cultural connections

"Boundaries between nationalities are becoming more relaxed, and people increasingly feel themselves belonging to transnational groups. And as people move around, so does their music. Changes in society also affect music," writes Anna Dantchev in her column.

The cultural cold war between the superpowers that began after the Second World War played a major role in shaping the international arts and culture scene as we know it today. This series of articles discusses the impacts of cultural diplomacy, particularly that of the USA, on Finnish music from the days of the Cold War to the present. This third part examines how American avant-garde came to Finland in the 1960s and what impacts it had.

“If you look far enough back in any culture, music is born out of many different aspects and influences, including the physical environment that you live in. This is the key for me, finding your own points of connection with your culture, whatever that might be,” says widely travelled multi-instrumentalist Nathan Riki Thomson.

Before the great October Revolution in 1917, the cultural contacts between Helsinki and St. Petersburg were amazingly strong and lively. St. Petersburg was the political and, above all, cultural capital of the Russian Empire, to which Finland also belonged.