VARIOUS ARTISTS
Tulikulkku
Kansanmusiikki-instituutti KICD 30 (1993)

Absolutely stunning. The head of steam that's been building up in Finnish music blows its lid in a tribute album in honour of the 50th birthday of the man who bears a great deal of the responsibility for putting the pot on the flame in the first place, Heikki Laitinen. His work at the Folk Music Institute and Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department has had everything to do with an extraordinary phenomenon of wild creativity drawing on deep tradition to which those institutions are central. There has been no better recording of what's going on than this album.
      The powerful opening by Me Naiset ("us women"), an acapella grouping of many of the best of the new wave of singers who, as it happens, are women, is an edgy, inexorable treatment of Kuu kulta kivestä nousit with a Setu-style solo/chorus format akin to that of a Hebridean waulking song.
      The group Primo, in which were both Heikki Laitinen and the director of the Folk Music Institute, Hannu Saha, reformed for this album (without Laitinen, so as not to kill the surprise), to create one of its most extraordinary and symbolic tracks, in which the underlying accompaniment is the disturbing sound of a 5-string kantele being burnt by Saha, very much a leading figure in the kantele revival; it's a gesture akin to the burning of a set of Scottish warpipes by the chairman of the Piobaireachd Society. Sounds great too, like the wooden wheels of a tumbril on a dirt road.
      Niekku didn't reform for the album - its members have moved on to other things - but it contributes Kaksin, recorded live in concert in 1991. With the exception of this, and a fine previously unreleased Hedningarna track, Kanalaulu, everything was specially recorded for this album, mostly by Janne Viksten, whose impeccable and creative engineering gives the whole thing a consistency and flow. His work is most clearly illustrated in Mikonkatu live, recorded at 11 pm in a Helsinki street - screaming shepherd's flute, harmonica, melodeon, traffic, shouting, dancing and mad laughter, all in enormous echoing stereo.
      In many ways the father of Finnish tradition-based avant-gardism is Martti Pokela, whose teaching at the Sibelius Academy and the national respect in which he's held made possible the setting up of the Folk Music Department ten years ago, and opened up the territory for what's happening now. He rarely performs these days, but occasionally takes part in concerts of his music played by the new wave - here he joins members of Pirnales in his whimsical Agromania.
     Sámi music is an important point of reference in what's happening further south in Finland, and the track featuring the great singer Wimme Saari accompanied by Pohjantahti is a further significant development in the subtle art of accompanying a joiku.
Every track is loaded with exploration and progress - Etnopojat's brooding Melperspectives 1, the Tuulenkantajat Septet's abrasive incantatory Köppö, a waltz from Väinönputki, Arja Kastinen's 15-string kantele solo, and Virpi Forsberg's multitracked animal horns.
     Improvising plays an important part in much Finnish traditional music, and so it has a natural connection to the experimental and avant-garde. At a time when it seems the heady idea that anything's possible suggested by rock in the late 60s has dwindled into today's sad formulae, the energy that made this album opens up a new/old world of directions and possibilities - like a meeting on a hilltop.

© 1993 Andrew Cronshaw