The series Studies in Popular Music has been quite successful in presenting popular music research in a globalising world. These windows on various national contexts have considerably widened our understanding of what can be researched in this multidisciplinary field, and how. Moreover, they have restated the importance of the national level, when studying a cultural practice. Too often, music has been situated into ‘space and place’, ignoring the significance that a certain language, border, passport or army can have in framing, defining and regulating popular music.
This edited volume contributes nicely to the series by presenting a country, Finland, which is ‘So sadly neglected and often ignored/A poor second to Belgium when going abroad’ (Monty Python ‘Finland’). In 14 chapters divided into five parts, plus a fascinating coda, the book presents a variety of musical practices in and about this Nordic country, from well-known heavy metal to hockey novelty songs, from odd 1930s electronic experiment to 1990s minimal techno.
Finland is a country built on a strong political will and its music quickly became a means to support the country's sovereignty and create a national brand. Finnish uniqueness is described in the introduction by Toni-Matti Karjalainen and Kimi Kärki as double-sided: historically working between East and West, and nowadays framed between the local and the global, as artists are continuously negotiating across these scales. The introduction also reveals another significant aspect, which can be easily spotted in international conferences: the Finnish contingent of popular music scholars is widely spread across universities in the country, and shows an impressive range of subjects, themes and theoretical standpoints, contributing greatly to the advancement of academic research on the subject.
The first part of the book collects three chapters about the ‘Emerging Foundations of Popular Music in Finland’. Olli Heikkinen examines the way mainstream music in Finland has shifted across the years, not always following an Anglo-American lead, but dealing in fascinating ways with foreign influences and accentuations of Finnishness. Terhi Skaniakos follows a particular era in the late 1970s and early 1980s which saw the emergence of Suomirock. Her analysis is discourse-based, with references to media attention and societal change. Toni-Matti Karjalainen carries out a fascinating study of the genesis and development of Finland as a heavy metal nation, focusing on German and British magazines across 20 years and looking into the slow affirmation of Finnish bands abroad, and their defying role in establishing sub-genres such as melodic death metal.
Part II is about ‘Environment, Borderlines, Minorities’. Pekka Suutari focuses on Karelian music. Karelia is a sparsely populated but vast region spreading across Finland and Russia. Its language and musical tradition have widely contributed to Finnish culture and cultural life. This heritage took up an uncompromising political role after World War II, when many Karelians were forced to abandon land occupied by the Soviet army and music became a site for memory building. Johannes Brusila introduces us to Swedish-speaking minorities and to their own peculiar identity negotiated discursively, according to the author, in three distinctive circles. The core is based on the small scale of private performances and third-sector institutions, the middle circle is based on the combination of belongings and affinities within Finland, and the outer circle covers the negotiations across Sweden, Finland and the international market.
Part III discusses transnationalisms. Kari Kallioniemi deals with the ‘British invasion’ and the way the UK and Finland interacted in different popular music eras from beat to punk, from prog to folk music. Univocal understandings of Finnishness are here put into question by continuous negotiations based on de-anglicisation, imitation and integration. Saijaleena Rantanen deals with a complementary form of transnational activities by focusing on Finnish North Americans and their musical legacy in handwritten and published songbooks, covering love for the home country, workers songs and, surprisingly, gender equality themes.
Part VI concentrates on the Finnish underground and its subcultural dimension. Petri Kuljuntausta guides us through DIY culture and early electronic instruments with bizarre examples of oddball inventors, producing sounds that culminated in the work of celebrated composer Erkki Kurenniemi. Pertti Grönholm puts the spotlight onto minimal techno and the Turku-based Sähkö label, showing that this label's intransigent attitude, developed in raves and bedroom productions, first conquered foreign critics before receiving any attention in the home country itself. Juho Kaitajärvi-Tiekso and Juho Hänninen look at three cases of contemporary underground artists: Jukka Nousiainen, Litku Klemetti and Henrik. They focus on the success of these acts in connection to social media and online platforms, and how new technologies transformed the meaning of the underground scene.
Part V goes back to the wider national community and to the amplification of its significance via sport events and stadium gigs. Kaj Ahlsved analyses the relation between the Lions (the nickname for the Hockey national team) and dedicated songs, ranging from official themes to novelty DIY instant songs. Hanna-Mari Riihimäki and Anna-Elena Pääkkölä write about alternative femininities and how they can queer national discourses via authority, appropriation and parody. They use performance and musicological analyses to combine a genealogy of women musicians with an in-depth study of Alma's ‘Dye my Hair’ video. Kimi Kärki ends this section with a close analysis of big music events such as the Total Balalaika Show 1993, Eurovision 2006 and Heavy Metal Sibelius 2017. These mega-events carry deep symbolic meanings and reflect various socio-economic and geo-political issues, ranging from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the culmination of the Nokia years and the country's centenary in 2017.
A useful Coda reflects further on issues of music export, genres, reputation and specific target countries, and an Afterword with an interview of Tuomas Holopainen of Nightwish, both by Toni-Matti Karjalainen, close the volume.
One of this book's greatest achievements is showing how popular music produces a very heterogeneous culture. The country's small population, currently 5.5 million, has always given out a sense of cultural homogeneity; however, minorities such as the Swedish-speaking population, Karelians, Roma and Sámi all emerge in several chapters, and the geo-political position between Scandinavia and Russia is made evident and critically assessed. Moreover, the book provides accomplished and well-crafted definitions of key Finnish terms such as iskelmä, Suomirock, rautalanka, humppa and others. Finally, each chapter has exhaustive reference lists and discographies. Images that will stay for me forever are the band Panasonic eating raw meat soaked in vodka (p. 150) and the tragic destiny of the Alexandrov Ensemble (p. 207).
