Aki Kaurismäki

Concert promoter, journalist and music export researcher Dr Greg Goldenzwaig takes a look at the import-export of rock and pop music between Finland and Russia. Some things have changed for sure in the past ten years.

The pop-music Finland of 2004 is no longer just “the land of a thousand sad and sorry songs”, as the classic Eppu Normaali quipped some twenty years ago. The former backwoods have become a baking oven for every conceivable subgenre of popular music, turning out appetizing fare to suit all tastes, from fancies for the cake-shop window to savoury nibbles for the basement bash.