Ilmatar's Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music / Edition 1

by Tina K. Ramnarine

Overview

Ilmatar gave birth to the bard who sang the Finnish landscape into being in the
Kalevala (the Finnish national epic). In Ilmatar's Inspirations, Tina K. Ramnarine explores creative processes and the critical role that music has played in Finnish nationalism by focusing on Finnish "new folk music" in the shifting spaces between the national imagination and the global marketplace.

Through extensive interviews and observations of performances, Ramnarine reveals how new folk musicians think and talk about past and present folk music practices, the role of folk music in the representation of national identity, and the interactions of Finnish folk musicians with performers from around the globe. She focuses especially on two internationally successful groups—JPP, a group that plays fiddle dance music, and Värttinä, an ensemble that highlights women's vocal traditions. Analyzing the multilayered processes—musical, institutional, political, and commercial—that have shaped and are shaped by new folk music in Finland, Ramnarine gives us an entirely new understanding of the connections between music, place, and identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226704036
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	08/01/2003
Series:	Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Tina K. Ramnarine is a lecturer in ethnomusicology and social anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of Creating Their Own Space: The Development of an Indian-Caribbean Musical Tradition and is also a professional classical violinist with a special interest in folk fiddling traditions.

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Ilmatar's Inspirations: Nationalism, Globalization, and the Changing Soundscapes of Finnish Folk Music

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By Tina K. Ramnarine

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2003 Tina K. Ramnarine
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0226704033

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ONE - Introduction: Place, Identity, Representation

Music unites. Music divides. Every song is a "folk" song, for as Big Bill Broonzy allegedly claimed, "I never heard a horse sing 'em!" Broonzy's statement is cited by Nettl (1983, 303) and by Ling (1997, 1) to draw attention to the difficulties in defining folk music and in delineating musical boundaries. Brailoiu notes a further difficulty in the notion of "folk music" or "folk song." If every song is indeed a folk song, who are the "folk" who perform these songs and to whom they can be attributed (Brailoiu 1984)?

Contemporary representations of a musical tradition as being both "folk" and "Finnish" reveal the extent to which a musical practice continues to be intertwined with ongoing ideological orientations and historical processes. Finnish folk music was constructed as a site of cultural contemplation during the nineteenth century, when the move toward national self-determination gathered momentum. As in many parts of Europe, the "folk" were regarded as the preservers of an ancient cultural heritage and as the bearers of performance traditions attesting to the distinct character of the emergent Finnish nation. The folkand the traditions to which they adhered were conceived of as being as timeless as was the (dormant) nation itself. Images of continuity, of a distinct people who were submerged under imperial rule but who had managed to retain their culture, framed nationalist perceptions. Thus, nineteenth-century Finnish nationalists looked to a mythical past and they found the evidence for such a past in the texts of folk songs. While it seemed that folk songs had once been prevalent, nineteenth-century scholars involved in the nationalist enterprise had to engage in processes of collecting cultural treasures, which they believed had been stored in the collective memory of the folk, and of reassembling the remnants of these almost-forgotten traditions.

Finnish folklorists were guided by the views of the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744 -1803), for whom the "folk" were peasants and bearers of past traditions. Much of the folk music research undertaken by pioneers in the field throughout Europe, such as the Hungarian composers and scholars Bela Bartok (1881-1945) and Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967), the Romanian ethnomusicologist Constantin Brailoiu (1893-1958), the English folk collector Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), and the Finnish musicologist Armas Otto Vaisanen (1890-1969), followed Herder's conceptualizations of the "folk." As recently as 1955, the International Folk Music Council defined folk music as the orally transmitted traditions of rural communities that have remained impervious to influences from other genres such as popular and art music (JIFMC 1955, 23). Even Ling uses the terms "folk music" and "folk songs" to refer to "rural music taught, without being written down, by one generation to the next," despite his observations that "it is difficult if not impossible to isolate folk music as a genre" and that "different kinds of music interweave and overlap" (1997, 1). In drawing a distinction between rural folk music and urban folk music (which he labels "popular music" or "city music folklore"), Ling reproduces Bartok's views on the differences between folk music in rural and in urban centers.

Bartok's assertion that music differs according to the location of musical practices in rural or urban centers stemmed from a fear for the continuity of folk traditions. The integrity of folk music, supposed to have been preserved and transmitted intact over the preceding millennia and acting as a mediator between past and present, now seemed threatened by rapid change. Processes of urbanization, modernization, and musical exchange challenged the quality of "timelessness" which nationalists and scholars alike attributed to folk music. In attempting to identify the antiquity and birthplaces of particular pieces, Bartok and Kodaly adopted Ilmari Krohn's (1867-1960) system of song classification (used by Krohn, a Finnish musicologist, in the collection Suomen Kansan Savelmia [Finnish Folk Compositions], published in five volumes from 1896 to 1945). It is a classification system that groups songs together according to structural similarities. Bartok later grouped the folk repertoire into three classes referring to the relation between the past and the present: "old-style melodies," "new-style melodies," and "mixed genera"--songs which do not belong to the other two. The categorization "mixed genera" was one in which the authenticity of the nation's folk traditions seemed to be compromised. Yet "mixed genera" seem to have been pervasive. Bartok grappled with classification issues in the early 1930s. In his essay What Is Folk Music? (Bartok 1976), he drew attention to the confusion concerning concepts of folk music, which he attributed to the widespread misconception that a country's folk music is homogeneous. The musical material he collected was diverse, "completely without uniformity" (Bartok 1976, 5). In continued attempts to define folk music, he turned to categorizing it broadly into two kinds, one being "popular art music," otherwise described as "urban folk music," and the other being "rural folk music" or "peasant music."

Bartok later asserted the value of "peasant" folk music above the urban type (in a climate in which "pastiche" folk music was more well known and used by art composers for its "exotic" qualities), describing "peasant folk music," nearly a decade later, as "pure folk music." He perceived rural folk music as having its origins in the more distant past. At a lecture given in 1940 in the United States, his definition of this music had become rather elaborate: "Pure folk music is the spontaneous expression of the musical feelings of a community, a community which is more or less isolated from the higher and artificial civilization, especially from the civilization of the towns. Therefore, pure folk music is to be found chiefly in districts where people are more or less illiterate, where it supplies their bodily and mental needs by traditional means often many hundreds, even thousands of years old, almost without any foreign influence. It is a fact that under such conditions the expression of music is almost without exception connected with traditional customs and ceremonies as, for instance, crop gathering, and so on. This music, therefore, is a social act and not an individual one" (Bartok 1976, 173). For Ling, as for Bartok, the place of folk music is still in the rural context. Its location emerges as an important marker of musical authenticity. The connection between folk music and place nevertheless extends beyond the rural context. Folk music is habitually described in terms of its location in a national arena: hence, "Finnish folk music," "Bulgarian folk music," "English folk music." The view of folk music as music of the people and as an inherent part of the nation's cultural life has been widely propagated by various nationalist movements. Such a view remains potent in the modern world. In Finland, contemporary folk music draws on, and incorporates, elements of traditions from diverse sources, including other European folk traditions and "world" music. It is nevertheless held up and represented, within and outside the nation, as "Finnish." So prevalent is this link between folk music and the nation that art music compositions that draw on folk traditions are still regarded as containing inherently "Finnish" elements. This point is crucial to an appreciation of the ongoing role of folk music in nationalist politics and sensibilities. In setting the scene in this chapter, I shall explore this point further in relation to the importance of folk sources to interpretations of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) as a national composer.

"NATIONAL ART": FOLK MUSIC, ART MUSIC

Unlike Bartok and Kodaly, who devoted their lifetimes to the cause of musical folklore and were profoundly influenced as artists by their scholarly investigations, Sibelius seemed to delve into folklore only insofar as it satisfied his immediate, individual artistic requirements. Yet, since folk music became an inherent part of national culture during the nineteenth century, any composer who turned enthusiastically to folk sources for inspiration risked being labeled "nationalist." Whereas the perception of Sibelius as a nationalist composer has persisted, any inspiration he derived from folk music has been obscured, since his use of folk sources was governed not by obvious or straightforward quotations of folk melodies, but by the incorporation of folk song texts and by allusion to folk themes, for example, Kullervo, Lemminkainen, Tapiola, and Karelia. The extent to which Sibelius used folk sources, and the designation of "nationalist" to which such use gives rise, have been problematic issues for later commentators. Matters have been complicated by Sibelius's own ambivalent views of folk music. An interest in the relationship between folk and art music was demonstrated in an early paper, "Some Reflections on Folk Music and Its Influence on the Development of Art Music" ([1896] 1980) in which Sibelius claimed: "An artist who is thoroughly steeped in his country's folk music must naturally have a different view of things, lay stress on certain points, and find his artistic fulfillment in a completely different way from others. And in this lies much of his originality" (cited in Tawaststjerna 1976, 191).

Sibelius undertook at least one field trip to collect folk material, but his main source of inspiration was Elias Lonnrot's acclaimed compilation of folk song texts, the national epic, the Kalevala (first published in 1835). It was his use of this text that established his reputation as a "national" composer at a time when nationalist elements were imbued with a special significance. Because of the Kalevala's symbolic and political importance to the process of nation building and to the development of a national identity, the choice of titles from this work sufficed to link the composer incontrovertibly to the nationalist movement. Despite displaying enthusiasm for the Kalevala (which was in any case a general artistic trend in Finland around the turn of the century) and openly acknowledging the inspiration gained through this secondary folk source, Sibelius was nevertheless vague about any inspiration he may have derived from primary folk sources. The date of his meeting with the folk singer Larin Paraske, in particular, seems to have caused the composer some confusion. According to Yrjo Hirn, Sibelius met Paraske in the summer of 1891, and the composer "listened to her with great attention and made notes on her inflections and rhythm" (Hirn cited in Tawaststjerna 1976, 98). Sibelius himself insisted (in 1915, to his first biographer, Eric Furuhjelm) that the meeting took place in 1892. The date assumes significance only because it raises the question of the extent to which Sibelius's knowledge of folk song influenced the process of composing what was to be his first major work, the Kullervo Symphony (1892). The assertion of a later date points to a repudiation of the folk influence and of the nationalist label. Yet Sibelius did not spurn only folk influences, for, in claiming creative independence, he also wanted to appear uninfluenced by current musical trends. Being aware of his position on the periphery of European mainstream musical culture--for which he was dismissed by critics as merely a "national" composer with nothing of substance to offer a more cosmopolitan stage and regarded as an incongruous heir to the Austro-German tradition of symphonic discourse which was itself being challenged by new musical developments-- contributed to a sense of alienation which expressed itself in Sibelius's wish to be regarded, according to Tawaststjerna, as an "independent phenomenon" (Tawaststjerna 1976, 121), and in the symbolic gesture of distancing himself from the wider cultural arena with his retreat to the Finnish forest.

Sibelius, restrained by the label of nationalist as the Finnish nation secured political independence, wished to assert an individual musical identity distinct from sociopolitical concerns. Earlier works that can be read as programmatic symbols of collective cultural consciousness (with their folk overtones) were superseded by works that displayed an emphasis on abstract, individual creativity, by means of which Sibelius's place on a more cosmopolitan stage was affirmed. He was no longer merely a national composer, then, but still "Finnish," for throughout Sibelius's compositional career the influence of the Kalevala, the text so inextricably bound to the nationalist cause, is plainly evident. Several accounts (e.g., Layton 1965; James 1983) suggest that the inspiration he derived from this text shaped Sibelius's distinct musical voice, a voice characterized by accent, temperament, and geographic placement--features which are themselves reminiscent of nationalist constructions in their emphasis on language and territory.

Kalevalaic themes, folk music, landscape, Northerness: these are the elements, then, on which narratives of Sibelius as a nationalist composer have focused. Detailed historical and political contextualization, and consideration of the intricacies and complexities which informed Finland's cultural and artistic as well as political involvement with Russia around the turn of the century, are less common approaches. Nevertheless, the construction of Sibelius as a nationalist was the result of particular historical processes whereby political conviction, the folk, and the presentation of a national art were entwined so that the nation could be held up as a discrete, homogenous entity and used to mark cultural, if not yet political, boundaries.

HISTORY

I was touring around the university area in Helsinki by Tuomiokirkko, the city's Lutheran cathedral, in front of which stands a statue of Tsar Alexander II, when I came across the Karelian and Viipuri Associations of Helsinki University. I rang the doorbell of the associations' building, a twentieth-century jugend tyyli (Nordic art-nouveau-style) construction, hoping to arrange a time to get some information about the associations' activities. The door was flung open. "Sisaan!" ("Come in!") was the hearty greeting I received. During my field research, Karelia had emerged as a focus in national debates, broadcast through the media, with the dramatic collapse of the former USSR, and questions about reclaiming parts of the region lost in the Winter War (1939) resurfaced in national politics. If Finland was the bridge between East and West during the Cold War period, it is in Karelia where the border struggles have been felt most intensely. My discussion with the association members focused on issues of regional identity and the relation of the region to the nation-state. They pointed to a map to show me how large Karelia is. For them, regional identity is important "on historical and cultural levels," but they emphasized that this is not a struggle for separatism and contrasted Finnish regional affiliations to the (former) Yugoslavian and northern Irish situations. "How can we draw the border?" asked Arto Ahola (an agriculturist). "It is the whole nation that decides, from Rovaniemi to Porvoo. We have strong regional affiliations, but Finns perceive themselves as one nation." Toward the end of the discussion they mentioned Karelian music and gave the example of the new folk group Varttina, who "sing traditional Karelian songs but add new, modern things. This is what makes it interesting. This is what makes the tradition alive," according to Kai Sahala, a computer scientist.

In the Peace of Hamina, the treaty concluded in 1809, Finland was ceded to Russia, having been a part of the Swedish kingdom for the preceding six centuries. Tsar Alexander I granted Finland an autonomous status as a grand duchy of Russia, and it was during this period that the Finnish nationalist movement grew (Paasivirta 1981). It was a movement connected to the general European trend toward national self-determination in the mid-nineteenth century. The leader of the Finnish national (Fennomania) movement, Johan Wilhelm Snellman (1806-81), promoted a political philosophy which arose from a study of classical liberal economics and the ideas of the German thinkers George William Frederick Hegel and Herder. Herder, credited as being the founder of cultural nationalism, whose ideas were influential all over Europe, began with the idea of "a man with a culture and with a language and living in a polity" (Llobera 1994, 166). For him, national differences were the result of differences in language, culture, religion, politics, and art and were determined by geographic environment, education, and tradition. Herder's view of the folk was tied to the importance he placed on language: "Volk and language cannot be conceived of independently of each other. Many things in the life of the Volk can be lost, including its political independence, but if the language is preserved, the essence of the nation will survive" (Llobera 1994, 168). There was no loftier expression of the nation's language than in its folk poetry. For Herder, folk poetry was "the expression of the weaknesses and perfections of a nationality, a mirror of its sentiments, the expression of the highest to which it aspired." He perceived folk poems as "the archives of a nationality," "the imprints of the soul" of a nation (Herder cited in Wilson 1976, 29-30). Hegel (1770-1831) followed Herder's concept of the folk but placed more importance on political frameworks, maintaining that "each Volk had to be a state because the political conditions of the time so demanded" (Llobera 1994, 171).



Continues...

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Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives
Chapter 1 - Introduction: Place, Identity, Representation
"National Art": Folk Music, Art Music
History
Continuity and Change
Identity and Representation
Borrowing from the Traditions of "Others"
Chapter 2 - The Folk and the Nation
Interest in Folklore before Lönnrot and the Kalevala
Lönnrot and the Kalevala
The Kalevala, Song Traditions, and the Kantele
Myth, Music, Landscape, Identity
Part Two - Ethnography: The Transmission, Performance, and Repertoire of New Folk Music
Chapter 3 - The Folk Music Revival in Finland: Toward "New Folk Music"
Revival, Transformation, Authenticity
The Kaustinen Festival and Konsta Jylhä
The Role of Folklorists in the Finnish Revival Movement
The Role of (Jazz and Rock) Musicians in the Revival Movement
Institutionalizing Folk Music during the Revival
Chapter 4 - New Folk Music in the Urban Center
The Setting: The Sibelius Academy
Learning Folk Music at the Sibelius Academy
Performing Folk Music in the Urban Center
Chapter 5 - Värttinä: Women's Songs from the East
An Interview with Sari Kaasinen: Making the Music
Gender and Region
Reception, Aesthetics, Politics
Chapter 6 - New Folk Music in a Rural Context
Formal Folk Music Education in the Village of Kaustinen
The Kaustinen Festival: "Roots in Finland" 1992
From Five Strings to Electric Models
Chapter 7 - A Family of Folk Musicians: The Järveläs
The Fiddle in Finland: A Historical Perspective
Biography, Locality, "Authenticity"
Composing New Folk Music: The Ostrobothnian Example
Local Musicians, Global Stages
Part Three: Folk Music, World Music
Chapter 8 - Musical and Social Identities: Borrowing from the Traditions of "Others"
New Folk Music and Karelianism
Saami Music in Helsinki
Learning from Senegalese Musicians
The Finnish Tango
Irish Music in Helsinki
Appropriation, Originality, Representation
Chapter 9 - Global Commodities: The New Folk Music Recording in World Music Markets
Sonic Representations: Music in Many Places
Small Record Companies in Finland
The Finnish Performing Music Promotion Center (ESEK)
Music as Product: Questions of Ownership
Chapter 10 - Epilogue
Musical Spaces
Writing History
Notes
Bibliography
Discography
Index

Editorial Reviews

'[Ramnarine] meaningfully connects changes in Finnish society and culture to changes in musical sound. . . .
Ilmatar's Inspirations makes an important contrihution to the ethnomusicological and anthropological literature and comes highly recommended."

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute - Jeffers Engelhardt

"An excellent ethnography of the 'new Finnish Folk music.' Ramnarine has met key firgures of the movement, and I can well hear their intonations and personalities in the interviews. We learn how they conceptualize folk music and their own role as its practitioners, and get a good view of  typical performance contexts."

Folk Music Journal - Pekka Gronow

"Ramnarine considers how Finnish folk music shapes national identity, the influence of outside musical cultures on Finnish folk music, folk music's place in urban institutions . . . and the position of the individual folk musician in the growing arena of  'world music'. . . . Her study of this musical culture is thorough in its scope, dissolving the boundaries between urban and village, old and new, local and global, and professional and amateur. . . . . A detailed and informative look at some of Finland's music festivals and most popular music groups."

Ethnomusicology - Kevin R. Burke

'[Ramnarine] meaningfully connects changes in Finnish society and culture to changes in musical sound. . . .

Ilmatar's Inspirations makes an important contrihution to the ethnomusicological and anthropological literature and comes highly recommended.

— Jeffers Engelhardt

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

An excellent ethnography of the 'new Finnish Folk music.' Ramnarine has met key firgures of the movement, and I can well hear their intonations and personalities in the interviews. We learn how they conceptualize folk music and their own role as its practitioners, and get a good view of  typical performance contexts.

— Pekka Gronow

Folk Music Journal

Ramnarine considers how Finnish folk music shapes national identity, the influence of outside musical cultures on Finnish folk music, folk music's place in urban institutions . . . and the position of the individual folk musician in the growing arena of  'world music'. . . . Her study of this musical culture is thorough in its scope, dissolving the boundaries between urban and village, old and new, local and global, and professional and amateur. . . . . A detailed and informative look at some of Finland's music festivals and most popular music groups.

— Kevin R. Burke

Ethnomusicology