Extraordinary Finnish fiddle band Frigg is celebrating its 20th anniversary with yet another fantastic album titled FriXX. The band’s mandolinist talked to us about Frigg’s background and the new recording.
What do you consider to be the essential elements of your music?
Shortly put: big fiddle sound with plucked strings accompaniment. Frigg’s music is energetic fusion folk music from Finland with deep roots in the Kaustinen fiddle style and elements from Nordic, Celtic and American musical traditions. There’s the frontline of four fiddles accompanied by guitar, double bass and mandolin – and tight interplay between all the instruments. We mostly perform our own original tunes.
How did Frigg’s musical ideas evolve over the years from your first album to your most recent recording FriXX?
The musical concept behind Frigg’s sound has been bright and clear from the start really. We often perform tunes from almost all our albums. Nevertheless, I’d like to think we have expanded our palette with new compositions and arrangements during these 20 years. As we have grown as musicians – and human beings – so have new influences seeped in our music naturally from everything we listen to and like. Classical music, trad. music, pop, rock…
We have worked a lot with the compositions and interpretation on how the energy of the music flows. Dynamics, phrasing, timbre, groove, rhythmic microtiming and of course tightly synchronized interplay between the instruments all affect the flow and help to create a special atmosphere or a “storyline” or inner universe inside a tune – this is especially significant with instrumental tunes when there’s no vocals with lyrics.
Tell us about your new album FriXX. Who plays on it?
FriXX is our 20th year anniversary album and 9th studio recording. There’s three of us from the original line-up: siblings Alina and Esko Järvelä on fiddle and myself on mandolin and cittern. The other two fiddlers Tommi Asplund and Tero Hyväluoma have been in the band since 2006. Our newest members are Juho Kivivuori (double bass) and Anssi Salminen (guitar). They became part of Frigg a few years ago.
The music on FriXX is written by Esko, Tero and me. There’s again some stuff on FriXX with completely new approach to us, such as Maanitus, a minimalistic repetitive tune, or Varpunen, a trad. polska tune with both rocking AND cinematic arrangement… Another really cinematic tune is Overtyyri. Saatto is another epic multi-layered tune, performed only with the fiddles. Perhaps a bit more “good ol’ Frigg style” can be heard on Juhlamarssi, Jouko-Taiga and VEP. Early Bird is the first single from the album and it’s as high energy journey through sonic Frigg landscapes as you can get!
I believe we share among ourselves a strong vision of what’s “the Frigg sound” and how we want the band to sound like, especially when we’re testing new material and bringing in new tunes. When we plan for new repertoire we can still say to each other: “We’ve never done this or that kind of tune before. How about it?”.
We are very pleased to see Frixx among the top 40 albums of “Best of 2019-2020 Season” of Transglobal World Music Chart!
Your music seems to combine Finnish and Nordic traditions with American bluegrass. What do you find attractive in bluegrass music?
Evidently we have taken influences from some aspects of bluegrass such as the tight interplay between the instruments, how the musicians are listening to each other and reacting dynamically to impulses, the roles of the accompaniment section (double bass, guitar, mandolin), improvised solos and fast tunes! On FriXX perhaps Häkkisen riili goes into this category. As a mandolin player I, for example, have found a lot of inspiration in the sound and groove of such musicians as David Grisman, Andy Statman, Tim O’Brien and Mike Marshall among others. You can hear my mandolin more in the front for example on Terhen and Myrskyluoto.
Mika Kauhanen, a renowned Finnish journalist, invented the term “nordgrass” to describe Frigg’s music. Still, I think we often sound quite Finnish, like on the track Kekripolska.
Your band includes 4 fiddlers. Why four and what are their roles?
Four fiddles just makes a good sound together. Four fiddles in the blend is enough but not too much. For example two fiddles can play the melody in unison, one fiddle plays second harmony and the fourth plays octave melody. Or two fiddles play melody in octaves, one is in the second harmony and one fiddle does something else together with the accompaniment section, like a riff or chopping or some other kind of rhythmic groove – or just improvises on top of the other three. Also four fiddles can do rich sounding long chords together etc. The possibilities are endless.
And we’re not the only band with this idea, just look at Fiddlers’ Bid, Blazin Fiddles, Session A9 or our Finnish idols JPP.
Finland is a relatively small country, but it has a thriving music scene in terms of traditional and contemporary folk music as well as tango, jazz, rock, etc. How’s the music education system in Finland and why do you think there are so many talented musicians?
I believe many of our internationally known Finnish musicians have studied at the Sibelius Academy, which is a highly acclaimed music university in the fields of folk, jazz and classical music. I work there myself as lecturer for folk music so I get to see how the wonderful talents of the students can grow in a very inventive and supportive surrounding. Most of the professional folk musicians you see at international events come from our Folk Music Department.
There is a widespread educational system for classical music in Finland for children. It’s quite affordable and a popular hobby. As for folk or pop music lessons there is less opportunities but increasing nowadays. There is a growing interest for folk music courses for children called Näppärit, which is founded by Mauno Järvelä – Alina’s and Esko’s father. These courses attract sometimes even 300 attendees for a weekend or a week.
Frigg is a well-known touring band, how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you in terms of work and livelihood?
It’s terrible, as it is for everyone else in the trade. Basically all our international tours and gigs have been cancelled and moved to 2021 or further. But I have to give huge thanks to all the folk clubs and festival organizers for their support that so many have agreed to move the gigs to next year and include Frigg in their 2021 program! Let’s just hope it will be possible to travel and organize events soon enough… We are working in close contact together with our international agents to see how things are developing. So big thanks to Craig, Anne, Danielle and Keita for their efforts!
The pandemic safety regulations have revealed that in Finland the government – and maybe a big part of the public also – hasn’t actually realized the economic and employing significance of the cultural trade. Cultural trade (including all events and genres, not only music) makes 3,5% of the Finnish GDP and normally creates 20 000 permanent jobs and 175 000 short term jobs in Finland. The COVID-19 recovery funds and recovery actions have been completely inadequate and totally unequal compared to other trades. It seems that many people who do NOT work in a culturally related job think of culture from the point of view of FREE TIME. Culture is leisure to them, culture is just people’s hobbies, it’s not a necessity for anyone so lock it down first! Let’s hope this will change for the better soon…
UK and US have been major marketing territories for us and we have a lot of friends of Frigg’s music there! But now, with BREXIT and no trade agreement with EU, it’s becoming increasingly expensive with loads more paperwork for foreign artist to tour in the UK. And with the pandemic regulations America has raised their visa fees for foreign artists touring by more than 50%! These are very troubling news to us. I sincerely hope these would be short term problems and that it still pays off to do gigs there. We really want to!
What have been doing these days while there were orders in many countries to stay at home?
Frigg released in May a lockdown music video of the tune Jouko-Taiga, which was fun to make! The covid-19 situation is actually relatively calm in Finland, statistically, although the effects on cultural industry have been dramatic, as said. After the lockdown ended we’ve had some domestic gigs with Frigg, for which we have to thank the local organizers for their efforts to make it all possible with all the extra safety arrangements. Also a big cheer to Pia and Mikko from our agency Raitala Music for working hard to make things better in the middle of this difficult situation! They are turning every stone and inventing new ways to help their artists.
Besides touring with Frigg all the members of the band work as full time musicians and/or music pedagogues with various projects, bands, music schools, theatres, dance groups and musical genres. This brings a lot of versatility and nuances also to our music. We’ve never wanted to restrict ourselves to focus only on Frigg because we want to do many kinds of things.
A few years ago, a Minneapolis label called NorthSide released dozens of Scandinavian folk albums in the United States. Although the label is still around, the amount of Scandinavian albums released has decreased considerably. Do you think this is due to market changes or the demise of indie labels? Did you notice a drop in sales in North America?
I believe the decrease in album sales is universal as digital streaming has become the number one way of consuming music. Unfortunately the streaming platforms pay the artists a ridiculously small share for their streams so this is not a way to make a living out of your own albums, unless people actually buy the digital version of the album…
We have always sold the biggest number of CDs during the gigs. In addition, you can order our CDs online from our website. For digital distribution we have a deal with CD Baby. .
In what ways are you promoting your music?
Jane Brace PR has done great promotion in the UK for two of our latest albums. We are working with Danielle Devlin and her agency Canis Major Music to organize our future US concert tours. Hopefully it would be possible in 2021. We will start promoting that closer to the tour, when we see it coming real.
If you could invite musicians or bands to collaborate with, who would it be?
We’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with quite a few artists during our career as you get to meet a lot of colleagues at festivals and events. It’s so built in folk music to have a few tunes together or play music and dance a few rounds together that eventually you end up on stage performing something together. The social aspect of folk music connects people very naturally to a big international family. Also, some organizers are keen on pushing a couple of bands together on stage in a “let’s see what happens” -kind of manner…
I can think of a few interesting names Frigg have not worked with yet like Chris Thile or LAU – or Transglobal Underground could be exciting! Just to name a few very different artists…
Are there any additional future projects to share with us?
We have been performing Frigg tunes with a few symphony orchestras in Finland. That has been wonderful! We are looking for to do the same internationally, so let’s see when this will become possible.
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Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.