They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly
be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians
with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground,
in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop
over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been
able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world
may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices
of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a
Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the
guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing
to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward
is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and
spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the
atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping
rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For
Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a
few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play
some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once
told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like
instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in
their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but
for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though
wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble
which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at
the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of
the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the
confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world
over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991. From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/
