Stories by

Why have HIM and Hanoi Rocks been the only Finnish bands to make it in America? Sami Valkonen, a music industry veteran involved with rock bands on both sides of the Atlantic, debates the factors that make up a success story on the American market.

In the summer of 1998, Americans watched the U.S. House of Representatives debate a proposal to eliminate all national arts funding - contentious issue that was wrapped up in the "controversial" art such funding supported as well as questions over the very idea of federal funding of the arts. Meanwhile, news reports began to tell how the government of Finland had an advanced system of supporting music through its school curriculum.

Finland's music education has succeeded in combining the best features of the old Russian and Hungarian schools with the principles of the Nordic welfare state and democracy. Establishing a good relationship with music has become the basis of the new teaching methods. The audible result - quality - nevertheless continues to occupy a significant role.

Between the mid 1970s and the early 1990s Professor Jorma Panula and his students made the Finnish training for conductors both widely known and highly acclaimed. But where did it all begin - and what has happened since?

Singing, playing games, listening, exercise, and playing instruments - these are the core activities of Finland's many music playschools. The schools are bustling with activity, for they have become very popular in recent years. Finland is a real land of music playschools.

Festivalisation has been a trend in Finnish musical life since the 1960s. As the number of festivals increase, more and more music events receive government aid, for Finland takes equality seriously. Public funding's share of festival budgets is on the decline, however, and it is not easy to find compensation in the form of support from private companies.

There are probably more orchestras, music schools and colleges and music festivals in Finland per head of population than in any other country in the world. Crucial to the development has been the Finnish Theatres and Orchestras Act, in which the state guarantees a certain number of person years for orchestras every year. The subsidy has not kept up with actual trends in costs, but the situation is soon to improve.

Victory in the Shostakovich Competition in 2004 was just the prelude for the Meta4 string quartet. Its young members now intend to give it their full attention and accordingly packed their bags at the beginning of this year and took up residence in Berlin. Storming Europe will be easier from there, and - at last - they will be able to practise full-time together.

There has been little research in Finland into Karelian culture on the Russian side of the border during the Soviet era. From the 1920s to the 1950s we get a fragmented picture on the whole of cultural policy in the Soviet Union. Ever the victim of ideological change, Karelian culture was sometimes something that enriched a multicultural state, sometimes something to be denounced as unorthodox.