Paleface

"The JuuriJuhla-RotFest (Roots Festival) takes place in Espoo each year and says it has its own roots in the pelimanni folk dance music, although most of the concerts range much wider. It featured top names on the Finnish roots music scene."

"Perhaps the most relevant legacy of the Kalevala is in its rich and varied use of language, its grand narratives and how those narratives translate to the modern era." Ethnomusicologist Lari Aaltonen discusses the Kalevala today.

Conductor, electronic musician, singer, clarinettist and producer Taavi Oramo is known as a highly diverse and open-minded musician. Though increasingly performing as a conductor, he is keen to keep up his multiple other roles too: the various aspects of music-making that he is involved in are mutually supportive.

The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) was an international anarcho-syndicalist union movement, which was founded in 1905 in Chicago. Finns were active in the movement from the 1910s onwards and published three songbooks of their own. These songs, however, have remained largely unheard in Finland. The ensemble Laulava Unioni offers fresh interpretations of music written by the Finnish members of the IWW.

Music is strongly associated with the Romani people. Singing was always a part of travelling with horse-drawn wagons or sleighs, or resting by the campfire. Music still occupies a large role in the lives of many Romani today, even as traditional lifestyles are being replaced by modern ones.

What relevance does Sibelius – and his big anniversary – hold for the wider Finnish music and culture scene in 2015? Andrew Mellor asked five musicians from outside the classical music tradition.

The Finnish capital is currently home to a thriving stage poetry scene, thanks to the determined efforts of Helsinki Poetry Connection. The group arranges jam sessions where poetry and music are often combined in unexpected ways.

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.

Multi-instrumentalist Teho Majamäki has spent the past fifteen years collecting musical influences, tunes and sounds on his travels around the world.