How did VuoriVene and Suomi Singalong begin?
Elizabeth Brauer / Helvi and Karen had the same idea at around the same time – wouldn’t it be great if people could sing together in Finnish over vast distances of space – all the way to Finland and around the world. Karen had already tried it out a couple times before using Zoom for a distance runolaulu workshop with an expert from Finland – Sirkka Kosonen. The pandemic hit and suddenly everyone got into using Zoom on a daily basis. So we launched Suomi Singalong on St. Urho’s Day 2020. We have continued ever since offering twice monthly participation sessions. Our sessions are all on Zoom but we are experimenting with hybrid sessions.What happens to me if I attend a VuoriVene or Suomi Singalong Session?Never fear! We are all learning together. Maybe you will even change how you feel about your own voice! We encourage you to attend no matter your self-perceived skill level with singing or Finnish. Many people have little to no Finnish when they start out, others, like me, are lifelong Finnish students and we even get Finns from Finland, who, of course, speak Finnish fluently. The concept behind VuoriVene is learning ancient Finnish folklore through its original medium of sung poetry. The concept behind Suomi Singalong is to have fun singing popular or familiar tunes, all while expanding our Finnish pronunciation and vocabulary.
Those who attend consistently go from being very shy and staying on mute to leading songs in Finnish – and their Finnish pronunciation is for sure getting better and better! People often comment after the session that they just feel so good after a lot of singing. And we have nice chats about Finn culture, events and personal stuff – for those who want to hang out and talk afterwards. Bring your own coffee!
The concept behind both sessions is participation rather than performance. Because of the nature of electronic telecom, we cannot sing in unison but we have our ways! We have seasoned leaders and followers, and you can stay on mute the whole time. We do a lot of repetition line by line for new songs and we try to introduce something fresh each time. The nice thing is when it’s your turn to sing – you can change the key to one that fits your voice better and you can even improvise on the tune as much as you want! We as leaders sometimes fish around to find the right tune and occasionally we don’t get it and have to ask for help from participants. It’s a very supportive and non-judging atmosphere. People are welcome to bring their own ideas of songs and links to YouTube or online sheet music. When you feel ready you can be a repeater after someone-else. You can blossom into a leader of a whole verse or song!
Tell me more about this runolaulu!
Runolaulu is rooted in the Karelian and Finnish languages, although most of what survived to be collected by scholars in the 1800s was the Karelian poems. Prehistoric people sang their way through daily life! I believe this global phenomenon of daily song practice was available to everyone and performance art was reserved for more formal situations. In Finno Ugric cultures, there were several genres in addition to runolaulu that fulfilled a variety of purposes and goals in social life – itkulaulu, lehmäkutsu, rekilaulu, tanssia, tuutiloolu, loitsu, joikku (laments, cow calls, dances, “sleigh songs,” lullabyes, incantations and Finnish joiks). Each purpose had its own poetic forms and sometimes its own melodies. Poetry was a formulaic structure that enabled everyone to preserve knowledge through rhythm and sound , and was a creative tool for teaching and communicating.
Runolaulu was traditionally an improvisational genre that complements 5-string kantele melodies – probably sung and played by the same person. Therefore the musical range of the melodies is small, making for a simple yet widely varied tunes and rhythms. I speculatethat the average person had 1-2 personalized melodies they heard or would make up to usethroughout their workday and life. A more famous singer likely had several traditional and improvised tunes up their sleeve – each text has a different mood, requiring different rhythms and melodies. Runolaulu was a rich tool for many purposes – to remember the history of the people via an epic tale, as we hear in the Kalevala, to participate in the animistic and shamanistic religious rituals, to protect or heal people and cattle, to get through boring work tasks, to express joy and appreciation, to socialize with others and to teach the values and lessons of the culture.
The best singers, both women and men, were rewarded with praise and fame for knowing the most lines of poetry by memory – in the range of thousands of lines. It is hard to imagine today how people could have memorized so many lines faithfully in Karelian or Finnish – it definitely requires superior intelligence to accomplish that feat! This poetic form, runomitta, is rooted in the structure of the Finno-Ugric languages and is common to Estonia, Karelia, Ingria and Finland, and possibly others. The function of runomitta is that you can select any melody you want as long as it fits the poetic meter of the text – providing a way to preserve thousands of lines of verse consistently and accurately.
Elias Lönnrot was a prolific collector and archivist of Finnish folklore. Thanks to him, the work was preserved and publicized via his literary creations – The Kalevala (2+ versions), Kanteletar and other works. These are not the original poems exactly. Lönnrot stayed very faithful to the authentic verses, adding his own ideas of plot, created verse and characters. At VuoriVene, we use the Kalevala in Finnish and the John Crawford 1887 translation to English as they are copyright free and available online. There are modern English translations that make the text easier to understand, such as the most recent Kaarina Brooks translation which I recommend.
https://www.finnsource.org/kaarina-brooks-awarded-for-kalevala-translations/