Jaakko Laitinen ja Väärä Raha

In a sun-drenched town only 200 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, jazz connoisseurs mixed with locals to enjoy their 31st festival of music, at the Jazz on the Beach in Raahe, Finland.

When Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha came on stage in the Horta Hall of Bozar in Brussels, as part of the 11th edition of Balkan Trafik!, they must have realised it was not going to be an easy victory. The folding chairs for the audience had been placed at the far end of a huge empty dance floor, some thirty metres from the stage. To compensate for this they moved into gear right from the very start, and delivered what could be expected from them: energetic and exciting Balkan music with a subtle twist.

From the 1950s through to the 1980s, Russian songs in Finnish translation made their way into Finnish ears through record players and radio waves. Today, it is possible to dance to live Russian-language music in Finland, partly thanks to the Tusovka Association, established in 1998.