This was overdue. A concert by Värttinä in Frankfurt. Already in January 2016 the new album "Viena" came out, one year later the vocal trio plus band is on tour in Germany. Since 1983 Värttinä have been dedicated to Finnish folk and the revival of mainly Karelian musical traditions. Karelia is a historical landscape in the northeast, today a divided country between Russia and Finland, but with lively border traffic. The musicians also took advantage of this during their visit to Viena-Karelia in the northern, Russian part. There they looked around to be inspired by ancient songs, nature and the stories the people had to tell. Back to the roots.
"It's so beautiful there, it's like going back a hundred years. There are small villages with houses made of wood that no one ever painted. There are cows and sheep running in the streets, which looks quite funny. The forests there are huge. Everything is very quiet. We had to get used to that. All you hear is the wind and birds. Very few people live there. So it's a rather isolated place," enthuse Mari Kaasinen, Susan Aho and Karoliina Kantelinen, who are responsible for the distinctive, unusual vocal harmonies. And they've been described in reviews as razor sharp. "Traditional music with a contemporary twist and postmodern points of view," commented Rolling Stone. The "ancient touch" is provided by traditional instruments such as the box zither kantele.
For more information on the event:
http://www.brotfabrik.de/index.php?id=25
