Essays on Sound and Vision (2025)

30 Years of Music in Finland

Finnish Music Quarterly 3–4/2014

From the Eastern bloc’s next-door neighbour to EU Member State, from Cold War to globalisation. From Walkmen and a choice of two channels on TV to digital music and the vast expanse of the Internet. From hymnal reform to heavy metal mass, from spectral music to sound art, from Suomirock to Sámi rap. It is mind-boggling to think just how much Finland and Finnish music have changed over the past 30 years.

Finnish Centre of Excellence in interdisciplinary music research, Finland

Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 2012

Interview with Antti-Ville Kärjä from Music Archive Finland

Journal of World Popular Music, 2017

Puls. Musik-och dansetnologisk tidskrift/Journal for Ethnomusicology and Ethnochoreology No 2 2017 Svenskt visarkiv Musikverket

STM-SJM STM-SJM Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning Swedish Journal of Music Research STM-SJM 2015 S VenSk a SaMfunde t föR MuSikfoRSkning SWediSH SoCie t Y foR MuSiCoLogY

2013

Fabian Holt and Antti-Ville Kärjä, eds. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries

Journal of World Popular Music, 2020

Fabian Holt and Antti-Ville Kärjä, eds. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. 432 pp. ISBN 9780190603908 (hbk)

Sounds of Estonia - The Institutionalisation and Construction of Traditional Music at the Viljandi Culture College in Estonia

Eesti Humanitaarinstituut, 2002

From Ancient to Avant-Garde to Global: Creative Processes and Institutionalization in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music

2005

This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of the history, ideology, teaching methods, and current performance practices and creative processes of Finnish contemporary folk music, an urban, professional music using traditional Finnish folk music as a point of departure for contemporary, individualistic creations. It focuses primarily on the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy music conservatory in Helsinki, where the genre was created and where its most important practitioners have studied or currently teach and work. Finnish contemporary folk music serves as a case study and jumping-off point for theoretical discussions of five larger socio-musical issues: 1) the institutionalization of musicians’ training in traditional musics; 2) the construction of legitimacy, authenticity, and historical continuity in revived and recontextualized musics; 3) the ideology, pedagogy, and methods for teaching creativity; 4) how the authority to be musical and specifically to be creative in music is created and allocated; and 5) the expression and reification of transnational relationships through musical fusions and appropriations. The Folk Music Department, influenced by its conservatory environment, has adopted a Western art music ethos of individual artistry while rebelling against its pedagogy and performance practices, which folk musicians perceive as inhibiting creativity. Contemporary folk musicians legitimize their practices by claiming to enter into the same creative process as folk musicians of the past, allowing them to innovate and experiment while maintaining historical continuity and authenticity. Department pedagogues have developed unique teaching methods drawing from historical practices, manipulating aural memory to imitate oral culture, simulating oral composition, and using avant-garde improvisation to develop individuality and personal expression. Their ideology authorizes all (Finnish) musicians to become tradition bearers and innovators, compose, improvise, and arrange, regardless of musical background or skill. Contemporary folk musicians incorporate musical elements from other cultures, reifying their desired relationships with those cultures. The Department wields tremendous power in the dissemination of ideology, causing an increase in creative activities by folk musicians of all ages and skill levels and general knowledge about and respect for folk music.

Finnish Kantele Music: Intercultural Musical Collaborations and Cultural Exchanges

Master's dissertation, 2017

This dissertation examines the musical and cultural interaction of collaborators through the tradition of Finnish kantele music, focusing in depth on different intercultural contexts. The kantele is a traditional Finnish stringed instrument that symbolises Finnish national identity. The national epic, Kalevala, originated from old runo-songs (Kalevala songs) in Karelia and Finland. Finnish runo-songs and kantele melodies once were intimately interconnected within oral tradition. In recent years, international collaboration in Finnish kantele music has emerged. This dissertation aims to investigate the ways in which people of different cultural backgrounds interact with each other through kantele music and how their musical and cultural identities can evolve through such intercultural contact. This ethnographic account reflects my field work in Finland, Russian Karelia, and Hokkaido, Japan, in 2017, the centenary year of Finland’s independence. I first examine the transformation of the kantele tradition, in relation to the Kalevala story and runo-songs, and look at the representation of Finnish kantele music. I then focus on the processes of intercultural transmission of kantele music in Japanese communities, analysing how collaborators advance their interest in international cultural collaboration and expand their musical skills and repertoire through intercultural contact. Broadening the perspective, I also discuss the importance of investigating cross-cultural relationships among the Japanese Ainu people and certain Northern European groups. Lastly, I describe a practice-as-research performance project, “Not Just a Collaboration,” in which I played the Finnish kantele at an intercultural event at Royal Holloway, University of London, in the UK. I discuss musical and cultural tensions among collaborators, howtheir perception of Finnish kantele music changed, and their development of musical skills. I conclude by emphasizing the significance of incorporating the ethnographer’s intercultural experiences in one’s ethnomusicological research.