Years in Kaustinen, every year a different role.
Written by Johanna Sauramäki
Already in primary school, I noticed that I always chose folk songs when we pupils were given the choice of songs from the school songbook. I was a cool kid, I guess, but when the teacher gave me the chance to wish for a song to sing together in music class, I waved and waved until my hand was out of its socket. The others stared at the strange bird for a moment while I shook my overgrown limb to choose one of the songs that the others didn't even want to hear, let alone sing. The most notable songs that shook my chest were folk songs:
Kamanat elevated places,
There's a great desolation on your face
Over there behind the woodland,
Early in the morning when the sun came up,
With a tulatullaa, cheeks with a bun.
I loved them. The pain felt like a chill in my heart. The songs I wished for were united by the wonderful melody of our own folk tradition, with its crisp and clear rhythm and its sweet melancholy.
In the early 1990s, when I was in the front row at the Adlon restaurant in Helsinki during a gig for Värttinä's Oi Dai album, I got a wrap-up folk tidbit. For many other listeners, too, that popular album must have made an indelible mark, and so did I. I had no training as a folk musician or any other kind of musician, but only as a graphic artist. But the sting came and it never left me.
When I've spent my entire adult life Marjukka Riihimäen the Philomela to interpret folk music Tellu Turka, Värttinän, Liisa Matveinen, Maija Kauhanen and many other great musicians, I have lived in my own country. For years, I have been interpreting pop arrangements with the vocal group Shalla Lalla, for which the arranger Wind in the wind has dissolved ethno-herb so that it tastes like life to me. These musical orientations have carried me along this side of the folk music genre and taken me from one Kaustis to another whenever possible.
This year, I get to be in the loose reins or alongside the new folk music sensation Tuulettare, who arrives in Kaustinen as an EtnoEmma award-winning, energetic and free-spirited act, offering the 50-year-old Kaustis people a whole new perspective on folk music. And a little piece of my chest will turn to rattan.
In all these areas of folk music, my life is full.
Shalla Lalla in Kaustinen.
And here we are, on our way to Kaustinen, not for the same reason as last time, but once again in a different role. One year as a singer in Shalla Lalla, another year as a singer in Lauri Tähkainen as a background singer, always in varying roles. The same is true for most of Kaustinen's visiting artists. Different roles in different years, or many roles in the same year, many bands, many tasks. That's what makes it all so interesting, full of surprises. The flowers of puritanism bloom somewhere else than here.
My role this year is to be a singer again, in Philomann, but also a documentarian, producer, manager. This year I'm looking at the festival from a new perspective, a new role, with new eyes.
What all six of my summers in Kaustis have in common is that I am looking forward to the summer in Kaustis the most. In Kaustis I have lost my shoes, lost my voice, lost my wallet, broken my bag. But I have found much more. I've found great songs, big emotions, great tunes, new arrangements, friends, loved ones, togetherness... I don't know what I'll lose this year, hopefully not my love for music, for folk music.
I don't know what I will find this time, you never know. Maybe performers for my Iholla club, maybe new songs to arrange, new friends, lots of polka, new acquaintances and more polka. But I'm expecting a lot to spill over into my heart. This year I will be fifty years old, the same age as Kaustinen. Full of anticipation, I return to Ostrobothnia, where my blood is in my grandmother (Hilma Johanna Sauramäki, Töysä) and my grandparents (Antti Risku, Kauhava) already flowed in the 19th century. I spend a moment in the land of the heart.
Whether you are five or fifty, let's all enjoy being here and now together! Good luck dear festival and all those who organise it! It's time to relax and celebrate together!
Johanna Sauramäki
The author is the entrepreneur of Saura Programmapalvelu, producer of Iholla music club and singer in Philomela, Shalla Lalla, Tuuter's Daughters and Good Morning Berthold. In Kaustinen this year he will be visiting as manager of Tuuletar and singer of Philomannela.