Värttinä and why I love their music a lot
Ural-Altaic Music Appreciation Series vol. 1
Värttinä is an unusual folk-rock band from Finland. I'd like you to know them. They really blow my musical mind. They are fronted by three women singers. (They used to have four women.) Their sound has been described as "wall of estrogen." I find their music to have high energy, asymmetric meters, and complex shifting rhythms; music that is radically original but rooted in very old folk traditions. Its complexity is tightly and expertly performed; its energy is wild, powerful, and intensely feminine.
A concert reviewer in Bratislava, Slovakia wrote "the three Finnish witches were led by Johanna, the most spontaneous singer of the band". As a Witch I take it that the word witch was meant in the good sense. Their music has an energy that goes well with my Witchy worldview. And I love the sound of the Finnish language as much as J.R.R. Tolkien did. No wonder Värttinä made the music for the Lord of the Rings stage production that opened this year.
Värttinä in concert, Cannes January 2006 -- L to R: Susan Aho, Mari Kaasinen, Johanna Virtanen. This looks like one of their high-energy songs.
I first found Värttinä by browsing world music in the Windows Media Player, heard the song "Äijö" from Ilmatar, thought it sounded deliciously weird, and began to hunger for more. "Äijö" contains a traditional Finnish magic spell, of the sort you find in the Kalevala. Several Värttinä songs are rooted in Finnish magic, Witchcraft, or Goddess mythology like that. The title Ilmatar means the Goddess of the Air, from a Finnish creation myth printed in the CD booklet.
Women in white. Schaffhausen April 2006
The first whole CD of theirs I got was Vihma, and it is still my favorite one that I've heard yet. The other CDs I have so far are Ilmatar, Iki, Miero, and Live in Helsinki. The song "Mieleni Alenevi" from Vihma starts with a Tuvan throat singer, suggesting a prehistoric Ural-Altaic* connection, and when the women singers come in, chanting rhythmically in hushed voices, they evoke for me the Paleolithic era 20,000 years ago when the shamans were mainly women. The shamanic power of their singing is palpable here. It goes with my hunch in historical linguistics that Finnish has changed the least of all languages from its ancestral form at the end of the Ice Age. I enjoy hearing Finnish as the language used by a group of women who access this power through song. In Finnish magic traditions, as in Tolkien's creation story "Ainulindalë" which was inspired by Finnish mythology, entities are brought into being and formed by singing. So magic power is accessed and employed through song. When I listen to Värttinä I can really feel that. The Finnish word for this kind of song is runo-the origin of magic runes? The magic in their lyrics includes healing spells as well as hexes.
I see and hear a lot of female energy in action. Wychwood Festival (gotta love the name!) Cheltenham 2005
A lot of Värttinä's songs are about a young woman in a village defying social conventions, learning how to find power in herself. The song "Maahinen Neito" (Earth Maiden) from Iki is especially powerful this way. The outcast girl who calls herself "the weird one" in these lyrics finds the strength to defy the village's judgment of her as a "witch" through the Earth Goddess power within her. In the song "Nahkaruoska" (Leather Whip), also from Iki, a wife finds out her husband is cheatin' so she whips and canes him. I would like to see Värttinä get together and compare notes with the Dixie Chicks. Share thoughts about strong women who fight back, like in "Goodbye Earl" and "Not Ready to Make Nice".
I think the two bands would get along well. Both Värttinä and the Dixie Chicks are fronted by three women, backed by male musicians. Both have plenty of good fiddling (thanks to Lassi Logren and Martie Maguire). Both play a modern fusion of rock with the traditional music of the southeastern part of their nation. Värttinä originated in Karelia, a region of southeastern Finland which is also partly in Russia now, and many of their songs are in Karelian dialect. Although the Dixie Chicks are from Texas--just like the president, you know? ;) --their music is rooted in Bluegrass, which I think of as Southeastern music, sort of, me being Virginian and all.
Helsinki April 2006 - Mari is pregnant in this picture.
Värttinä's singer Johanna Virtanen shares my name. The center of Värttinä is Mari Kaasinen, who founded the band as a 12-year old girl in 1983 and is the only one who has been with it from the very beginning. When her original trad folk band had gone as far as it was going to go, she rebooted, hired excellent new musicians and singers, and took the music in a radically creative direction. You go, grrls!
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*Ural-Altaic:
A hypothesis that once connected the Uralic and Altaic language families, that they share a common ancestry, based on many striking typological and morphological similarities. It was current in the 19th century but has now been discarded by linguists. Still, the similarities between Uralic and Altaic have impressed me enough that I often put them together in my mind. The shamanism practiced by the peoples speaking Uralic and Altaic languages, for one thing, forms a common bond. Uralic languages include Finno-Ugric (e.g. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian) and Samoyedic. Altaic is the name given to a grouping of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungus-Manchu, and possibly Korean and Japanese. Tuvan is a Turkic language spoken in Tuva Republic in southern Siberia on the border of Mongolia. The throat-singing practiced as an indigenous musical tradition there uses harmonic overtones of the voice. It gives a uniquely haunting sound.
Värttinä is an unusual folk-rock band from Finland. I'd like you to know them. They really blow my musical mind. They are fronted by three women singers. (They used to have four women.) Their sound has been described as "wall of estrogen." I find their music to have high energy, asymmetric meters, and complex shifting rhythms; music that is radically original but rooted in very old folk traditions. Its complexity is tightly and expertly performed; its energy is wild, powerful, and intensely feminine.
A concert reviewer in Bratislava, Slovakia wrote "the three Finnish witches were led by Johanna, the most spontaneous singer of the band". As a Witch I take it that the word witch was meant in the good sense. Their music has an energy that goes well with my Witchy worldview. And I love the sound of the Finnish language as much as J.R.R. Tolkien did. No wonder Värttinä made the music for the Lord of the Rings stage production that opened this year.
Värttinä in concert, Cannes January 2006 -- L to R: Susan Aho, Mari Kaasinen, Johanna Virtanen. This looks like one of their high-energy songs.
I first found Värttinä by browsing world music in the Windows Media Player, heard the song "Äijö" from Ilmatar, thought it sounded deliciously weird, and began to hunger for more. "Äijö" contains a traditional Finnish magic spell, of the sort you find in the Kalevala. Several Värttinä songs are rooted in Finnish magic, Witchcraft, or Goddess mythology like that. The title Ilmatar means the Goddess of the Air, from a Finnish creation myth printed in the CD booklet.
Women in white. Schaffhausen April 2006
The first whole CD of theirs I got was Vihma, and it is still my favorite one that I've heard yet. The other CDs I have so far are Ilmatar, Iki, Miero, and Live in Helsinki. The song "Mieleni Alenevi" from Vihma starts with a Tuvan throat singer, suggesting a prehistoric Ural-Altaic* connection, and when the women singers come in, chanting rhythmically in hushed voices, they evoke for me the Paleolithic era 20,000 years ago when the shamans were mainly women. The shamanic power of their singing is palpable here. It goes with my hunch in historical linguistics that Finnish has changed the least of all languages from its ancestral form at the end of the Ice Age. I enjoy hearing Finnish as the language used by a group of women who access this power through song. In Finnish magic traditions, as in Tolkien's creation story "Ainulindalë" which was inspired by Finnish mythology, entities are brought into being and formed by singing. So magic power is accessed and employed through song. When I listen to Värttinä I can really feel that. The Finnish word for this kind of song is runo-the origin of magic runes? The magic in their lyrics includes healing spells as well as hexes.
I see and hear a lot of female energy in action. Wychwood Festival (gotta love the name!) Cheltenham 2005
A lot of Värttinä's songs are about a young woman in a village defying social conventions, learning how to find power in herself. The song "Maahinen Neito" (Earth Maiden) from Iki is especially powerful this way. The outcast girl who calls herself "the weird one" in these lyrics finds the strength to defy the village's judgment of her as a "witch" through the Earth Goddess power within her. In the song "Nahkaruoska" (Leather Whip), also from Iki, a wife finds out her husband is cheatin' so she whips and canes him. I would like to see Värttinä get together and compare notes with the Dixie Chicks. Share thoughts about strong women who fight back, like in "Goodbye Earl" and "Not Ready to Make Nice".
I think the two bands would get along well. Both Värttinä and the Dixie Chicks are fronted by three women, backed by male musicians. Both have plenty of good fiddling (thanks to Lassi Logren and Martie Maguire). Both play a modern fusion of rock with the traditional music of the southeastern part of their nation. Värttinä originated in Karelia, a region of southeastern Finland which is also partly in Russia now, and many of their songs are in Karelian dialect. Although the Dixie Chicks are from Texas--just like the president, you know? ;) --their music is rooted in Bluegrass, which I think of as Southeastern music, sort of, me being Virginian and all.
Helsinki April 2006 - Mari is pregnant in this picture.
Värttinä's singer Johanna Virtanen shares my name. The center of Värttinä is Mari Kaasinen, who founded the band as a 12-year old girl in 1983 and is the only one who has been with it from the very beginning. When her original trad folk band had gone as far as it was going to go, she rebooted, hired excellent new musicians and singers, and took the music in a radically creative direction. You go, grrls!
_________________
*Ural-Altaic:
A hypothesis that once connected the Uralic and Altaic language families, that they share a common ancestry, based on many striking typological and morphological similarities. It was current in the 19th century but has now been discarded by linguists. Still, the similarities between Uralic and Altaic have impressed me enough that I often put them together in my mind. The shamanism practiced by the peoples speaking Uralic and Altaic languages, for one thing, forms a common bond. Uralic languages include Finno-Ugric (e.g. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian) and Samoyedic. Altaic is the name given to a grouping of Turkic, Mongolic, Tungus-Manchu, and possibly Korean and Japanese. Tuvan is a Turkic language spoken in Tuva Republic in southern Siberia on the border of Mongolia. The throat-singing practiced as an indigenous musical tradition there uses harmonic overtones of the voice. It gives a uniquely haunting sound.