Värttinä~
So, we randomly and out of the blue went to a Värttinä concert. It was practically in the neighborhood and their first tour in Finland in ten years. Was amusing to realize that I was there the last time, too. And boy have they been busy abroad... ten years. O.o
They had also grown in that time. The first time I saw them they were still on that folky stage... if you've seen the live version of Loituma's Ievan Polkka you'll know what I mean, happy beaming folk singers. Seleniko was just out. The next time they were in a night club / pub, bigger stage, trying out their wings in turning the traditional folk properly into something else... Kokko was out and Vihma in the making. Now it was a concert in a more of an official auditorium theater kind of thing. You know, people wear fancy stuff and sit and listen, not bounce in front of the stage drunk like ten years ago. :P
And seriously... mind-blowing. I'm tempted to get the Live DVD that they've just published, but we had to grab Miero to begin with, so. Unfortunately it has that moronic protection thing that installs a program to listen/rip it with and the said program wants rights to connect to the net freely. Like hell. So no fun mp3s, which does annoy me since all the music listening I do is with winamp and at the comp these days. Had to poke at the cd-player like it was some alien device right now to get it playing.
Anyway, I was talking about the concert and how much they've changed from a basic happy folk band with a little twist in a pure unique twist with a folk basis. The concert was mainly songs from Miero, but they had some of the good old ones included, and Kylä vuotti uutta kuuta with just a guitar-guy and Mari Kaasinen alone gave me goosebumps. As did Äijö. Which reminds me... Finnish language so totally pwns in making plausible-sounding curses. It's the magic of R. And the three singers certainly worked that magic. I love it how they can make it sound so ugly and threatening at the same time as beautiful.
I also got to thinking about the Finnish culture, talking and silence in the concert. Might have to do with the fact that they had a song where people who chatter a lot are viewed negatively and right after that song they sing one about silence. And that I felt oh so very Finnish there, listening to the intro to that song and Johanna Virtanen talking about how there can be those silences when your heart is about to burst from happiness and then those when there is too much burden on your heart and mind that it could be carried by mere words. Silence is a solid form of communication, dammit.
Um, anyway... I was pondering the dual view Finnish culture has to words. Chattering and small talk is gossip-like, dubious and worthless. Words bind you, thus you shouldn't say words in vain... only say what you truly mean, only promise what you know you can keep. Smooth-talking is too close to lying in the national Finnish conscience. In all the old Finnish literature the dubious bad people smooth-talk, change black into white, fool the honest people... the good guys say maybe two words a month, but keep what they said. ...it's ridiculous to analyze this stuff after I've had someone like Talvi created for ages, but anyway! ...oh, and both my rogues are smooth chatterboxes. *facedesks* I'm such a Finn. Anyway!
The other part of this has the same basis -- the importance of words -- but it shows itself completely differently. Our national epic's main hero is a wizard, although the Finnish word for it is 'someone who knows', knowledger, if you're willing to abuse English language for a straight translation. The magic is all about knowing the words, the spells are songs. All the knowledge and power of the world is in knowing the true names, words. When you know the words and set them out correctly, you -change- the world into the shape of the words. From this basis it isn't so odd that Finns dislike words that don't carry a meaning or that we distrust those that speak too much. But. And here's the twist... we also appreciate and approve someone who is good with words. There's a fine line between a dubious smooth-talker and a funny word-genius that everybody loves. It's difficult to explain, but it is there. The difference between real wizards and hedge tricksters. I'm personally thinking it has to do with the use of silences and speaking only when the genius moments pop up with the words, the hedge tricksters unable to do that because they're not speaking because they have something to say, they are speaking because they can not face the silence. In the end, they're just making noise.
I rambled a lot of words there. *coughs* To bring this back to Värttinä I must say that I absolutely love the random sounds they make... you're expecting it's some uber tech device making them, but nope. The little shrieks and yips and other surreal and naturey sounds.
Oh, and that it's highly amusing that one language can contain both of the following sentences:
miul ei oo muil on and pirun riivattu purija ruma roikale luikertele, although the difference that I mean won't probably be evident unless you hear them said properly. The first is about as soft as aja hiljaa sillalla, which was apparently voted as the world's most beautiful sentence in some linguist convention some time and the second is all about rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, more growling than a sentence.
They had also grown in that time. The first time I saw them they were still on that folky stage... if you've seen the live version of Loituma's Ievan Polkka you'll know what I mean, happy beaming folk singers. Seleniko was just out. The next time they were in a night club / pub, bigger stage, trying out their wings in turning the traditional folk properly into something else... Kokko was out and Vihma in the making. Now it was a concert in a more of an official auditorium theater kind of thing. You know, people wear fancy stuff and sit and listen, not bounce in front of the stage drunk like ten years ago. :P
And seriously... mind-blowing. I'm tempted to get the Live DVD that they've just published, but we had to grab Miero to begin with, so. Unfortunately it has that moronic protection thing that installs a program to listen/rip it with and the said program wants rights to connect to the net freely. Like hell. So no fun mp3s, which does annoy me since all the music listening I do is with winamp and at the comp these days. Had to poke at the cd-player like it was some alien device right now to get it playing.
Anyway, I was talking about the concert and how much they've changed from a basic happy folk band with a little twist in a pure unique twist with a folk basis. The concert was mainly songs from Miero, but they had some of the good old ones included, and Kylä vuotti uutta kuuta with just a guitar-guy and Mari Kaasinen alone gave me goosebumps. As did Äijö. Which reminds me... Finnish language so totally pwns in making plausible-sounding curses. It's the magic of R. And the three singers certainly worked that magic. I love it how they can make it sound so ugly and threatening at the same time as beautiful.
I also got to thinking about the Finnish culture, talking and silence in the concert. Might have to do with the fact that they had a song where people who chatter a lot are viewed negatively and right after that song they sing one about silence. And that I felt oh so very Finnish there, listening to the intro to that song and Johanna Virtanen talking about how there can be those silences when your heart is about to burst from happiness and then those when there is too much burden on your heart and mind that it could be carried by mere words. Silence is a solid form of communication, dammit.
Um, anyway... I was pondering the dual view Finnish culture has to words. Chattering and small talk is gossip-like, dubious and worthless. Words bind you, thus you shouldn't say words in vain... only say what you truly mean, only promise what you know you can keep. Smooth-talking is too close to lying in the national Finnish conscience. In all the old Finnish literature the dubious bad people smooth-talk, change black into white, fool the honest people... the good guys say maybe two words a month, but keep what they said. ...it's ridiculous to analyze this stuff after I've had someone like Talvi created for ages, but anyway! ...oh, and both my rogues are smooth chatterboxes. *facedesks* I'm such a Finn. Anyway!
The other part of this has the same basis -- the importance of words -- but it shows itself completely differently. Our national epic's main hero is a wizard, although the Finnish word for it is 'someone who knows', knowledger, if you're willing to abuse English language for a straight translation. The magic is all about knowing the words, the spells are songs. All the knowledge and power of the world is in knowing the true names, words. When you know the words and set them out correctly, you -change- the world into the shape of the words. From this basis it isn't so odd that Finns dislike words that don't carry a meaning or that we distrust those that speak too much. But. And here's the twist... we also appreciate and approve someone who is good with words. There's a fine line between a dubious smooth-talker and a funny word-genius that everybody loves. It's difficult to explain, but it is there. The difference between real wizards and hedge tricksters. I'm personally thinking it has to do with the use of silences and speaking only when the genius moments pop up with the words, the hedge tricksters unable to do that because they're not speaking because they have something to say, they are speaking because they can not face the silence. In the end, they're just making noise.
I rambled a lot of words there. *coughs* To bring this back to Värttinä I must say that I absolutely love the random sounds they make... you're expecting it's some uber tech device making them, but nope. The little shrieks and yips and other surreal and naturey sounds.
Oh, and that it's highly amusing that one language can contain both of the following sentences:
miul ei oo muil on and pirun riivattu purija ruma roikale luikertele, although the difference that I mean won't probably be evident unless you hear them said properly. The first is about as soft as aja hiljaa sillalla, which was apparently voted as the world's most beautiful sentence in some linguist convention some time and the second is all about rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, more growling than a sentence.