FMQ - kantele Articles

Rauno Nieminen: Back to the Future

Rauno Nieminen turned the jouhikko and kantele into contemporary marvels. Recently awarded a lifetime achievement for his work, Nieminen’s work isn’t just about instruments – it’s a bridge between eras. In this article, Nieminen unveils the unexpected convergence of the old and new in the world of folk music.

Simon Broughton

April 12, 2024

Features

“Subtle is the new fortissimo” – The Superpluck trio pushes timbral and cultural boundaries

Focusing on contemporary music, Superpluck are a trio made up of three plucked instruments. Over the past five years, Rody van Gemert, Eija Kankaanranta and Assi Karttunen have taken aim at prejudiced and established networks in Finland and beyond.

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

October 13, 2023

Features

The Kantele Day – Dynamic, modern, and persistently national

The first ever Kantele Day was celebrated in Finland on Saturday 16 September 2023. The celebrations – including a flash mob, concerts and gala – were organised by the Kantele Association, a community for amateur and professional kantele players and anyone else interested in the instrument. What is the status of the kantele in today’s Finland?

Heidi Henriikka Mäkelä

October 4, 2023

Columns

Between different worlds – Locating “Finland” in Final Fantasy V Dear Friends

I still vividly remember how surprised I was when, more than 20 years ago, I first popped Final Fantasy V Dear Friends (1993) into my CD player. I was expecting to hear the energetic main theme with its iconic harp, strings and trumpet. Instead, the CD started with joik from Lapland – followed by a piece that begins with a kantele solo! Indeed, Dear Friends is one of the few game music albums to feature kantele and joik. But is there anything ‘Finnish’ about the album?

Lasse Lehtonen

June 15, 2023

Features

Kantele player Hanna Ryynänen – A Journey to Get to Know Myself

As she releases her debut solo album, kantele player Hanna Ryynänen takes us into her personal musical world.

Simon Broughton

May 5, 2023

Features

Playlist: Music from and about Japan and Finland

This Special Feature introduces several musicians and composers who have contributed to the musical connection between Japan and Finland. Our playlist highlights these connections between the two countries, focusing on musicians and composers discussed in this Special Feature, as well as some other works of contemporary music.

Lasse Lehtonen

March 30, 2023

Features

Eva Alkula and Tomoya Nakai – A genuine interest in someone else’s culture is the best starting point for collaboration

As the saying goes, “sometimes you have to travel far to see what is near”. Finnish kantele artist Eva Alkula and Japanese koto artist Tomoya Nakai have performed as a duo for nearly two decades. Their collaboration crystallises each artist’s identity as a musician and enables the birth of something new. The unique union of the distinct timbres of the kantele and the koto is “a match made in heaven”, even if the physical distance between Tokyo and Tampere remains 7,843 kilometres.

Elina Roms

March 30, 2023

Reviews

The kantele empress strikes back

"Kauhanen’s one-woman-band concept, where she sings while playing the kantele and percussion, is hugely impressive."

Tove Djupsjöbacka

May 23, 2022

Reviews

Embraced by vocals and stringed instruments

"The ten tracks on the disc form an attractive whole showcasing the ancient connection between humans, music and nature and, on the other hand, modern cosmopolitanism."

Amanda Kauranne

February 10, 2022

Reviews

Virtuoso weirdness facing a sacred experience

"The album makes the point that the need of the human animal to experience the sacred is tied up with the history of sexuality, gender and power."

Amanda Kauranne

February 10, 2022

Reviews

Electroacoustics of a natural origin

"Luonnos, the title of the collection of four electroacoustic works by Ilari Hongisto, refers to a sketch but also, in colloquial Finnish, to being in the nature."

Anna Pulkkis

May 6, 2021

Reviews

From runo roots to the UZone lair

"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."

Simon Broughton

April 14, 2021

Features

A national symbol and music without borders – can folk music be both?

The phenomena grouped under the soubriquet of Finnish folk music include transnational cultural phenomena on the one hand and strong regional traditions on the other, and not nearly all of these are defined by where Finland’s political borders happened to be at any particular time.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

March 29, 2021

Reviews

Daily life and versatile musical dialogues

"The debut album of kantele player and singer-songwriter Marjo Smolander is an interesting combination of different musical collaborations."

Tove Djupsjöbacka

February 5, 2021

Features

Sarah Palu and the inner self reflected in music

Finnish-French composer-musician Sarah Palu touches a deep chord in the soul with her début album Ikivirta [Everflow]. It is a journey through soundscapes featuring a multitude of musical influences, but always connected by a scarlet thread. Palu plays the kantele and the harp, and what she finds fascinating in music are the connection to her inner self on the one hand and connections between people on the other.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

May 28, 2020

Features

Eija Kankaanranta – A hands-on approach to sound

Kantele player Eija Kankaanranta constantly challenges herself as a musician and embraces the new dimensions she discovers in her instrument.

Auli Särkiö-Pitkänen

February 7, 2020

Features

Pluck those strings, play that bow - kantele and jouhikko

The kantele is seen as Finland’s national instrument and its mythological history is often reinforced: how Väinämöinen, a hero and the central character in our national epic, the Kalevala, builds the first kantele. The jouhikko is another instrument with a long history, known previously by the name jouhikantele (bowed kantele). Its living playing tradition gradually died down but was actively revived during the 20th century.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

September 30, 2019

Features

Kardemimmit – a folk-pop quartet pushing 20

A group of four women who each both sing and play the kantele and who write songs in a consistent and original style, Kardemimmit have their roots in the folk tradition but are not afraid to season their menu with whatever spices take their fancy. Few ensembles can boast having made music together from childhood through to turning professional. In recent years, Kardemimmit have been in demand from the USA to Japan.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

June 14, 2018

Reviews

An impressive one-woman-show

"Maija Kauhanen's debut album could well be a future classic in Finnish folk music."

Riikka Hiltunen

September 21, 2017

Features

The kantele - outside the box

Today, the kantele inspires composers and performers across genre boundaries. Musician Maija Kauhanen and composer Adina Dumitrescu discuss the instrument from their respective perspectives.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

June 16, 2017

Features

The kantele – not exclusively Finnish

Finns never fail to point out that the kantele is Finland’s national instrument. In our national epic, the Kalevala, Väinämöinen the wizard builds the first kantele from the jaw bone of a pike and charms all the people and the animals of the forest. But there are kantele-like instruments elsewhere too, and it is only recently that they have begun to be studied more thoroughly.

Tove Djupsjöbacka

May 29, 2017

Features

Deep in sound, deep in soul

Kaija Saariaho has been a frequent visitor to the USA in recent years, and her music has been widely performed in various concert series and at festivals there. The premiere of a new production of her first opera, L’amour de loin, at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2016 will be an operatic event such as has not been seen for decades, and it will be broadcast to cinemas around the world. Not only that, but she is also working on a new opera.

Liisamaija Hautsalo

July 10, 2016

Reviews

Another world

There’s a real sense of narrative in the music as Kastinen moves between the different instruments in her improvisations, and combines different playing techniques with bows and plucking, slides, sticks and mutes as well as using her own breath.

Fiona Talkington

June 10, 2016

Reviews

Sound blessing

"The sound they achieve together on their third album is quite a blessing, and Timonen offers both jazzy atmosphere as well as some traditional playing."

Tove Djupsjöbacka

June 4, 2016

Features

The national character of Soviet Karelian music

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.

Pekka Suutari

June 4, 2005

Features

What’s been written for the kantele?

“Nowadays, a great variety of music is played on the kantele. Its repertoire includes neoclassical, minimalist, and modern music. The kantele is also a more international instrument than ever before”, writes Pekka Jalkanen in his article about contemporary music for kantele (FMQ 3/2008).

Pekka Jalkanen

January 8, 1985