Varttina – Viena (Westpark Music, 2016)
Thirty years in the making, the Finnish folk group Varttina started out as a children’s music project in the village of Raakkyla in 1983. In those years the group has evolved in membership and endured the occasional change in musical direction, putting out such recordings as Varttina (1987), Musta Lindu (1989), Oi Dai (1991), Ilmatar (2000) and Miero (2006), performed live across the globe and collaborated with A.R. Rahman for the musical theatrical production of The Lord of the Rings performed in Toronto, Canada and London, England. Headed up by original Varttina singer, Mari Kaasinen, Varttina is back with thirteenth studio album Viena on the Westpark Music label.
Varttina’s tight, neat sound is crafted out of the talents of vocalist and kantele player Mari Kaasinen; vocalist and kantele player Karoliina Kantelinen; vocalist Susan Aho; accordionist, bansuri player and vocalist Matti Kallio; fiddler, nyckelharpist, bowed lyre player and vocalist Lassi Logren and guitarist mandocellist, bouzouki player, mandolinist and vocalist Matti Laitinen. Keeping to that sharply honed sound centered on the blending and the myriad of harmonies of its female vocalists, Viena is just as energetic, beguiling and edgily eccentric as ever and the result is contagiously joyful.
Drawing influence from a trip to Russia’s Viena Karelian folklore villages where the last of the “rune singers” and Kalevala folk tradition and poetry have eked out an existence for thousands of years, Viena is a tribute to the region’s untouched nature and the musical roots.
Opening with the lovely “Taivasranta” or “The Heavenly Shore,” fans get the full force of these elegantly entwined vocals surrounded by guitar, accordion and kantele (a Finnish plucked instrument belonging to the dulcimer and zither family).
Dipping into the traditional, Viena offers up the vocally sensational track “Raijan Joiku,” before giving over to the joyfully worked “Kanaset” and the delicately dreamy “Kelo.”
Working through stunners like “Ukonlammas,” the traditional “Kokko” and irrepressibly delightful “Kiri,” Viena exudes the richness of Finland’s musical traditions. Closing traditional track “Oi Dai” with its happy energy is reason enough to check out Viena.
By turns Viena is infectiously folksy and dramatically elegant and well worth the legacy of Varttina.
Buy Viena in North America
Buy Viena in Europe
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
