Finland - Helsinki Part III & The Rest of Uusimaa

 As we carry on our exploration of the music of Helsinki we first encounter percussionist Minna Koskenlahti.  Her music is difficult to categorise.  She has a back ground in folk music and plays in various bands, but as a soloist she explores the limits and limitlessness of percussion, giving her instruments a melodic approach creating a minimalistic, intensive and hypnotic sound.  Here is the first half of her 2021 album Toinen/Other:

DANTCHEV:DOMAIN is a Helsinki based Finnish/American/Bulgarian outfit, led by Finnish/Bulgarian singer Anna Dantchev.  They dabble in Bulgarian folk combined with Nordic Jazz and cinematic storytelling with splashes of contemporary pop and rock.  Dantchev sings in English and she is supported by a nice brass section as well as a twinkling vibraphone, distorted guitar and punchy bass.  This is the title track of their 2022 album The Lions We Are:

Early music trio Ensemble Gamut! are a collective of early music and folk specialists looking for new ways to perform medieval and renaissance music by combining traditional instruments and electronics in innovative ways to create their own soundscape.  Their name derives from a medieval music theory by Guido of Arrezzo, but also means colour reproduction, whilst the Finnish word kamut means friends and Kamu is shorthand for Finnish folk music.  Here is a track from their 2022 album Ra called Lapsed caick laolacatt:

In 1998 the contemporary dance theatre group Tsuumi was founded, complete with their own in-house band the Tsuumi Sound System, who have since recorded several albums and toured extensively separate from the dance troupe.  Their music is described as world music, but sounds more like Finnish folk rock.  It's definitely rooted in Nordic folk with fiddle and accordion upfront backed by a strong rhythm section and saxophone.  They really seem to rock the place during live performances.  Here is a 10 minute extract from a concert at the Montelago Celtic Festival in 2017.  Some of those tunes can be heard on their 2013 album Floating Letters:

Saxophonist and reed player JoneTakamäki was born in Helsinki in 1955 and has been prominent Finnish avant garde and improvised music scene since the late 1970's.  For his latest collaboration he has teamed up with 2 Turkish musicians, multi-instrumentalist Umut Çağlar (of Konstrukt and Karkhana) and drummer Fahrettin Aykut (of BABA ZULA) to record a live session as Myth of the Drum (2022).  It blends free jazz with East Asian Zen sounds.  Here is an extract from the album:

Finally leaving Helsinki, although we could easily spend more time here, we are staying in the Uusimaa region as we are heading for the town of Kerava, just northeast of Helsinki.  This is where musician and composer Milla Viljamaa was born in 1980.  Her main instruments are piano and harmonium and she dabbles in various genres from folk to chamber music, opera to film music.  One of her most enduring love affairs is the tango though.  She has collaborated a lot with accordionist Johana Juhola, but this tune is from her 2011 solo album Minne and is called Neiti Marplen Tango (Miss Marple's Tango):

Next we are heading east for the town of Loviisa in the region of Uusimaa, where part of the world folk band BergåFolk Project comes from, the other half hailing from Helsinki.  They arrange folk songs from all over the world and give them their own interpretations, singing them in their original languages.  They are quite new on the scene, but are already making waves for their energetic live performances.  Here is an Italian song from their 2022 self-titled debut album called La Donna Ideale (The ideal woman):

That's it from Uusimaa for today, next we are heading to the east of Finland for our last leg of Scandinavia.  In the meantime you can follow my virtual tour on my Tripline map.