värttinä bassist Hannu Rantanen replacing Kangas, Virkkala and Myllykangas, but the material is from the original band, written by Turkka, Alakotila and Kangas with mainly traditional lyrics. Actually much of Tellu’s singing doesn’t involve lyrics but the use of her voice as an instrument, taking the dominant line, or sharing it with soprano sax or fiddle, over the band’s muscularly surging piano, octave mandolin and bass driven sound in exuberant twisting, winding, time-signature-shifting melodies that are in a continuum with traditional tunes and with the traits of other works by Alakotila and Kangas. It’s a meeting of forms that might be seen as an emerging distinctively Finnish folk-rooted jazz, different from American and even from other Nordic or European jazz evolutions.
www.myspace.com/lunanova


© 2010 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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