Along unusual lines

LNER Class A4 4464 Bittern

We were on the train at Taunton station on Sunday, when I noticed an unusual concentration of people aiming cameras, and furthermore, a member of station staff uncoiling a large water hose. I deduced that a steam train must be just pulling into the station. It shortly revealed itself to be the 1937-built and beautifully streamlined LNER Class A4 4464 Bittern. I'm not especially a steam locomotive enthusiast, but this is rather splendid, one of the few renovated to a state certified for mainline use.

In the picture above, you can see part of a strange-looking phenomenon: as we travelled through Somerset and into Wiltshire, there was a peculiar and ominous dark line in the clouds, at least 20 miles long, running parallel to our route.
 

It was only when the cloud cover broke that the explanation was revealed: the general cloud cover must have been a flat relatively thin layer, and the line was the shadow cast on it from above by a prominent jet vapour trail higher in the atmosphere. In the picture below you can see it and its shadow (lower right).

On the subject of train journeys, I've just started reading the Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson's short story collection Art in Nature, Thomas Teal's translation published by Sort of Books in 2012. Jansson is of course best known as the author of the Moomin series of children's books, but she was also a distinguished artist and the author of a number of novels and short stories.

The Independent review by Christian House (here) describes the anthology as a "dreamlike trip through the magic of life" and as "a sublime little collection of stories that is full of boats and beach houses, painting and plays", which makes them sound rather twee. Far from it; despite bright and minimalist settings, many of the stories are very dark, especially the first I read, The Locomotive. It concerns a mechanical draughtsman who works for a railway company, and whose private hobby is drawing locomotives. As becomes rapidly clear from the focus of his obsession and his detachment from people, the unnamed narrator is evidently somewhere on the autism spectrum, and views what little human interaction he has entirely within twin metaphors of artwork revision and train arrivals/departures.

His routine is broken when he perceives what he believes to be a kindred spirit in a woman he meets at a station who expresses an interest in train travel. He hires her as a housekeeper, and over time, she falls  in love with him (this is obvious to the reader, but the narrator only feels disgust at her attempts to get close to him). So, with the meticulousness and methods of his draughtsmanship - drawing and erasing scenarios - he begins to plot her murder.

Although The Locomotive could be classed as psychological horror, the stories in Art in Nature are highly variable in genre, ranging through fantasy, explorations of art and its creators, and wry comedies of manners and relationships. It's very polished collection from an author whose other works have been largely eclipsed by the Moomins.

- Ray

Kimmo Pohjonen and accordion wrestling

My brother-in-law Andrew (who now clearly knows the combination of weirdnesses that tend to grab my attention) sent me a link to a Guardian piece I didn't spot, Accordion wrestling – squeezy does it (Stephen Moss, 29 May 2012).

This concerns a current show on world tour, a "a sport, theatre, dance, music performance art piece" by the Finnish accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen, who has been nicknamed ""the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion", which combines accordion with choreographed acrobatics and grappling by Helsinki wrestlers. The concept, he explains, derives from a genuine historical scenario:

How did he get the idea? "Around 15 years ago, I was in the north of Finland and an old accordion player told me he used to play for wrestling matches. I thought it was a joke – but I discovered it was true. It started in the 1920s and was common in the 40s and 50s, when wrestling was the most popular sport in Finland. That was also when accordion players were stars."

Finnish wrestling has little of the camp theatricality of the sport ITV used to show on Saturday afternoons. It is very serious. A bout can take hours as the two competitors grapple for an advantage. The accordion player entertained the crowd the whole time. Another important function, he says, was to cover up the farts emitted by the wrestlers. "One of the old players said he was told to watch the eyes of the wrestlers, and when you see the fart is coming to produce some special effect to cover it." Not something you are taught at the Royal College of Music.

There are several other YouTube examples - search on "accordion wrestling" - and the official site for the performance tour is here. UK performances are:
6 June Manchester Royal Northern College of Music, 7.30pm, £15.00 (£13.50 conc), rncm.ac.uk / 0161 907 5555
8 June, London York Hall promoted by the Barbican, 8.00pm, £20, www.barbican.org.uk / 020 7638 8891

I'd run into Pohjonen a while back, and find his music exciting as another example of where accordion fusion is going. Much of his work is hard to classify, spanning folk fusion, rock, modern jazz, contemporary classical, and avant-garde. Check out, below, Regenerator, a track from his Earth Machine Music Symphony, which combines accordion with raw and percussive sampling from farm machinery.


Again, there are plenty of further tracks on YouTube. For example: Routa and Vala (from Pohjonen's soundtrack pieces for the Kalevala-inspired Finnish-Chinese film Jade Warrior); Emo (part1) played by Pohjonen along with the Kronos Quartet; Animator, a dark solo multimedia performance; Genesis, an initially atonal piece with the Tapiola Sinfonietta; Sumo, a moody piece by the accordion / guitar / percussion trio K Cube; and Keko, a kind of accordion / folk fusion / beatbox improvisation that builds to a frenetic climax and collapse (the implication seems to be that the accordion is finally playing the player until it kills him - it reminds me of  HP Lovecraft's The Music of Erich Zann).

See the Kimmo Pohjonen website for background: www.kimmopohjonen.com

---

Switching from the sublime to the mundane: I am, by the way, scheduled to play an accordion spot on Topsham Quay on the afternoon of June 2nd - provisionally at 2.45 and 3.30.

Addendum: it went ... acceptably. I got very distracted at one point in mid-piece when the T bus backed, beeping, into its parking bay adjacent to the stage, and the ensuing mistakes flustered me for the next two pieces. But the audience reception was very good: clearly it didn't seem as bad to them as it did to me!

- Ray

Las Chicas del Tango

Nothing much in the way of commentary, except to say that I just love this exquisite trio of works (especially the above Viejo Amor - Old Love) by Las Chicas del Tango (The Tango Girls - or more idiomatically, The Tango Chicks), the Finnish tango trio comprising Kukka-Maaria Ahonen on vocals, the brilliant Johanna Juhola - whose babies I would readily have (no worries, Clare knows) - on accordion, and Milla Viljamaa on piano. ... - Ray

Vapaassa Tilassa

Moving on from creaky renditions of Peg O' My Heart ...

I've enthused before about the brilliance of Finnish fusion music, and about the work of Johanna Juhola. The above video is the title track of the album Vapaassa Tilassa ( (In a Free Space, Texicalli Records, 2007) which is a collaboration between Juhola and Timo Alakotila, a musician and composer acclaimed as the father of Finnish "chamber folk" music. The style is moderately unclassifiable - folk freestyle, but with elements of jazz improvisation, tango and chillout - but whatever it is, it showcases one of the greatest exponents of accordion as an expressive and versatile modern instrument. There are a couple of other tracks in full, Heini and Kevään ensimmäinen tango, at the WOMEX entry, and samples of all the tracks at the digital-tunes page. The Johanna Juhola official site has some others in its media player list; one of my favourite Juhola pieces, Paluu, is there, and also on Vapaassa Tilassa.

Check out also the official Timo Alakotila site;  the Music page provides an excellent sampler of his work, which ranges through solo piano, chamber folk, and neo-classical work for string quartet and full orchestra; the general flavour is very reflective and wistful. I notice he recently released another duo album, Åkerö, in collaboration with another of the great modern Finnish accordionists, Maria Kalaniemi (samples at the CDRoots page show that one track is a beautiful accordion / vocal / piano arrangement of the previously-mentioned Koskaan et muuttua saa).

Out of purely geeky interest, if you compare the images to this post and the previous, you can see the difference between the keyboards of the C-system accordion played by Johanna Juhola, and the B-system one I play (they're mirror images of each other).

As to the whole issue of skill level that seeing the top players raises with me: I know I will never be as good as this. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. At one level, it's quite depressing. I know I don't have a major aptitude; as I've said, music for me is part of a generalism, one of a whole list of things I'm medium-good at. But at another, it's an inspiration, and there are crumbs I can pick up: angles on style and arrangement.The positive thing, perhaps, is that I don't feel about accordion the way I feel about, for example, unfretted strings or brass instruments: not being able to imagine how anyone does it. With accordion, I can see colossal skill, but I feel I'm somewhere - however low down - on the same skill ladder.

Sorry, but I think I'm going to be rather boring with angst about this in the long term. Over the past year, the bayan accordion has become a very major part of my life (as you may know, this much). Martin Stork kindly sent me this nice atmospheric photo from the Topjam sessions.

That's what my fingers feel like when I play in public!

- Ray

Mimmit

Tanssi Poika - translation

Check out EviEvone's YouTube channel for examples of tracks by Mimmit ("Chicks"), a double act comprising the sisters Pauliina Lerche and Hannamari Luukkanen, who come from the village of Rääkkylä in Eastern Finland near the Russian border.

Their target audience is actually children ...

The Mimmit band is an exciting mix of danceable world music and animation!

A new and refreshing take on Finno-Karelian world music for children and the young-at-heart with mythological undertones!

Mimmit has a big mission: They want to make children fall in love with world and ethnic music before they get too suspicious about "alternative" music styles!

... but this seems an irrelevant genre classification for this exuberant and refreshing folk-fusion music, some of it quite dark and mystical, such as Tanssi Poika ("Dance, boy"), Pakkasherra (the Finnish equivalent of "Jack Frost", I think) and Hauen sanalla ("The Word according to Magical Pike").

See the official Mimmit website for samples and background; there is an English page. Pauliina Lerche has also done solo work, which I've mentioned before. See her official website for track listings and samples. Other tracks are on YouTube including the brilliant accordion piece Tulikatriili ("Fire Quadrille")

- Ray

Koskaan et muuttua saa

A pleasant musical find: above, Koskaan et muuttua saa (You will never change) as performed by the excellent Finnish musician Maria Kalaniemi. It's an inspired and reflective adaptation (I assume, from the venue, intended to have religious interpretation) of a pop song generally given rather slight arrangement, as in this version by Lakeuden Kuu.  The first verse gives the flavour:

Vaihtuvat päivät
pois leikit nuo jäivät
mut koskaan et muuttua saa
vuodet niin kulkee
ne paljon pois sulkee
mut koskaan et muuttua saa

The days are changing
those childhood plays are gone already
but you may never ever change
the years may go pass
they take a lot away from us
but you may never ever change
- translation kindly done by Cantilena91 at Yahoo! Answers (see here for all five verses).

The attribution is a little complicated. The Finnpicks blog, which focuses on Finnish pop music covers, traces the vocal version to a 1969 hit by Pasi Kaunisto, but the tune comes from an earlier instrumental composition, Adagio Cardinal. A news item in Billboard for 30 Nov 1968 says this was originally a guitar piece by a Spanish composer, Michael Vacquez ...

Barclay, which released the first compatible EP classical recording in France, with 10-string guitarist Michel Dintrich playing the "Canon of Pachelbel," has followed up with a new Dintrich compatible EP and a cassette featuring featuring the "Adagio Cardinal" by the Spanish composer Michael Vacquez.

This first recorded performance of the work, made in the Eglise du Liban in Paris, will be distributed by Barclay throughout the world. The cassette version contains an introduction to the work by Ivan Pastor, director of Barclay's classic label, and Dintrich. The cassette has one blank track upon which guitar enthusiasts are invited to record their own version of the "Adagio Cardinal".

... but the Catalog of Copyright Entries 3D Series Vol 23 Pt 5 Secs 1-2 (1969) (page 4) gives multiple authorship for a piano version. I'm not quite clear if it's saying that Michael Vacquez is a pseudonym of Hubert Ballay, or vice versa:

ADAGIO CARDINAL; (Ah! Qu'il est doux)
paroles de Hubert Ballay, musique de
Guy Boyer & Michael Vacquez, pseud,
of Hubert Ballay. Piano & chant.
[France] 2 p. © Ste des Nouvelles
Editions Eddie Barclay & Productions
EFO-1I5958 Musicales Baboo; 31Dec68;

See Adagio Cardinal - Koskaan et muuttua saa for an appreciation and MP3s of several versions. There are also a number of instrumental versions on YouTube. They tend toward the cheesy and Mantovani-esque; the totally different Maria Kalaniemi accordion version is by far the best I've encountered.



Addendum: Something was naggingly familiar about Adagio Cardinal, and it just surfaced. It has a close similarity to the intro section of Feed the Birds (above), written by the Sherman brothers for the 1964 musical film Mary Poppins.

- Ray

Troka

I very much like folk-classical fusion (see Methera and Musical miscellany, previously), and the Finnish musical circuit is especially rich in that area. Just encountered: Troka, an award-winning band whose reputation has spread to the USA (they appeared on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio show). The line-up is Matti Mäkelä (fiddle), Antti Järvelä (double bass), Johanna Juhola (accordion), Ville Ojanen (fiddle, viola and mandolin) and Timo Alakotila (harmonium and piano). From various sleeve notes:

Troka have been praised for their ability to bring a contemporary feel to folk music. Their sound is influenced by both the classical string quartet and traditional ensemble techniques.

The embedded video above, Kesäillan Tvist (Summer Night Twist), is my favourite so far, with its upbeat main section (hoedown-like, but with an edge of classical/European) framed by a sinister-fairground strings-accordion intro and outro 1, alongside Ängskärsmenuett (Ängskär Minuet), a charming folk/classical/ambient original composition by Timo Alakotila, and Lellupuo-Iikoon Friioomarssi (Iiko's Courtship March). There are more samples at the Troka MySpace page (though I find it a bit tetchy about loading).

1. PS: Oh, damn! That accordion outro is so catchy, it's turned into an earworm.

- Ray

Happi thoughts

Happihumppa by Johanna Juhola Reaktori (Johanna Juhola: accordion, Sara Puljula: double bass, Milla Viljamaa: harmonium, Tuomas Norvio: live electronics)

Via Facebook: the exhilarating Happihumppa ("Oxygen Humppa"), a jazz fusion piece by the Finnish band Johanna Juhola Reaktori (I think it's technically a tango, whch is a bit more clear on listening to the other arrangement in the samples at johannajuhola.net).

I don't know if the title was intended as a bilingual pun on "happi"/"happy" or just for the alliteration, but there's a rich vein of linguistic and cultural interest springing from it. "Humppa" is a Finnish dance music genre whose name derives from German "oompah" band style; it's extremely fast with a strong rhythmic emphasis.  It's probably best known via the spoof band Eläkeläiset ("The Pensioners"), who play deliberately gormless covers of pop, rock and metal classics (well-represented on YouTube). However, humppa isn't necessarily satirical.

If the "Happi" part, the Finnish for "oxygen", seems surprisingly concise and untechnical to English readers, it's because not all languages went down the English route of coining "inkhorn" scientific terms from Latin and Greek. Finnish, particularly following the lead of the philologist Elias Lönnrot, has a modern tradition of coining neologisms from its own Finno-Ugric roots; so while "happi" conveys exactly the same as "oxygen" (which means "acid former") it comes from the Finnish "hapan" (sour) and "happo" (acid). The Finnish for nitrogen, "typpi", similarly came from local roots, deriving from the dialect word "typehtyä" (to choke or smother).  Other such folksy element names are "vety" (hydrogen, dating from 1851 and relating to "vesi" - water) and "pii" (silicon, from "piikivi" - flint).

There are more examples of such technical words in the section on Lönnrot on page 71, History of Finnish Literature, by Jaakko Ahokas. For instance, the Finnish for electricity, "sähkö", was coined in 1845 by Samuel Roos from the verbs "sähähtää" and "säkenöidä" (spit and sparkle). "Tutka" (radar) was coined from the verb "tutkia" (to investigate) by the linguist Lauri Hakulinen, who also coined "muovi" (plastic) from "muovata" (to mould).

It's quite interesting that Lönnrot was the exact equivalent of English commentators, notably William Barnes - see Ansible ... and Anglish - who wanted English to be derived from its Germanic roots. German itself went to some extent down the same path as Finnish: nitrogen is "Stickstoff" - stifling stuff - and oxygen "Sauerstoff" - sour/acid stuff. But it's probably significant that the German and Finnish coinings happened when these countries were in the process of forging a separate national identity, which wasn't happening for Britain at the time when chemical names were being invented. Poul Anderson's essay "Uncleftish Beholding" ("Atomic Theory") has some very nice Anglo-Saxon terms we could have had, such as "waterstuff" for hydrogen, "sunstuff" for helium, "sourstuff" for oxygen, "coalstuff" for carbon, "chokestuff" for nitrogen ... and up to heavy elements named after Norse rather than Greek and Roman gods: "ymirstuff" (uranium), "aegirstuff" (neptunium) and "helstuff" (plutonium).

- Ray

Music findings

Not books, but a few interesting music tracks I've been enjoying:

A while back I ran into a nice free-bass accordion demo on YouTube: the video "Maria Kalaniemi charms with her accordion" features an virtuoso arrangement - listen 1:30 onward - of a Finnish folk tune called "Istunpa sänkys laitalla". It features on the collaborative album Iho. In a pleasant diversion, the YouTube discussion thread led me to an alternative spelling of the title as "Istuinpa sänkys laidalla", and this appears in a vocal version by Sirkka Mostrom on the album Folk Voices: Finnish Folk Song Through the Ages (which gives the English title as "I Sat on Thy Bed"). You can hear it at Sad Songs Make Me Happy. The two versions of the tune are rather different, but both are lovely. Do we have any Finnish readers who could say what the song is about?

Update: I asked elsewhere, and "Cantilena91" kindly translated the lyrics:

I sat on thy bed
looking at you...
I, from the bottom of my heart am thinking,
there rests my darling.

The love of my heart
is deeply rooted into you,
and all my former friends
have been wiped away from my mind.

O, poor boy, you!
Oh, so young at age were you
when you threw me to grieve
always up unto death.

The wind escorted (me) to sea,
the waves were raging too.
Your sorrow was escorting me too,
to sing only for you.

Oh my darling, o, beloved one,
when (as) I remember you,
the blood moved within my breast,
please don't forget me!
The blood moved within my breast,
please don't forget me!

On a more upbeat note, I was also pleased to discover the background to a tune that's currently featuring in the Christmas trailers on UK television: "The Carol of the Bells". I've always tended to dislike this as a "made-up" modern American carol with its banal lyrics and choral-set-piece flavour, but I find it has roots. The English words are a 1930s bolt-on, and the piece goes back to a 1916 choral composition by Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych called "Щедрик" ("Shchedryk"), based on a folk chant and using the format of a traditional Ukrainian New Year carol to tell of a swallow bringing a household good luck. If you want a change from the ghastly doggerel (in my opinion) of the modern version - "Ding dong ding dong / that is their song" etc etc - check out Shchedryk on YouTube: for instance, Charivna's a capella version or this pleasant instrumental for string quintet on traditional instruments.

- Ray

Musical miscellany

Maria Kalaniemi: Arctic Paradise. More on this below.

A regular glance at Sydney Padua's 2D Goggles finds a new story under way in her beautifully drawn steampunk comic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: Lovelace and Babbage Vs The Organist! (part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) pits Babbage against his nemesis - street musicians - and Lovelace against the inner demons of her poetic ancestry. The erudite commentary brings to light a wealth of connections in the early 19th century scientific and social circuit: in this case, that the English concertina was one of a number of musical inventions by the physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone.

In that territory of instrument - the more complex free-bass accordion - I continue to be delighted and amazed by Finnish accordion virtuosity; a number of classically-trained exponents are creating exciting folk / classical / jazz / ethnic fusion. Check out Pauliina Lerche (for example Tulikatriili on accordion, and her vocal/instrumental work in general, such as Tanssi poika and Vot I Kaalina); Johanna Juhola (for example, Painajainen Leikkikentll); and Maria Kalaniemi (my current favourites are the reflective Arctic Paradise and Taklax I, whose folk-classical fusion reminds me a lot of Methera) . Accordion aside, exploring associated YouTube links has led me to Ulla Pirttijarvi, a Sámi musician whose work combines the traditional Sámi "yoik" form with modern arrangements (for instance, Northern Silk); and Gjallarhorn, a band from the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnian region of Finland, who fuse "the folk music of Finland with a global range of influences and instrumentation including the didgeridoo and Australian wood flute" (for instance, O-Vals and Eldgjald). Oh, talking of Finnish music, I find - mutters curses - that I missed a Värttinä concert in Exeter three years ago, when they were in the UK following the West End premiere of The Lord of the Rings stage production, for which they co-composed the music.


Markku Lepistö Company: Concerto Diatonique

Addition upgraded from comment: Alan.98 (who is Alan Brignull) recommends the addition of Markku Lepistö to the list. Definitely!

Continuing the theme of instrumental virtuosity, I just ran into Seeing Ear Theatre's audio adaptation of Jack Vance's 1961 short SF story The Moon Moth. (also in the anthology The Moon Moth and Other Stories). In the scene-setting introduction (not in the print story), a drunken man attempts to force his attentions on a young woman. He is stopped and, despite protesting that he is a Consular Representative, is executed on the spot: not for the attempted assault, but for misjudging the woman's 'strakh' - social prestige level, as denoted by her mask. This is typical of Sirene, a planet with a highly xenophobic mask-wearing culture where all interactions depend on level of strakh (an unwritten scale of social prestige) and furthermore must be conducted in song accompanied by bizarre instruments whose choice again depends on relative strakh levels (for instance, the hymerkin - "a clapping, slapping, clattering device of wood and stone" - is used primarily to talk to slaves, and would be a deadly insult in other contexts).

The Moon Moth (plot spoiler, if you want, here) is a social satire and murder mystery telling of the misadventures of Edwer Thissell, the replacement Consular Representative, who has to catch a murderer despite his own inexperience in Sirenese culture. I think the Seeing Ear Theatre version could do with a bit more musicality in the dialogue and accompaniments, which don't fully convey the virtuosity and complexity of Sirenese music, but it's not a bad effort overall. Here it is: part 1 / part 2.

- Ray

Unusual string quartets

A couple of recommendations. On October 6th Lily (my employer) and I went to a performance by Methera, and it was outstanding. From the official website:

Methera unites the rich texture of the string quartet with the depth and integrity of traditional music from England and beyond. Four fine young musicians with individual traditional styles weave old and contemporary tunes into the tapestry of the string quartet, exploring the power and diversity of sound it has to offer

The crossover between folk and chamber music isn't new. The description reminded me of a detail I heard a long time back about Turlough O'Carolan, the great Irish blind harper, being influenced by Corelli; see these Albuquerque Baroque Players programme notes for interesting discussion of such fusion going on historically. But Methera brings a very fresh and very English spin on the concept.

Methera's lineup is standard - two violins, viola and cello - but, unusually, Methera play facing inward to tightly coordinate their playing. You can hear some of their pieces at www.myspace.com/methera, which give an example of the flavour of their music - even if the online samples don't do justice to the dynamic range and the marvellous atmosphere, intensity and intimacy of the live performance. If you get the chance to go to one - it'll have to be their 2010 tour now - both Lily and I highly recommend them.



And then there's the Finnish rock band Apocalyptica (see Wikipedia and their official site) whose core lineup is four classically trained cellists. They produce a remarkable fusion of metal and string quartet styles, much of their work comprising covers of songs by heavy metal bands such as Metallica (for instance, "One", embedded above, is Metallica's "...And Justice for All"; and another of my current favourites by them, "Fade to Black", comes from the Metallica song of the same name). Their collaborations are excellent too: check out "Helden", a German cover of David Bowie's "Heroes" with vocals by Rammstein's Till Lindemann, and their performance of Rammstein's "Seemann" with the scary Nina Hagen.

Addendum: November 9th 2009. "Helden", the German cover of "Heroes", is especially pertinent today, which marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The lyrics, Bowie said, were inspired by seeing a couple defying the system by making love on top of the Wall. Rammstein themselves, by the way, have East German / Berlin roots, as does Nina Hagen (I'm wondering if the strongly trilled R is a regionalism).

- Ray

Värttinä again

Nothing to do with books, but just a current enthusiasm: Värttinä, a distinctly feminist Karelian folk-rock trio. I gather "Värttinä" means "spindle" - although personally I think "distaff", with its double meaning, is a translation more in the spirit of these deeply cool ladies who sing modern arrangements of material from women's Finno-Ugric singing traditions.

Knowing the translations helps understand the choreography. With Tauti (above), they're miming pain, and later relaxation, because "tauti" = "disease": the song is a traditional charm to cure illness. Nahkaruoska (below) = "leather whip". This isn't a fetishy thing but a "girl power" song about a philandering husband going through all the farm girls in town. His wife decides it's got to stop, so kicks him out, sending him on his way with a leather whip - "Nahkaruoska" - and hitting him with a cane ("vivi" = "whack"). I just love that Charlie's Angels pose at the end. It's their outro number: the "Kiitos" they say at the end = Thank you".


- Ray

Värttinä

Further to Finnish folk roots, a wander on YouTube led me to another brilliant group that has made a seamless crossover from trad folk to highly eclectic fusion (and such experimental eclecticism seems characteristic of the Finnish music scene). Check out Värttinä ("distaff" would be the best translation) whose official site describes it as a "band that has grown from mostly traditional vocal music to combining traditional language and lyrics with modern music and themes". Here's the MySpace page.

The mix is pretty unusual; Värttinä comprises a trio of female vocalists who sing both folk and original compositions in Karelian, drawing on traditional Finno-Ugric close harmony, using lyrics sourced in the Karelian "runo" poetry, but with instrumental backing that recalls elements of Irish, Asian, Cajun, jazz and rock. My favourites so far include Paivan Nousu Nostajani ("Dawn, my rouser" - above), Itkin ("I cried"), and Seelinnikoi (a bride's lament at having married unwisely) and Linnunmieli. Not that it's all gloomy: Värttinä also does gentler material such as the beautifully mellow Suurenmoinen Tyttö ("Magnificent girl" - I think) and Kylä vuotti uutta kuuta (a wedding song, "The Village Awaits the New Moon").

As the Guardian review of the album Miero said, the vocals are "taut, raw and scary. Even scarier when you read the English translations". Finnish folk roots seem come from a darker wilder time and place than the English. Outside death metal, it's hard to think of anything else as ferocious as Äijö, a song about an elderly man - evidently a shaman - who is bitten by a snake and, unable to find it after pursuing it with an axe, deals it a powerful curse 1 - before he dies.

Treacherous and cold-skinned viper,
slithering and slit-eyed fiend,
heather-colored belly-crawler,
learn now of your contemptible extraction,
hear and know your lowly provenance:
Earth it was who first uncoiled you,
as it did much crawling vermin,
even many-colored serpents.

As for what your proper hue be
I can't say, nor does it matter
if you were nine different colors,
whether you are black or greyish
or perchance a shade of copper.

Evil, stinging devil's minion,
never shall my blood refresh you,
nor my flesh sustain your body.
Hissing ghoul with jagged backside,
long-fanged, vicious, wicked creature,
find a hillside in the forest,
hide amongst the tender willows,
slink into a stony hollow,
creep, black worm, into a burrow
and take my affliction with you,
carry off the pain I suffer
to those killing fields of battle,
to the very sites of warfare.
Cleanse the grievous wound you gave me,
rid my veins of this your venom.
Henceforth do not hasten thee hither,
never wend your winding way here,
be, foul thing, forever banished.

I imagine it's even more striking in Karelian, in which it's heavily alliterative (see the lyrics page). The words allude strongly to Finnish pagan mythology, where Äijö is one of the names of its Odin-like chief god Ukko - both "äijä" and "ukko" mean "old man" - who wielded a stone axe (a Ukonvasara) and whose symbol was a viper. (Readers of 2000 A.D. will recognise the name as that used for the dwarf sidekick and chronicler of Sláine).

As discussed on many websites - see Are High Elves Finno-Ugric? and More about Quenya's relation to Finnish in the Net - Tolkien's Elvish language Quenya was inspired by Finnish; no surprise, then, that Värttinä were on the musical team collaborating with A.R. Rahman for The Lord of the Rings stage musical. See the Montreal Mirror - Wizard’s words, woman’s wiles - for background; it also gives further insight into the origins and intent of Värttinä’s "fierce and focused" exploration of darker female emotions.

- Ray

1. This curse is as studied and vicious as that used by Skírnir in the Poetic Edda's Skírnismál to scare Gerðr into agreeing to marry Freyr.

You shall be sent where no son of man
Or god shall see you again,
With earth behind you, on an eagle's mound,
Facing Hel, for ever sit. Fouler to you shall food look
Than the snake seems to warriors.
A sight you shall become ere you come out.


Hrimnir shall leer at you, everyone jeer at you,
A more famous figure you'll be
Than the god's watchman when you gape through the fence.


May error and terror, blotches and blains,
Grow on you, grief with tears.
Crouch low while the curse I pronounce,
Heavy torment and twofold grief.
Orcs shall pinch you the whole day long
In the grim garths of the giants,
Every day to the halls of Frost
You shall creep, crawl without choice,
Without any hope of choice


Lamentation not laughter know,
Dejection instead of joy.
With three-headed trolls shall your time be spent,
Never shall a man come near you,
May your senses be numbed, your sadness weep,
May you be as the thistle, thoughtlessly crushed
Underfoot at the gate of the garth.


To the woods I went, through the wet trees,
For a spell-binding branch,
And a fitting branch I found.
Odin is angry, angry is Thor,
All the gods shall hate you
Base maiden, you have brought on yourself
The anger of all the gods.


Hear me, giants, hear me frost-trolls,
Sons of Suttung, hear me,
What I forebode, what I forbid,
Joy of man to this maid,
Love of man to this maid.


Hrimgrimir shall have you, the hideous troll,
Beside the doors of the dead,
Under the tree-roots ugly scullions
Pour you the piss of goats;
Nothing else shall you ever drink,
Never what you wish,
Ever what I wish.
I score troll-runes, then I score three letters,
Filth, frenzy, lust:
I can score them off as I score them on,
If I find sufficient cause.


- The Elder Edda, trans. Paul B Taylor and WH Auden, Faber & Faber, 1973

Finnish folk roots

This is mostly not about books, but lately I've been getting into Finnish music. Finland has a very strong folk tradition. But it's one with a very intimate relationship with modern musical forms, a seamless connection in a way that doesn't seem to be sideline hybrid music into genre (such as "folk-rock" or - like the much under-rated Wurzels in the UK - "comic"); folk groups happily experiment with jazz, scat and electronica. Modern dance forms have readily evolved from folk forms, such as the jenkka and the letkajenkka (based on a schottische); and there's humppa (an astonishingly fast foxtrot style named after the German "oompah" band). The cult band Eläkeläiset ("The Pensioners") are hilarious performers of the latter, who do humppa cover versions of pop and and heavy metal: at YouTube, for instance, Humppamaratooni (Whiskey in the Jar, dubbed over the Metallica version) and Humppa Arvoitus (Nik Kershaw's The Riddle) and Ryhtivaliohumppaare (ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man) are representative.

EARWORM WARNING (Dec 2nd). Follow the asterisked links at your own risk! Ievan Polka is immensely catchy: so much so that there's a strong chance of your getting an earworm that lasts for days, as I've just found. I guess this is why it became an Internet meme. (If you've read the "Tenser, Said The Tensor" section of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, you'll know what I mean).

Moving away from the comic extreme, MetaFilter just mentioned *** Ievan Polkka (Eva's Polka) ***, a horribly catchy tune going way back (trad. arr. Eino Kettunen, 1930). But the MetaFilter version is *** this one *** sung a capella by the Finnish folk quartet Loituma. For whatever reason, Ievan Polkka has blossomed into an Internet meme via the strange decision to use it to back an animated manga character spinning a leek. Go figure.

Loituma themselves have done variants: see *** their MySpace page *** for "house" and "remix" versions, and YouTube for this *** upbeat pop version *** (an example of what I meant by Finnish folk grading seamlessly into mainstream). But the highlight there is a more reflective piece, Missing Him (called Kun Mun Kultani Tulisi on YouTube), a beautiful love song in close harmony backed with the kantele (Finnish zither). The lyrics, along with other songs from Loituma's album Things of Beauty, are here. It'd be a pity if Loituma's other work were buried by the very Internet hit that brought them to notice; their second album is In the Moonlight - full track here of Salaisia kyyneleitä (Secret Tears), which has a very Eastern European flavour.

Missing Him (the standard title - Jos Mun Tuttuni Tulisi - usually translated as If the One I Know Came Now) is Finland's most famous poem:

Should my treasure come
my darling step by
I'd know him by his coming
recognize him by his step
though he were still a mile off
or two miles away.
As mist I'd go out
as smoke I would reach the yard
as sparks I would speed
as flame I would fly;
I'd bowl along beside him
pout before his face.
I would touch his hand
though a snake were in his palm
I would kiss his mouth
though doom stared him in the face
I'd climb on his neck
though death were on his neck bones
I'd stretch beside him
though his side were all bloody.
And yet my treasure has not
his mouth bloody from a wolf
his hands greasy from a snake
nor his neck in death's clutches:
his mouth is of melted fat
his lips are as of honey
his hands golden, fair
his neck like a heather stalk

The words are late mediaeval, and were among those incorporated into the Kanteletar, the body of folk lyrics and poetry collated by Elias Lönnrot in parallel with his work compiling Finnish folkore into the epic Kalevala. The oldest known printed version was that noted down by the musician and ethnographer Giuseppe Acerbi on a trip to Lapland in 1799. In the mid-1800s, a Stockholm civil servant, Carl Gustav Zetterqvist, was so taken with the poem that he wrote around internationally and solicited 467 translations (they weren't published, but reside in the Elias Lönrot Collection, Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki). As with any orally transmitted text, there are variants such as these two, Finnish and Karelian, of a shorter version, the one Goethe translated in 1810 as Finnisches Lied.

Käm' der liebe Wohlbekannte,
Völlig so wie er geschieden:
Kuß erkläng' an seinen Lippen,
Hätt' auch Wolfsblut sie gerötet;
Ihm den Handschlag gäb' ich, wären
Seine Fingerspitzen Schlangen.

Wind! o hättest du Verständnis,
Wort' um Worte trügst du wechselnd,
Sollt auch einiges verhallen,
Zwischen zwei entfernten Liebchen.

Gern entbehrt' ich gute Bissen,
Priesters Tafelfleisch vergäß' ich
Eher, als dem Freund entsagen,
Den ich Sommers rasch bezwungen,
Winters langer Weis' bezähmte.

The poem also appears on Arctic Silence by Merja Soria, another exponent of vocal/kantele arrangements of ancient Finnish songs. A few samples, though not including Jos Mun Tuttuni Tulisi, are here. If you like this taster of Finnish folk music, there's more at Etno.net, more or less the experimental wing of the Sibelius Academy of Music, where Loituma originated. See the recordings list: for musicians and groups marked "F" there are samples; for those marked "E", full tracks are available for download.
- Ray

Addendum: I'd wondered what "Loituma" means in Finnish. Tuulikannel at YouTube kindly checked it out: apparently it's the name of a lake in Karelia.

Addendum #2: I just saw (25 January 2009) that a new Ready Brek TV ad is using a version of Ievan Polkka.

See also: Värttinä.