J. Karjalainen records classic Finnish-American songs
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By Pirkko Kotirinta
"Jukka of the West is such a good story, that if it weren't true, someone would have to invent it", says songwriter Jukka Karjalainen with a wry expression, recalling with a completely straight face all of the things that this legendary figure left him: a couple of banjos, books, and a red rocking chair.
Even an Ouija board is from the old man who had been to America, although it was used mainly as a surface for cutting food.
However, his most important legacy was the songs. It was from these songs that J. Karjalainen learned as a young boy in the 1970s that he has now compiled his soon-to-be-released recording Lännen-Jukka, Amerikansuomalaisia lauluja ("Jukka of the West, Finnish-American songs").
The album is Karjalainen's 20th, and he is infectiously enthusiastic about it.
"This is one of the most valuable works that I have ever done", says Karjalainen, who has composed and written dozens of hits. "And now there is a feeling that the story is just beginning!"
Karjalainen combines two of the homes of his music on the new album: the blues and the Finnish language.
"The Finnish language puts the blues on its knees in these songs", Karjalainen says.
"American music used to dominate the rhythm of the words in my songs. Now it is the other way around."
Karjalainen has magnificently brought life to a combination that might have been born in the 1920s and 30s across the big water, at a meeting of Finnish miners and the black workers in the cotton fields. We know well that Hiski Salomaa, Arthur Kylander, Antti Syrjänen, Viola Turpeinen, and other Finnish musicians in the USA recorded their songs in the same studios as the most famous American musicians, such as the country legends the Carter Family.
"Before Robert Johnson went in, there might have been a Mexican mariachi orchestra in the studio, as well as a German band, some country singer, and after him, all manner of strange saw players", Karjalainen says, explaining the recording sessions of his blues idol.
At the same time he starts to ponder what kinds of sentiments Hiski Salomaa - whom Jukka of the West naturally claimed to have known quite well - had when he popped into the studio in Chicago in 1927.
"The important moment was a fleeting one, but the records recorded revelations from history that were a few minutes long. They were longer than the fractions of a second that are frozen in a photograph". Those moments now are like secret messages from the past, and Karjalainen says that he listens to them with a feeling of enchantment.
Karjalainen has also been enchanted recently by a book - the classic Anthology of American Folk Music written by Harry Smith in 1952, which gave wings to the folk music boom in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
Karjalainen says that he has always been interested in "old things and grey wooden walls".
He has carried with him the treasures of his childhood, such as a black-and-white photograph that he has found in the attic. The picture, taken in the harbour of Seattle in the early 20th century, shows a group of sailors posing on the deck of the ship. "Any one of the men might be Jukka of the West".
The photo, along with the Ouija board, is on the cover of the booklet that comes with the Lännen-Jukka CD.
The board is linked with another one of the songs on the CD: Sormus se kulki itteksensä ("The Ring Moved All By Itself"), with lyrics originating from Karjalainen himself.
Or whatever. "Jukka of the West also had Karjalainen as his surname", J. Karjalainen points out with a grin. Another new lyric is Nancy ja Sally ("Nancy and Sally"), a realistic and traditional-sounding story. The other songs are more or less folk songs, with new tunes with something of a blues sound to them.
The neo-retro folk songs were recorded in a single take with one microphone in Karjalainen's yellow log cabin last spring. "The temperature was fairly cool. I kept warm with felt slippers, liquor, and birch firewood."
With a woollen cap on his head, and a pipe in his mouth, Karjalainen listened to his achievements in the darkening evening, and was satisfied:
"I wanted to see if the song man still has a handle on his work", says Karjalainen of his folk recording, in which he accompanies his rough singing voice, mainly with just a banjo. "I proved that I could. But it really made me respect [Bob] Dylan and the others much more."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.10.2006
PIRKKO KOTIRINTA / Helsingin Sanomat
pirkko.kotirinta@hs.fi
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| 31.10.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 J. Karjalainen records classic Finnish-American songs |
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