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Written in Folk Roots issue 89, November 1990
 

JPP
I've Found a New Tango
Olarin Musiikki OMLP 32 (1990, vinyl LP)

SIKIÄT
Sikiät
Kansanmusiikki-Instituutti KIEP 2 (1990, vinyl EP)

SALAMAKANNEL
Väinön Paluu
Kansanmusiikki-Instituutti KILP 22 (1990, vinyl LP)

Järvelän Pikkupelimannit, now usually abbreviated to JPP, means "young (or little) folk musicians from Järvelä", and is Finland's finest string dance band. Järvelä is a village near Kaustinen in central Finland, and is also the surname of three of the five fiddlers - Arto, Jouni and Mauno. The lineup is completed by fiddlers Jarmo and Juha Varila, Timo Alakotila on harmonium (an instrument ubiquitous in Finnish dance bands) and Janne Virkkala on double bass.
    Thing is, a dance band plays the music people like to dance to, and, in the Perho river valley at least, they like to dance to tangos, rags and waltzes as well as more obviously Finnish forms. So on JPP's new record, I've Found a New Tango, that's what you get; it could almost be a tea-dance with Stephane Grappelli. The fiddles are sweet-toned, and the technique involves frequent excursions out of first and second position up to the dusty end. No, it's nothing like Swedish or Norwegian fiddle music, but these people are genuine folk musicians of great ability in a living tradition, and such things usually come as a surprise to outsiders looking for the "authentic".
    What's more, they're passing it on to new generations; the original Järvelän Pelimannit was a collaboration between two generations of fiddlers; the older fiddlers left it to the younger and so began JPP; now its members, particularly Mauno, play with and teach the rising generation, producing fiddlers of the calibre of Ville Ojanen of, amongst others, the group Sikiät (a local word meaning roughly "brats"), whose first recording, a 5-track EP, shows a promising new influx of ideas and melodic sensitivity.

    The Sikiät record is on the house label of the national Folk Music Institute, based in Kaustinen, and its director, Hannu Saha, as well as being a hot harmonica and sometimes tenor horn player, is a leading player of 5, 9, 10 and 36-stringed kanteles, and leads the group Salamakannel ("lightning kantele"). Väinön Paluu , its second album, is the witty, swingy instrumental mixture pretty much as on the first, reviewed in FR last year, though with perhaps more Latin/Caribbean influence, and with the addition of percussion by guest musicians Jarmo Hovi and Pekka Witikka and of trombone and whistle by Kurt Lindblad. The universal fiddler, Arto Järvelä, here gets chance to play mandolins and the Swedish nyckelharpa, and Kimmo Känsälä and Jussi Ala-Kuha (whose Kaustinen workshop makes the most of the guitars, mandolins and kanteles they play) are as on the case as ever with fluid bass and soaring guitar lines respectively. Material is mostly either trad or group member composed, except for "The Isle of Capri", the inclusion of which is more understandable after a listen to JPP.

© 1990 Andrew Cronshaw

 
These are 1990 albums, so on vinyl and not all re-released on CD.

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fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.
Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).
Olarin Musiikki no longer operates, but some of its releases can still be found, via Helsinki's Digelius Music record shop, and at CDRoots.com (the online CD sales part of the excellent US-based online magazine Rootsworld.com, where you'll find a vast number of intelligent reviews of interesting music), and perhaps via other online suppliers.

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