Hill (2009) Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological Transformation, and Creative Freedom in Finnish PDF

Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological Transformation, and Creative Freedom in Finnish
Contemporary Folk Music

Author(s): Juniper Hill
Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 53, No. 1 (WINTER 2009), pp. 86-114
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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Vol. 53, No. 1 Ethnomusicology Winter 2009
Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological

Transformation, and Creative Freedom
in Finnish Contemporary Folk Music
Juniper Hill / University College Cork
Creativity andthatartistic
and values have shaped freedom arefolktwo
the contemporary musicofscene
thein salient pedagogical goals
Helsinki. This virtuosic, professionalized scene developed primarily in and
around the Folk Music Department that was founded in 1983 in the Sibelius
Academy (SibA). Department leaders held ambitious activist goals, rebel
ling against what they perceived to be restrictions in nationalistic folkloric
music, limitations in Western art music, "subjugating" teaching methods in
music education (Laitinen 1989:9-10), and impersonalizing mass-media and
commercialism in popular music. Believing these prevalent music cultures
to be lacking in creative opportunities, department pedagogues designed
teaching methods to restore creativity within traditional folk music idioms
and to encourage artistic freedom beyond the conventional musical bound
aries of the time. Two of the main methods used in the department are: (1)
simulated oral composition, which was partly inspired by new developments
in the field of folklore, and (2) experimental free improvisation, which was
inspired by avant-garde music. These ideas and approaches combined with
the Sibelius Academy's tremendous influence and power effectively created
an alternative music-culture with its own beliefs, values, and performance.
In essence, this is the story of how ideology, politics, and transnational in
tellectual and artistic trends influence pedagogy and teaching methods, which
in turn shape creative processes, performance practices, and sound products
within and beyond a conservatory. It is also the story of how a charismatic
and ambitious individual tied to an influential institution can actually create a
new music (sub)culture, not through the material workings of the market as
so often happens in contemporary music around the world, but rather through
a combination of ideas with education and institutional power.
? 2009 by the Society for Ethnomusicology
Hill: Finnish Contemporary Folk Music 87
The ethnographic material presented here draws from an initial field

research period of eighteen months that I conducted in Finland from 2002
to 2004 and an additional four months of follow-up fieldwork carried out
over 2007 and 2008. As a visiting student in the SibA Folk Music Department,
I spent three semesters taking private lessons in folk singing and folk flutes,
attending undergraduate and postgraduate studio courses and seminars, par
ticipating in workshops and events, conducting interviews, and documenting
performances. My primary field site was Helsinki, though I also conducted
an extensive online survey with 234 respondents from across the country,
and spent three summers carrying out fieldwork at folk music festivals and
camps around Finland and in neighboring countries.
The Formation of the Folk Music Department

in the Sibelius Academy
The founding of the Folk Music Department at the prestigious Sibelius
Academy, the only institution in Finland offering advanced degrees in applied
music (i.e., Master of Music, Doctor of Music), was unprecedented. As the
Sibelius Academy transitioned from a private to a public institution in the early
1980s, the committee reviewing the degree programs decided to add both
a jazz department and a folk music department. According to the story, one
board member asked,"is there anything else missing here?" Out of the blue,
somebody responded,"why don't we include folk music, also?" (interviews,
HannuTolvanen, 20 April 2004, Helsinki; Heikki Laitinen, 18 June 2004, Hel
sinki, my translation).1 Although this tale makes the department's founding
appear apolitical and even whimsical, previous political movements may have
influenced this decision. A Finnish music education scholar suggested to me
that the Finnish communist movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its aim of
decentering bourgeois culture (and Western art music as a representation of
that elite culture), as well as Finland's strong democratic ethos, might have
played a role in the move to include non-bourgeois popular music, jazz, and
folk music in music education programs. A Pop and Jazz Institute was also
established in the capital in 1972, becoming the Pop and Jazz Conservatory
in 1986 (Finnish Music Information Centre 2003). Furthermore, it is unlikely
that folk music would have been included in the state's preeminent music
conservatory if the Romantic Nationalist movement of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries had not increased the valuation of folk music, and
if the Folk Revival of 1968 had not increased the visibility of folk music?
albeit amateur folk music?in the second half of the twentieth century.
Finnish folk music had long ceased to flourish in its original contexts. Of
the traditions regarded as ancient, five-string kantele (zither) and jouhikko
(bowed lute) were replaced by more modern instruments and the kalevalaic
88 Ethnomusicology, Winter 2009
narrative singing was gradually suppressed by missionaries for its magico

religious themes?only later to be resurrected by nineteenth-century national
ists, not as performed music traditions, but as national symbols, literature, and
thematic source material for national art.2 The traditions regarded as new?
seventeenth- to nineteenth-century strophic songs and fiddle and accordion
dance music?were gradually replaced in the first half of the twentieth-century
by Mrican-American-influenced popular musics and mass media, and then later
revived by predominantly rural, politically conservative, enthusiastic amateurs
in the Finnish Folk Music Revival of 1968 (Kurkela 1994; Ramnarine 2003).
However, by the early 1980s neither nationalistic folklore nor revived folk
dance music enjoyed great popularity or public esteem.
At the time of the department's founding in 1983, there were no programs
to train incoming students in folk music before they reached this tertiary
level of professional folk musician training. Historically, Finnish folk music had
been transmitted orally and informally from family and neighbors. Starting in
the 1970s, a few weeklong folk music classes for amateurs were offered by
the Kaustinen Folk Music Institute and lessons in the Finnish kantele were
taught by Professor Martti Pokela in the Sibelius Academy Music Education
Department. Other than these small exceptions, there was no institutionalized
folk music education in Finland, nor were there any pre-existing formal folk
music teaching methods or pedagogy. When the SibA Folk Music Depart
ment was founded, no one could fathom how folk music would be taught
or what would be included in the five-year curriculum to train professional
folk musicians.
The Sibelius Academy hired the charismatic and ambitious Heikki Laitinen
to be the department's first chair and professor. Laitinen, formerly the director
of Kaustinen Folk Music Institute, had a background in folklore, avant-garde art
music composition, ethnomusicology, and theology?influences that can be
found in his application of folklorist Albert Lord's theories, emphasis on the
avant-garde, valuation of field and archival research, and deliverance of riveting
sermon-like speeches on creativity and folk music's potential. Laitinen's influ
ence on the department and on the contemporary folk music scene (and even
more broadly on music education in Finland) has been monumental?though
his colleagues, folk music pedagogues Martti Pokela, Kristiina Ilmonen, Juhani
Nareharju, and Hannu Saha, among others, have also played key roles and
deserve to share the credit. The department leaders, together with the early
students (many of whom later became teachers in the department), were given
free reign to invent their own folk music pedagogy and teaching methods.3
The department's teaching methods were shaped by several goals. Some
of these goals are what one might expect to find in a conservatory folk music
program: to resuscitate moribund traditions, to diversify the field of folk mu
sic, to increase the status and image of folk music, to produce highly skilled
and knowledgeable folk musicians, and to turn folk musicians into artists and
folk music into a respected art form. Other goals are more unique to the Sibel
ius Academy program and reflect the individual agendas of its pedagogues: to
make folk music relevant to contemporary society; to recapture the creative
processes of a (reimagined) oral past; to give folk musicians the freedom to
develop folk music as an art; and to give students the artistic skills, courage,
and freedom to create and perform their own personal, original (folk) music.
This paper focuses on the motivations and ramifications of these latter, more
unique goals concerning creative process and artistic freedom.
Musical Creativity and Artistic Freedom

During my three semester residency in the SibA Folk Music Department,
I noticed that the terms luovuus (creativity) and taiteellinen vapaus (artistic
freedom) were frequently emphasized in student and teacher discourse, and
that teaching methods were specifically designed to encourage creativity and
freedom.
The definition of musical creativity as generative activities requiring
divergent thinking is particularly appropriate to the Finnish case. Several
scholars of creativity maintain that in order to be creative individuals must
engage in "divergent thinking," a process comprising the invention and ex
ploration of multiple possibilities, preferably in an environment in which
diverse solutions are allowed and accepted. Divergent thinking contrasts
with "convergent thinking," the (uncreative) process of following rules and
specific set models to obtain the only one acceptable outcome (for general
creativity, cf, Guilford 1950; Baer and Kaufman 2006; for musical creativity
cf.,Deliege and Wiggins 2006; Webster 1992; Campbell 1991). The SibA Folk
Music Department's commitment to divergent thinking in music is exempli
fied in this statement by former department chair Kristiina Ilmonen:
We don't give any kind of orders of what is the right way to play, what is the
right way to make music, what is the right music ... If we would just say that
this is the right thing to do, this and this and this, it would maybe make people
more obedient?and we don't like them to be too obedient. We like them to
be a little crazy and creative and have a mind of their own. (Interview, 16 July
2004, Helsinki)
The department requires that students engage in the creative activities of

improvisation, variation, composition, and arranging in both course assign
ments and exam-recitals. For example, Masters students must give three juried
concerts, one of ancient traditions, one of new traditions [from the eighteenth
to nineteenth centuries], and one of their own music.
While creativity is strongly emphasized in the department, I found in
my field research that contemporary folk musicians used the term vapaus,
or freedom, with much greater frequency and emotional zeal. Unlike creativ
ity, the term freedom implies: release from imprisonment; being able to act
without hindrance or restraint; exemption from arbitrary, despotic, or auto
cratic control; and the overstepping of customary bounds (Oxford English
Dictionary). Thus, striving for musical freedom connotes a desire to be free
of perceived restrictions, a challenging of imposed boundaries.
In this sense, artistic freedom may go beyond and even contrast with
creativity, for creativity may flourish within?without defying?the norms
and rules of a traditional music idiom or aesthetic judgment system. Impro
visation within traditional idioms?for example, a master Persian musician
improvising within and adhering to the traditional norms and guidelines of
the radif system, a jazz soloist playing within the chord changes and using
licks characteristic of a cool jazz style, or a Finnish fiddler spontaneously
embellishing a polka with traditional ornamental patterns?would be an
expression of musical creativity, but not necessarily of musical freedom. In
contrast, musicians improvising freely beyond any one idiom or music-culture,
or experimental composers such as John Cage challenging the boundaries
of what his audiences perceive to be music, would be an expression of both
creativity and freedom.
Does the tremendous importance of musical freedom to Finnish contem
porary folk musicians evidence feelings of hindrances, restraints, boundaries,
and burdens? From what have these musicians sought to be free?
Dissatisfaction with Western Art and Popular Musics

and with Finland's Music Education System
As I reviewed Finnish music journals and constructed oral histories of the
Folk Music Department's development, I uncovered adamant expressions of
dissatisfaction and criticism by folk music pedagogues of contemporaneous
music scenes?including Western art/classical music, transnational popular
music, and Finland's music education system?as well as assertions that folk
music education could provide solutions.
Contemporary folk music activists believed that Western art music cul
ture restricted creativity of the majority of musicians, because it provided
virtually no opportunities for improvisation and limited composition to a
select gifted elite.4 Leading folk music pedagogues, such as Heikki Laitinen,
Hannu Saha, Juhani Nareharju, Kristiina Ilmonen, and Pauliina Kauhanen,
radically advocate that every amateur and professional musician, regardless
of skill, level, talent, or age, has the ability to improvise and compose and the
right to be creative.5 Finnish folk music pedagogues maintain that creative
activities should be actively taught and encouraged in all students at all levels.
For example, Kristiina Ilmonen asserts:
We have pedagogically the viewpoint that already a student can be an artist [e.g.,
capable of meaningful and valuable individual expression in creative activities].
I think this is what differs from classical music quite a lot, because many of the
people there think that you are only an artist after you have graduated, or if you
are world famous and giving solo concerts. But we believe that already children
can be artists. So our perception of the world is quite different. (Interview, 16
July 2004, Helsinki)
In addition to the general decline and limitation of creative activities in

Western art music today, Finnish folk music pedagogues have viewed the
curricula and teaching methods of the established music education system as
being conservative, old-fashioned, encouraging of passiveness, discouraging
and stifling to creativity, and inhibiting of personal expression. An anonymous
writer to Finland's classical music magazine Rondo professes that "folk mu
sic's professionalization and professional teachers signify an alternative to
the extremely old-fashioned music pedagogy of the music schools" (1997:15,
my translation). Heikki Laitinen (1989) has argued that teaching folk music
can enrich music culture by encouraging musical versatility, multiple values,
multi-facetedness, open-mindedness, and multilingualism, and thus stands in
direct contrast to the music education system's nineteenth-century single
valued belief that music has specific set rules. He polemically proclaimed in
heated debate with music education administrators that:
Art music is based on the eradication of the creativity on the part of some
50,000 children [the approximate number of children enrolled in music schools
in Finland] ... The music education system is founded on repetition, obedience,
subjugation and conformity ... and these submission and obedience require
ments in the music education system have become exceedingly more strict in
the last ten years. New and more exact regulations are constantly appearing for
what at each age level should be obeyed and repeated. (Laitinen 1989:9-10, my
translation and emphasis)
Laitinen proposed that folk music education could be an alternative to a music

school system that "sets children up for failure," heralding that "folk music is
taught and will be taught for the salvation of musical creativity" (ibid., my
translation and emphasis). Hannu Saha, a folk music educator, administrator,
and artist who has been hired to replace Laitinen in the Folk Music Depart
ment after his retirement, has similarly decried the "passiveness" taught in
the music education system and advocated for more creative music-making
to be emphasized in the schools. Saha proposed instruction in improvisation
and variation on the traditional five-string kantele (zither) as an excellent
foundation for learning creativity (Saha quoted in Kuusisaari 1993:20, my
translation; interview, Saha, 7 October 2008, Helsinki).
Some Finnish contemporary folk musicians also believe transnational
mass-mediated popular music to be too impersonal and lacking in opportu
nities for individual expression. For example, Pekka Westerholm and Heikki
Syrjanen of the World Mankeri Orchestra, who improvise and compose free
jazz-sounding music on their own homemade Finnish folk instruments, see
their music as an alternative to "capitalist cultural imperialism," insisting
that "you shouldn't get involved in something just because some advertising
executive is ingenious and shrewd enough to create a demand for rock and
disco and these things" (Syrjanen and Westerholm, in Austerlitz 2000:204).
The complaints against popular music seem to be primarily against com
mercialization, marketing, selling out by catering to the musical parameters
set by the recording industry, and the loss of interpersonal connection in
mass mediaization. Several Finnish folk musicians, including Heikki Laitinen
and Hannu Saha, have told me that they believe amateur garage bands to be
the actual folk music of today and one of the few creative musical outlets
in contemporary society (for an example of creative and individualistic
semi-amateur Finnish popular music listen to the 2002 compilation Cafe
Veijon Baart). Nevertheless, as Paul Austerlitz (2000:205) and Vesa Kurkela
(1989:414) have both observed, multinational corporations have become
the "antihero," or in other words, the Other against which folk musicians are
rebelling and denning themselves through the perceivably more personal
and grassroots creative processes available in folk music.
Several contemporary folk musicians who grew up studying and playing
classical, jazz, or popular music responded to my questionnaire confessing
that they had been drawn to the alternative haven of contemporary folk music
because of the opportunities for creative personal expression and artistic
freedom that were lacking in other musical genres and environments. Thus,
the zealous demand for musical freedom that is characteristic of the Finn
ish contemporary folk music scene developed partly in rebellious activism
against the perceived restrictions in Western art music, popular music, and
music education systems. It was based on that perception of their surround
ing musical milieu as stifling of creativity that they developed their pedagogy,
and identified with certain other musical cultures in the world (both folk
and avant-garde), which led to the development of Finland's contemporary
folk music scene.
Limitations Imposed by Folklorization and by Folk Music's

Role As Nationalist Symbol
Many Finnish contemporary folk musicians have also been frustrated by
the restrictions and conventions of the folk music that developed from the
Romantic Nationalist and Public Enlightenment Movements of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. For over 150 years the once-oral runolaulut
(poem-songs) compiled in the Kalevala national epic and the mythically
magical kantele played by the legendary hero Vainamoinen have served as

the Romantic Nationalist-inspired symbols of Finnish heritage and national
character. These nationalist symbols have been propagandized to genera
tions of Finns through literature, paintings, sculptures, festivals, civic holidays,
school curricula, art music, and even rock songs (cf, Anttonen and Kuusi
1999;Austerlitz 2000; Branch 1993; Jaakkola andToivanen 2004; Koiranen,
Leisi6,and Saha 2003;PuustinenandTenhunen 1999;Ramnarine 1994,2003).
As Wilson (1976) chronicles, Finnish folklore, particularly the Kalevala, was
manipulated to serve nationalist political agendas from nineteenth-century
nation-building through Finland's conflict with the Soviet Union in the Sec
ond World War. In addition, the Public Enlightenment Movement (kansan
valistusliike) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries so-called
cleansed and improved folk ballads, folk dances, and fiddle and accordion
pelimanni music (Western and Central European-derived dance music such
as schottische, quadrille, waltz, etc.). These folklorized versions of folk music
and dance were part of evening entertainment events known as iltamat
that were organized by various public enlightenment societies (such as the
Workers' Civilization League and Rural Civilization League) with the intention
of educating and civilizing the Finnish people (Hill 2005:144-46; Laitinen
2003:200). The heritage of the Romantic Nationalist and Public Enlighten
ment movements is still visible and audible today, particularly in amateur folk
music organizations and festivals, and has had a tremendous impact on the
general conceptions of folk music.
For many contemporary folk musicians, these folklorized versions of folk
music, the organizations controlling such folkloric presentations, and the gen
eral public's expectations of folk music translate into significant restrictions
on how folk music may be played and should sound. On numerous occasions,
I heard musicians argue that folk music should not be a "museum piece" or
a "mausoleum piece," frozen forever in an imagined historical era, but rather,
it had to be "living" (active, changing, evolving) in the present. Furthermore,
several contemporary folk musicians complained to me that the nationalist as
sociations and symbolism had given folk music a bad reputation, for much of the
general public now thought of folk music as dull, boring, and old-fashioned.
For example, when asked about the general public's image of Finnish
folk music, Sibelius Academy alumna and accordionist Anne-Mari Kivimaki
responded: "Finns don't believe that Finnish music can sound good ... [The
general image is] a player that is at least 50 years old wearing a national folk
costume and playing some sort of music that's not very good. Unfortunately
that is still the general/public concept of folk music" (interview, 21 April 2004,
Helsinki, my translation). Anne-Mari's collaborator Reeta-Kaisa Pirhonen, a
contemporary folk dance choreographer, describes how nationalism has
negatively impacted the reception of folk music and dance:
The second you put on a national folk costume in Finland, people have a prede
termined image. People are like/folk dancing, national folk costumes?I'm outta
here!" They don't want to watch because they have that kind of preconceived
notion that it will be boring, naive, and primitive, and no one's into it. There was
a period when Finland was getting its independence and the national costumes
were decided upon; it was part of the desire that Finland would have its own
state-power that we have something of our own. And it's a little understand
able that it happened that way then, but at some point in time people began
to loathe it. It has maybe done a bad thing for folk dancing, because when the
Women's Gymnast League [Naisten Voimisteluseura, a group that published
highly codified folk dance manuals] made folk dancing "cleansed "and "civilized"
and "beautiful," that's how it was destroyed. It no longer had anything at all to
do with the folk, rather it became something else ... The national folk costumes
and performances came to be done in such a way that they no longer interest
the people ... If I put my folk costume on then it is a sure thing that half of the
audience will leave. (Interview, 1 June 2004, Helsinki, my translation)
Helen Ruhkala, a contemporary kantele player and director of the Folk Arts
Center in Kaustinen, goes further, complaining how national symbolism in
hibits the musical freedom and development of kantele players:
The traditional kantele has been, "oh, that old instrument"... It has been a national
symbol for such a long time ... it is inside Finns. It is so strong, we have learned
already in school that it is our beautiful national instrument... For kantele play
ers and kantele people it is a negative, because it makes restrictions, limits for
the use of the kantele. 0nterview, 16 July 2004, Kaustinen, Finland)
The nationalist legacy is a double-edged sword for Finnish contemporary

folk music. On the one hand, contemporary folk music is indebted to the
Romantic Nationalist movement. It is doubtful that folk music would have
received such a degree of institutional support and state funding if it had not
been for the nationalistic valuation of folk music, and certainly many of the
scholarly and archival resources that have been crucial in the resuscitation
and rejuvenation of moribund traditions were collected, preserved, and made
available by Romantic Nationalist-inspired scholars and organizations (such as
the Finnish Literary Society). On the other hand, the cleansing, codification,
stereotyping, and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century institutional
ization of folk music have resulted in a number of restrictions and negative
associations that have inhibited the development, performance, and reception
of folk music in Finland today. One might make the argument that contempo
rary folk music is a forging of an updated national identity, presenting a more
contemporary image of Finnishness on the transnational"world music"market
(Ramnarine 2003). Most of my informants were sick of nationalist discourse
and seemed to be more interested in presenting cultural and ethnic identities
that stretch beyond national borders (e.g.,Nordic,European,Finno-Ugric) and
in defining themselves as an affinity-based subculture of artists (Hill 2007).
Regardless of how important a (modern) Finnish identity is to contemporary

folk musicians, they are reacting against the entrenched old-fashioned national
symbolism of folk music that restricts their creative possibilities and taints
public reception of their work. As the leading pedagogue of the SibA Folk
Music Department proclaimed:
There cannot be any borders or limits, rather the folk musician must be just as
free as the jazz musician and classical musician. A classical composer is allowed
to do anything whatsoever, no limits at all. Same with a free jazz musician who
can do anything whatsoever, no limits at all. It must be the same way in folk music
also." (Interview, Heikki Laitinen, 18 June 2004, Helsinki, my translation)
The ideology, attitudes, and teaching methods disseminated through the SibA
Folk Music Department actively strive to break down these restrictions placed
on folk music and to restore creativity within folk music.
Simulated Oral Composition as Teaching Method

One of the most widely used pedagogical strategies in the SibA Folk Mu
sic Department is what I call "simulated oral composition."6 This technique
is used to restore creative improvisation and variation within a traditional
idiom. It evolved from an attempt to re-create what many pedagogues and
folklorists believe to be the creative process of an oral culture?a belief that
was inspired by Albert Lord 's theory of oral composition, which took Finnish
folklore by storm in the 1960s and 1970s.
In his influential book The Singer of Tales ([I960] 2000), Albert Lord
demonstrated that long epics and narrative songs existing in oral traditions
were composed orally in the moment of performance with the singer-poet
drawing from an orally transmitted store of traditional metric phrases, formu
las, narrative themes, and story patterns to spontaneously construct the song
anew. "Each performance is more than a performance; it is a re-creation ...
Oral transmission,' oral composition,' oral creation,' and 'oral performance'
are all one and the same thing" (Lord 1983:160-61).
Finnish folklorists, including Heikki Laitinen, believed that Lord's oral com
position theory explained ancient Finnish kalevalaic runolaulut (sung poetry).
According to Finnish folk music scholar and archivist Anneli Asplund, Lord's
theory was first applied in the performance of Finnish folk music after the
project Pddskylintu Pdivdlintu: kalevalaisia lauluja (Swallowbird,Daybird:
Kalevalaic Songs) (1968), in which folklore scholars recorded an album of ar
chive songs to be used in Finnish language and literature classrooms (the songs
were re-sung so that children would not be turned off by the scratchy sounds
of the original archive recordings). After this recording project, Anneli Asplund,
Heikki Laitinen, Pirkko-Liisa Rausmaa, and Seppo Knuuttila formed the group
Nelipolviset (TheTetrametereds, after the kalevalaic meter), which focused on

a Lordian approach to performing kalevalaic songs. Asplund relates:
We soon realized that it was not possible to sing by imitating each and every sound
from the [archive] tapes as we did in Pddskylintu Pdivdlintu. That Pddskylintu
project taught me at least that it can't work that way, that it is impossible to sing
in the manner in which one learns every single note there from the tape and then
sings. Rather, it was necessary to learn the rules in the custom, the rules for produc
ing the tradition. Just like what we were also reading at that time from Lord, in the
Singer of Tales ... It was a great experience when that book was found ... [Lord]
tells about Yugoslavian epics and how these old Yugoslavian singers produced
music, produced songs, that it was necessary to learn these rules and this formula
technique and then sing accordingly. It was also the theoretical background for
our singing when we noticed that we had to of course learn the songs, the text,
and the melodies, but then we also had permission to create the music according
to these rules. It is clear that nowadays we don't live in an oral tradition, rather we
live in this culture in which books and text are always the most important thing.
So we also learned that if we wanted to learn the old poems then we had to take
SKVR [Suomen Kansan VanhatRunot, The Old Poems of the Finnish People, a 34
tome collection of field transcriptions of kalevalaic sung poetry] and study the text
there ... We tried to learn to study the process. That was the theoretical Lordian
system to produce music. It was in the air at that time, all folklorists were impressed
by this book Singer of Tales, it was the course book. If you read the articles and
books of the sixties, seventies, and even eighties, very many song researchers were
speaking of the Singer of Tales and the Lordian system. And that was also begin
ning when Heikki [Laitinen] started [teaching at the Folk Music Department] in
the Sibelius Academy, when he started to create the system of how to teach folk
music. (Interview, 27 May 2004, Helsinki, my translation)
Laitinen concurs that Lord's Singer of Tales changed his own thinking in the
early 1970s when he was studying folklore at the University of Helsinki, and
that Lord's theories influenced both his teaching and artistic work (e-mail,
January 2005). This process-oriented approach, focusing on creating ancient
material anew with each performance, became fundamental to the ideology
behind the pedagogy that Heikki Laitinen instituted in the SibA Folk Music
Department.
However, unlike the Yugoslavian epic tradition upon which Lord based
his theory, there was no continuous living oral tradition in Finland. Kalevalaic
runolaulut existed in modern Finnish culture almost entirely as text, published
literature, not as an active performance tradition. Furthermore, contempo
rary folk musicians were not raised in an oral culture, but rather in a culture
accustomed to and dependent upon written and recorded materials. In art
music, and even in many amateur folk music clubs, written notation reigned
supreme. Recordings, though aural, have a similar fossilizing effect as notation
by creating static authoritative versions of pieces. In the modern text-based
and recording-based culture, the extensive variation of oral music-culture
processes had been virtually lost.
Heikki Laitinen and other folk music pedagogues endeavored to recap

ture both the oral transmission process and oral composition process of an
oral culture. They refer to folk music's original state as kuulonvarainen and
muistinvarainen, terms often glossed in English as "oral" but literally meaning
"auditory-resource-based" and "memory-storage-based," respectively. As these
terms are usually used in conjunction with each other, I translate the concept
as "auditory-memory-storage-based." The use of these terms reveals an aware
ness that the performance of music stored in auditory memories is shaped by
the nature of memory storage and recall. Psycholinguistic research has shown
that people remember and recall meaning?an abstraction of content?much
better than surface form, or the exact wording or notes that they heard (Fletcher
2004). Humans are also most likely to remember order sequences, familiar
units, or "chunks," such as small melodic motifs or poetic phrases, as opposed
to individual pitches and sounds (Campbell 1991:84-85; Hoffman 2004). In
an auditory-memory-storage-based tradition, musicians and singers are more
likely to reconstruct a piece using familiar chunks and phrases?what Lord
called formulas?according to their understanding of the overall meaning and
content, as opposed to recalling a piece word by word or note by note, as Mil
man Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated (Lord [I960] 2000). Musicians in an
auditory-memory-storage-based culture are also likely to compose/improvise/
invent new passages or sections to replace ones they may have forgotten.
The SibA Folk Music Department designed techniques to simulate oral
composition processes. Teachers draw on traditional material that nineteenth
century and early twentieth-century Finnish folk music scholars collected,
analyzed, and systematically compiled. They use this material to orally teach
students variations and renditions of the same/similar tunes. Instead of ingrain
ing one authoritative version of a song (as often happens when using recordings
or notation), students build up a storage of motifs, patterns, phrases, contours,
and themes in their auditory memory that may be selectively recalled and
manipulated as the musical pieces are re-created in performance.
For example, the melodies in Figure 1 come from a volume of traditional
Finnish song melodies, Laulusdvelmid, that was published in 1908. This
volume was compiled by the Finnish musicologist Ilmari Krohn, who was
known for his field collecting and melodic and rhythmic analysis. Ilmari Krohn
placed these melodies together based on their melodic similarity, regardless
of where in Finland the tunes were documented. As a visiting student at the
Folk Music Department, I studied traditional flute with Leena Joutsenlahti,
one of the six students in the first entering class in the Folk Music Depart
ment in 1983 who studied under Heikki Laitinen and helped to develop the
department's teaching methods. In our lessons, Joutsenlahti took advantage
of these melodies that were conveniently published in sequence to help me
absorb a variety of related melodic motifs and passages that I could store
in my aural memory and later draw from interchangeably. She read these
Figure 1. Archival melody versions from Ilmari Krohn's LauhisavelmiU (1908)
used as contemporary pedagogical tool to teach simulated oral composition.
(Villages where the songs were documented, named above each melody on
the right, are scattered across Finland.)
1452
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melodies from the book, but taught them to me aurally, one right after the
other. She made me play them all back to her from memory, and then had
me improvise my own variations drawing from these different yet extremely
similar melodies that were at that point all jumbled together in my head.
The same technique was used in the department's folk song class. The
instructor Outi Pulkkinen gave us a sheet with four different versions of
the same kalevalaic runolaulu, collected from four different singers in the
nineteenth century (see Table 1). Each column contains a different version
of the same section of the same runolaulu as sung by different singers. The
instructor positioned the text on the page so that the thematic contents line
up horizontally and could be easily compared. In our folk song class we were
required to memorize all four versions, and then improvise and perform our
own versions, drawing on the different phrases swimming about in our heads
and on our own understanding of the narrative and poetic style. The result
in both cases was traditional-sounding new variations drawing from historic
melodic, ornamental, and textual materials.
While the spontaneous recreation of traditional material is more common
in performances of the ancient traditions, such as kalevalaic epic songs and
shepherd flute music, some musicians in the Folk Music Department have
also been working on simulating oral composition in the so-called new tradi
tions (dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries), particularly
pelimanni instrumental music. Jouko Kyhala, folk music doctoral student, has
been working on a "polska language" that he uses to spontaneously create
new polskas in the traditional form, style, and structure during the moment
of performance in formal concerts. (The polska is a dance genre in triple
meter that was commonly used in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century peas
ant weddings in western Finland, and is also one of the more popular dances
in the folk revival scene.) As Kyhala explained to me, he has read scholarly
accounts of single fiddlers who played nonstop for three days at traditional
weddings, and he surmises that, instead of having a large enough repertoire
to play for that time period, which would have required some 3000 tunes,
traditional fiddlers must have had the ability to spontaneously create polskas
while performing them (interview, Kyhala, 16 October 2003, Helsinki). Simi
larly, Timo Alakotila, a Sibelius Academy instructor and well-known folk music
composer and harmonium player, has developed a method for teaching the
oral composition of pelimanni tunes. He has students learn several different
standard pelimanni licks, motifs, and phrases that can be used interchange
ably over specific chord changes (see Figure 2). Students practice these licks
and phrases until they are proficient and familiar enough with the material
to create their own (interview, Alakotila, 17 September 2008, Helsinki).
Simulated oral composition has been extremely successful in fighting the
ossifying effects of notation and recordings on music and in reclaiming the
Kinkon kieravillasia, Kunnottoman,tiijottoman." Petralaukan pealajella.
Miesten tapparan teria, Astupa paivan helkytteli Laksi vanha Vainamoini;
Paljon matkoja pahoja. Otti laumah lampahia, Mahittoman, muissittoman, Joukosen kiinan nenassa,
Jopa paivan :ki Jopa paivan kolmannenki Miesten tapparan terija. Toisen astu torkutteli
Polvi n alusimeksi, Vasemitse vaapahtavi Torkahtihp' on toini jalka, Suuhu Antervon Vipusen.
Salmalla veneen sakaran, Uupui kolmea sanoa Viitta virren tutkalmutta Viitta virren tutkalmuo, "Mane saamaan sanoja Parven hanhia haviAntero
tti, Viis oisVipuisen
virren tutkalsuusta.
mutta Vii"si viEirrensoanut
tutkalmsanoakana,
uo? Hauvin on suussa, lohen peassa, Ois tuola sanoa kolme,
Laati purtta laulamalla; Teki tiijolla venetta, Loatipa purtta laulannalla; Loati purtta laulamalla. Kasa hietra kallioon. Laksi soamahan sanoja, Itse noin sanoiksi virkki: Itse noin sanoiksi virkki: Paljon hanhia havitti, Laksi soamahan sanoja, Ei ole sielta ottamoina Lohen suussa, hauvin peassa,
Ei saanut sanoja tieta, Eika puoltana sanoa. Joukosen kynan nenassa, Viis ois virren tutkalmuo: Antero Vipuisen suusta. Ei soanut sanoakana, Lahtovi sanoja soamah, Mahittoman, muissittoman."
Jopa toisen torkutteli Laksi soamahan sanoja, Miesten miekkojen terija; Astu paivan heikutteli
Teki tieolla venetta, Tietaja ijan ikuine Teki tiijol a venehta, Teki tiijol a venehta, Kalkutteli kalliolla, Parraspuita pannessaha. Peaha laijan peassessaha. Peaha laijan peassessaha. Laksi saamaan sanoja Tempoi teeret kankahilta. Tuopa se vanha Vainamoini Tavattoman, tiijottoman,
Vaka vanha Vainamoinen Oli vanha Vainamoine, Tuop' oli vanha Vainamoini Oli vanha Vainamoini Pisti paan teraksisen Suuhu Antervon Vipusen.
Naisten nieklojen nenia. Naisten neulojen nenia, Jop' on peana kolmantena, Miesten miekkojen terie.
runolaulu texts were collected from different singers in Karelian vil ages in 1832-1877. They all tell the same story, using
Table 1. Four versions of the same runolaulu used to teach folk music students variation and oral composition. These
Vene koan kokkapuusa. Peahan purren peastaksensa, Parraspuita pannessaha, Parraspuita pannessaha,
Miesten miekkojen teria, Astui paivan, astui toisen, Toisenpa paivan torkutteli Naisten neulojen nenie.
Kaski seppo Ilmarisen: Joukon tappoi jouhtenia, "Ois tuola kolme sanoa, "Mista soan sanoa kolme,
Pani paitansa pajaksi, Miesten miekkojen teria. Iltana erahantena, Jopa peana kolmantena,
Uupu kolme sanoo Laittoi purtta laulamalla; Uupupa kolmie sanoa, Uupu kolmie sanoa,
Turkkein tuhuttimeksi, Toinen jalka tuukahtavi Naisten neulojen nenia. Iltana erahantena
Tako rautasen korean. Suuhun Antervo Vipusen, Vaapaht' on vasenki jalka
Astu paivan heikutteli Eika puoltana sanoa. (Viitta virren tutkalmutta).

SKRV 1.1.393 SKRV 1.1.392 SKRV 1.1.395 SKRV 1.1.387 Laksi vanha Vainamoinen, Koppi koppelot maelta. Ei ole sielta ottamoina,
similar phrases, in slightly different ways. Only the first few lines are shown here.
Suuhun Antero Vipuisen
Ei kirves kiveen kayta.
Figure 2. The introductory lines of four versions of kalevalaic runolaulu

collected from different singers in Karelian villages in 1832-1877, used to
teach folk music students variation and oral composition. Each version tells
the same story, using similar phrases, in slightly different ways.
^ L?1 Dm s _ A_ _
? I'lllk Jff]JB1
. jmJLT rr ictrr
personal variation and uniqueness inherent in auditory-memor

tradition. These teaching methods are a rebellion against W
and romantic nationalist folkloric music values and perfor
requiring the reproduction of music according to authoritativ
tion/transcriptions. This pedagogical strategy has provide
folk musicians with the tools and the permission for creat
idioms of Finnish traditions.
However, students are not required to stay within the stylistic or idiomatic
boundaries of the tradition; indeed, in the drive for artistic freedom they are
encouraged to challenge all musical boundaries.
Experimental Free Improvisation As Pedagogical Tool

While simulated oral composition exercises give students the musical
tools for creativity within an idiom, experimental free improvisation exercises
are used primarily as a pedagogical tool to encourage artistic freedom. The
pedagogical goals are to expand students' perceptions and beliefs; to chal
lenge students' socio-culturally ingrained ideas of what they are allowed to
play and what counts as "good" music; to transform students' self-image of
what they are capable of playing; and to give students the self-confidence
and courage to take creative risks.
The inspiration for free improvisation comes both from scholarly ac
counts of historical folk music and from avant-garde art music and jazz.
Contemporary folk musicians reference the historical documentation of
traditional improvisation practices to legitimize and lend authenticity to
their practice of free improvisation. For example, stories are often cited of
shepherd flautists spontaneously weaving melodies "from their own head"
(omasta pddsta) and kantele players sitting for hours playing their "own
power" (pmaa mahtia) (see the liner notes to Joutsenlahti's 1999 album
Makale and Kastinen's 1995 album Iro). However, the use of avant-garde
improvisation and experimental techniques was inspired by avant-garde
art music composition, experimental music, free jazz, and performance art.
Heikki Laitinen, who studied contemporary art music composition with Erik
Bergman, is largely responsible for introducing avant-garde and experimental
projects into the Folk Music Department. Thus, free improvisation is simul
taneously a bridge to an imagined Finnish past and a link to contemporary
transnational trends. But its power in shaping contemporary folk music
has been the department's employment of free improvisation to overcome
students' inhibitions.
In order for Heikki Laitinen to achieve his goal of folk musicians without
limitations and folk music without boundaries, he has had to break down
the aesthetic judgment criteria, notions of what counts as music, and socio
musical conventions of how musicians should behave that have been in
grained in students who grew up studying in Finnish music schools and
surrounded by Western art and popular music. When I asked Laitinen about
his reasons for incorporating the avant-garde into the Folk Music Depart
ment, he responded that, in addition to his desire to develop and perform
a new avant-garde folk music (related to but distinct from avant-garde jazz
and avant-garde art music), "the avant-garde has a pedagogical significance.
When you do the most unconventional possible ... then afterwards your re
lationship to the normal is different. It's deeper.You become a better player
of conventional music" (interview, 1 October 2008, Helsinki, my translation).
When asked what avant-garde means to him, Laitinen explained,"avant-garde
means shattering conventionality, breaking rules ... believing in oneself and
having the courage to go to the outermost limits as a musician in different
modes of expression ... [it's] expression" (ibid.).
Laitinen has instigated several projects and courses in the Folk Music
Department that require students to use their instruments, voices, and bod
ies in ways that challenge mainstream Western music conventions. The fol
lowing narratives illustrate different exercises that pushed students beyond
their previously conceived limitations. Kristiina Ilmonen describes a terrify
ing project that transformed her when she was a student in the Folk Music
Department in the 1980s:
We did kind of avant-garde experimental things with Heikki [Laitinen as our
teacher] ... In one performance, we had 7 or 8 days in an art gallery in the center
of Helsinki ... Every day we would be in the art gallery for 12 hours and all of
the time improvising all day nonstop. People would go backstage only to have
a little bit to eat and drink and come back and improvise. And then we had this
[assignment] in which each night somebody had to break his instrument, liter
ally in pieces. So I played violin at the time. I had a cheap violin in my solo, and
in the end of the solo, it was the assignment to break my instrument. And I still
remember how I felt when I did it. It was the most frightening experience of my
life?because a musician doesn't normally break instruments. So even though
it was a crap instrument?it didn't have any value at all?still, when I broke it,
it was something like an adrenaline rush that I have never experienced since. I
was trembling. (Interview, 16 July 2004, Helsinki)
Leena Joutsenlahti describes how radical it was for her (an instrumentalist)
to be made to perform solo singing:
We sat in a circle, no one was allowed to talk, and we turned the lights off because
it was so much pressure. Then someone started to sing, her own song. When she
had finished, someone else started and it went on in that way until everyone had
sung their own song. And it was so exciting, it was so astonishing and marvelous,
everyone singing here. That you suddenly began to sing and trusted that you did
have a voice and that you could indeed sing, that you were allowed to sing. Be
cause before, the idea about singing was that you can only sing after you've been
to singing lessons and had voice training. All these things were new. (Interview,
14 June 2004, Helsinki, my translation)
Ilmonen similarly explains how vocal improvisation has challenged her own
and her students' personal inhibitions:
Many times, people who are taught singing in school have a very problematic rela
tionship with their voice because a teacher might have said,"you cannot sing, you
should be quiet. If you go into choir, please only open your mouth and don't make
a sound." There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in Finland
who feel like this, that they are not at all allowed to sing because they are such bad
singers. And when I see these people, complete amateurs, go to vocal improvisation
courses, I see changed personalities come out, because it affects your whole image
of yourself.Your voice is so much related to your body, your personality, the image
of yourself that you have. I feel that if you gain the courage to use your voice, you
gain a lot of self-esteem in the process, a lot of positive things ... As a very weak
singer myself, singing was very problematic for me as a student. But gradually, when
I started to do vocal improvisation, I found a way to express myself through singing
in another way... It gives power to my music also when I'm playing an instrument,
not only when I'm singing. I feel that it releases powers inside you, really. I have
seen it in many people. (Interview, 16 July 2004, Helsinki)
Avant-garde projects have been standardized in the curriculum in the

course Esittdmisen Muodot (Modes of Performance), taken by roughly two
thirds of all Folk Music Department students. For this course, students are taken
to a country retreat for a week of intensive experimental improvisation exer
cises. They learn extended vocal techniques. They are required to invent new
playing techniques on their instruments (such as playing upside down, playing
strings from the underside, or physically modifying their instrument) in order
to develop a new relationship with their instrument. They are taught modern
dance, movement, and performance art that break down the boundaries of
how students are allowed to use and move their bodies while performing (see
Figure 3). After explaining the experimental exercises involving instruments,
singing, and body movement used in this seminar, Laitinen confessed to me,
" [it's a lot of] frolicking, foolery, and craziness, to be honest. Freedom, release,
liberation. And it has been an extremely powerful influence on [students']
playing. Not to make [their] playing like this, but rather to make it be more
free'' (interview, 18 July 2004, Helsinki, my translation). Department alumna
Sara Puljala explains how this course impacted her:
We became this strange community in that we experienced a lot of shame to
gether. Everyone had to do things that they couldn't do, in public all the time
... It breaks some kind of inner barriers and your creativity really comes out...
I got into that kind of mood after the course that I could do anything ... this re
ally special kind of feeling that anyone can do anything, and I can do whatever I
want, I don't have any restrictions or limits ... People really felt that they learned
something really important about themselves, as a performer and as a person.
Everyone was ashamed of themselves and we overcame that together. [JH: Did
it make you care less about making mistakes or getting negative feedback?]
Yeah. Yeah. Like embarrassing yourself in front of people?I've done that a lot
[laughter]?so that it's no big deal. And that's really important in improvising
and in creativity also. (Interview, 29 September 2008, Helsinki)
In my interviews with Folk Music Department alumni, several of them

commented that this Modes of Performance seminar was one of the most
influential experiences in their folk music education, giving them more self
confidence and adventurousness to try new things and put themselves on
the line. As Ilmonen observes,"in 99% of the cases it will produce something
new, at least a new attitude ... a new spark in their eye" (interview, 16 July
2004, Helsinki).
These experiences are powerful and empowering partly because they
force students to step outside of their comfort zones.7 After undergoing chal
lenging experimental free improvisation exercises, students realize that they
are capable of creating and expressing themselves in a variety of performance
modes without any negative judgment, which gives them the courage to
take creative risks in their performances without self-censoring for fear of
negative feedback. It frees musicians from the fear of making mistakes, for
they realize that anything goes.
This attitude carries over into the teaching and performance of tradi
tional repertoire as well. For example, in my flute lessons in the Folk Music
Department, my instructor Leena Joutsenlahti would teach me folk tunes by
ear. In my attempt to imitate her as I was learning new pieces, if I acciden
tally played different notes, she would exclaim with enthusiasm, "Oh, what
a wonderful variation!" This type of feedback and encouragement led me to
believe that: (1) I did not need to fear playing wrong notes; (2) I shouldn't
feel stupid or slow for not being able to perfectly imitate her melodies right
away; (3) I was creative and talented and had the ability to effortlessly invent
Figure 3. First year folk music students from the Sibelius Academy and modern
dance students from the Theater Academy engage in free improvisation in the
Helsinki subway tunnel Accordionist Olli Kari has overcome inhibition and
is challenging conventional musician behavior. Photo by author, 2003.
106 Ethnomusicoiogy, Winter 2009
"wonderful variations"; and (4) it was permissible and even desirable for me
to play my own variations of traditional tunes. Thus, her appraisals of my
playing led to an improved self-concept and influenced my future behavior
by making me less afraid of playing something wrong and more willing to
play my own musical ideas.
The experimental exercises also change students' attitudes about what
musical aesthetics and behaviors are acceptable and desirable. Being encour
aged to perform such radically different sounds and movements breaks down
their preconceived notions of what music is, what counts as music, and
what the standards are for judging music. It thus counters the mainstream
aesthetic values of art and popular music culture that many students had
previously acquired from studying in the music school system and by be
ing enculturated in mainstream Finnish and Western culture.8 It opens up
minds to new possibilities and to different sounds and gives individuals the
ideological power to be different, to not conform, to challenge boundaries,
and to strive for musical freedom. This freedom has led to the tremendous
stylistic diversity and individual variation found in the Finnish contemporary
folk music scene.
Results and Conclusions

The unique teaching methods at the SibA Folk Music Department have
resulted in a wide spectrum of personalized music-making that is extremely
divergent in musical style but relatively unified in ideology and process. Con
temporary folk musicians value a process of making folk music in which indi
viduals use traditional material as a jumping off point for their own creations,
maintaining folk music as a living tradition relevant to contemporary society
and providing a vehicle for creative personal expression. They perform his
torical materials and new compositions in traditional, avant-garde, and many
other styles, all the while engaging in variation, improvisation, composition,
and arranging.
The pedagogical method of simulated oral composition, in its focus on
re-creating the folk creative processes of an oral culture, has led to extensive
personal variation of traditional source material. Some of this may be at a micro
level, for example, the subtle melodic variations sung by Anna-Kaisa Liedes in
her performance of a kalevalaic song,"Morsiamen Itketys"(The Bride's Lament)
on the album Folk Voices: Finnish Folk Song through the Ages (1999), which
are simultaneously an expression of personal creativity and a performance of
a traditional melody within the stylistic boundaries of an idiom (see Figure 4).
Several musicians performing pelimanni music exhibit similar micro variations
of traditional repertoire (listen to Hakala and Lepisto 2001; Kalaniemi 1998; and
Kylapelimannit-trio 2004). Other musicians interested in re-creating the ancient
traditions have combined historical and historical-sounding melodic motifs,
ornamentation, and rhythmic patterns in new compositions and minimalistic

free improvisations, while remaining predominantly within traditional stylistic
parameters (listen to Joutsenlahti 1999; Kastinen 1995; and Kivimaki 2003).9
Using experimental free improvisation to teach students to challenge
boundaries and defy conventions has led to a diverse array of highly indi
vidualized styles. A few prominent artists engage in extensive avant-garde free
Figure 4. Teaching material devised by Timo Alakotila to teach spontaneous

composition-performance of pelimanni music. Each line provides sample
melodic fragments that can be fit into the same melodic phrase and chord
changes. Provided courtesy of Timo Alakotila.
108 Ethnomusicoiogy, Winter 2009
improvisation (notably, Heikki Laitinen, Anna-Kaisa Liedes, Outi Pulkkinen,

Kimmo Pohjonen, Jouko Kyhala, and the World Mankeri Orchestra, among
others). Avant-garde projects range from extended atonal departures from tra
ditional tunes, to dissonant tone cluster harmonizations, to the contemporary
style called "noise," to ambient soundscapes, to rich layering of drones and
ostinatos in loop-delay and other electro-acoustic manipulations, to extensive
experimentation with extended vocal techniques and modified instruments.10
Fusions of folk music with pop (e.g., Herea's 2007 self-titled album), electronic
music (e.g.,Vaananen's 2001 album Matka Vbj?^;Kurki-Suonio's 1998 album
Mustd), and a variety of world music traditions (e.g., Gjallarhorn's 2000 album
Sjofn; Aija's 2008 album Jet-Black) are also common. Several contemporary
folk music projects retain recognizable elements of local folk musics but their
arrangements and improvisations go beyond idiomatic stylistic conventions in
their own ways (e.g., Trepaanit's 2006 album Halla\]PVs 1998 album String
Tease; Loituma's 1998 album Kuutamalla;V'?ntin?s 2000 album Ilmataf).
I personally find this music to be extraordinarily innovative, creative,
powerful and emotive. The willingness and enthusiasm of these artists to put
themselves on the line, to fearlessly express themselves, to disregard bound
aries and conventions, lends their music a rawness, passion, and personal
touch that I find to be exciting and deeply moving. Perhaps not surprisingly,
not everyone shares this favorable impression; a few amateur folk musicians
complained anonymously in response to my questionnaire that the SibA Folk
Music Department had made folk music "too academic ""only for elite tastes,"
with too much noise, cacophony, and irritating,"useless artisticness.'However,
these voices are a minority; most have praised the high-quality, diversity, and
improved image the department has brought to folk music.
Is this diverse array of music really Finnish folk music? Derek Bailey
maintains that: "Idiomatic improvisation ... is mainly concerned with the
expression of an idiom?such as jazz, flamenco or baroque?and takes its
identity and motivation from that idiom. Non-idiomatic improvisation has
other concerns and is most usually found in so-called 'free' improvisation
and, while it can be highly stylized, is not usually tied to representing an idi
omatic identity "([1980] 1993:xi).No one would question that the idiomatic
improvisation encouraged by simulated oral composition falls neatly under
the label of Finnish folk music. Whereas there is some debate concerning
whether all of the experimental free improvisations should be considered
folk music. In response to my persistent questions about boundaries and
definitions, more than one person in the SibA Folk Music Department re
sponded that "maybe it should just be called music," in other words, without
stylistic delimiters such as "folk"or"Finnish.''Their music unquestionably goes
beyond idiomatic boundaries and, as Bailey suggests, these free improvisers
have other concerns and are not tied down to representing a Finnish folk
idiomatic identity. Yet, these attitudes and approaches are taught in a Folk
Music Department, experimental improvisations satisfy requirements for
degrees in folk music, and most of the artists very strongly identify as folk
musicians. Derek Bailey reflects that: "In practice the difference between
free improvisation and idiomatic improvisation is not a fundamental one ...
All improvisation takes place in relation to the known whether the known
is traditional or newly acquired. The only real difference lies in the opportu
nities in free improvisation to renew or change the known and so provoke
an open-endedness which by definition is not possible in idiomatic impro
visation" (ibid.: 142). This process of "changing the known"?incorporating
elements originating outside Finnish folk music, and thereby challenging
folk music's idiomatic boundaries and cultural conventions?has been one
of the primary ways in which Finnish contemporary folk musicians have
expressed artistic freedom. Now that the Finnish contemporary folk music
scene is relatively well-established, and musicians and listeners have become
accustomed to the transgression of previous boundaries, the parameters of
what is known and accepted to be Finnish folk music have changed.
Contemporary folk music in Finland is now defined and distinguished
less by stylistic musical traits than by ideology and creative process. The
activist-pedagogues in the Folk Music Department successfully created a
new musical-culture.
The subculture generated by the teaching methods and attitudes of the
department reaches beyond the conservatory's walls and beyond the immedi
ate scene in Helsinki. Folk Music Department students, alumni, and instructors
have played leadership roles in folk music across the country, performing at
festivals, giving workshops and master classes, directing ensembles, teaching
individual lessons, and lecturing at seminars. Through these activities, and
bolstered with the cultural power and prestige of their institution, Sibelius
Academy musicians have widely disseminated their values and pedagogy. Sty
listically, the musical influence has been subtle, with amateur folk musicians
engaging in some contemporary arrangements and world music or pop music
fusions, but nowhere near as avant-garde or experimental as at the Sibelius
Academy. However, profound influences from the Academy are exhibited in
amateurs' ideology and performance practices. My questionnaire, completed
by 163 amateur and professional folk musicians from across Finland, dem
onstrated that the more amateur musicians worked with Sibelius Academy
musicians, the more they engaged in creative activities. A statistical analysis
revealed that the correlation between degree of Sibelius Academy influence
and how frequently musicians improvised, created variations and arrange
ments, and composed was statistically "extremely significant," or p < .001
(meaning that one should be able to postulate with 99.9% certainty that
the more people are exposed to Sibelius Academy pedagogy the more likely
they will be to engage in these creative activities) (see Hill 2005:312-35).n

Furthermore, the more exposure amateurs have had to Sibelius Academy
teaching, the more strongly they believe that folk musicians must have the
freedom to express themselves personally and incorporate contemporary
influences (statistical correlation of these factors was "highly significant," or
p < .01, meaning that one should be able to postulate with 99% certainty that
the more people are exposed to Sibelius Academy ideology the more likely
they will be to value musicians' freedom for personal expression). These Si
belius Academy influences impact musicians of all skill levels, regardless of age
(respondents ranged from 11 to 73, with no statistical correlation [p = .36]
between Sibelius Academy influence and age). These results illustrate both
the effectiveness of these teaching methods in encouraging creative activi
ties, and the tremendous power wielded by institutions to disseminate belief
systems and shape musical behaviors (Hill forthcoming).
The transformation in ideology, values, creative processes, and performance
practices that define the new Finnish contemporary folk music subculture
were effected through ambitious activist ideas applied through education. The
ideology and values were shaped partly in rebellion against the perceived faults
of the Western art music, popular music, music education, and nationalistic
folkloric beliefs and practices. Contemporary folk musicians thus have a strong
sense of subcultural identity based on how their values and practices differ
from Western art and popular musics, and they feel an affinity with other non
mainstream music-subcultures, particularly folk and avant-garde/experimental
music. It is from these other music cultures that they have taken inspiration for
their teaching strategies: simulated oral composition from Albert Lord's study
of Yugoslavian bards, and experimental free improvisation from avant-garde
composers. Through the simulated oral composition teaching method, they
have successfully restored creativity, expressed through extensive personal
variation, within traditional idioms. Using experimental free improvisation as
a pedagogical tool, they have broken down musicians' preconceived limits and
judgment systems, and given them the ideological tools and social approval to
challenge boundaries and claim artistic freedom.
Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the Sibelius Academy Folk
Music Department for allowing me to learn with and from them. I am grateful for having received
the following support for my research: a Fulbright HE Fellowship, a Federal Language and Area
Studies Fellowship, a UCLA International Studies and Overseas Program Field Research Grant,
a UCLA Quality of Graduate Education Grant, a Sibelius Academy Grant, a Lois Roth Foundation
Grant, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. I would also like to thank Elizabeth
Tolbert, Timothy Rice, Timothy Cooley, and the anonymous referees for their insightful feedback
and criticism on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Approximately half of the 58 formal interviews that I conducted were done in Finnish
and half in English. If no translation is specified, it means that the interview was conducted in
English.
2. Kalevala, literally meaning the land of the ancient Finnish god Kaleva, is the title of the
national epic as compiled and edited by Romantic Nationalist scholar Elias Lonnrot in the nine
teenth century ([1835] 1999). The adjective "kalevalaic" refers to the style of the original sung
poetry (runolauluf) that served as source material for the Kalevala, e.g., trochaic tetrameter
with extensive alliteration (or "beginning harmony").
3. The first six students who entered the SibA Folk Music Department in 1983 were Maria
Kalaniemi (accordion), Arto Jarvela (fiddle), Anna-Kaisa Liedes (voice, kantele),Leena Joutsenlahti
(woodwinds), Liisa Matveinen (voice), and Anu Itapelto (kantele). Many of them have become
prominent and influential artists and teachers in Finnish folk music. For more on the history of
the SibA Folk Music Department, see Hill 2005:162-188 and Ramnarine 2003:68-83.
4. Finnish folk pedagogues' perception of the lack of creative opportunities in Western art
music is somewhat biased, but it is also supported by the following research: Patricia Shehan
Campbell (1991), Angeles Sancho-Velasquez (2001),and Robin Moore (1992) have documented
the decline of improvisation in the practice of Western art music, demonstrating that Western
art musicians today tend to engage in such creative activities with substantially less frequency
than in earlier historical periods. Henry Kingsbury (1988), in his ethnography of an American
music conservatory, argues that "talent" is a social construct, and only those few who have been
labeled talented are given the permission to engage in creative activities, such as creating new
interpretations/renditions of classical pieces and "playing with feeling." Nicholas Cook (2006)
demonstrates how eighteenth-century theology and nineteenth-century Romanticism led to
the belief that composers should be divinely inspired geniuses.
5 . Their assertion that creative ability is independent from skill level is supported by empiri
cal research. Music education scholar Peter Webster maintains that "there is no evidence that a
relationship exists between scores on traditional aptitude tests in music (measuring the ability
to hear tonal and rhythm patterns) and creative thinking in music. In other words, children
who possess advanced levels of music audiation are not necessarily the same as those who can
think imaginatively about music" (1988:34-35; see also Webster 1992:277).
6. Though many department leaders and instructors share similar values, beliefs, and goals
concerning how folk music should be taught, the department's pedagogy has not been formally
systematized. To my knowledge, there is no insider term for "simulated oral composition." I
experienced this technique in my lessons with Outi Pulkkinen, Anna-Kaisa Liedes, and Leena
Joutsenlahti. Heikki Laitinen, Timo Alakotila, Anneli Asplund, and others also described this
technique in my interviews and conversations with them.
7. Transformation through the transgressing of comfort zones is a pedagogical concept
developed in outdoor adventure education, particularly Outward Bound schools. As students
take on mental and physical challenges beyond the familiar and the comfortable, they discover
that they are capable of more than they thought they were, leading to increased self-confidence
and self-esteem. They become more willing to take risks and to challenge self-perceived and
socially proscribed limitations (Hill 2006).
8. Though not as experimental or avant-garde, Ted Solis has employed in his marimba
ensemble similar methods of movement, versatility, multi-instrumentalism, improvisation, posi
tive feedback, and the creation of a safe and encouraging environment in order to overcome
students' inhibitions and create an alternative to the Western concert paradigm, which he de
scribes as "pathologically perfectionist, pretentious, and an unnaturally constructed generator
of performance anxiety" (2004:246).
9. Clips of several of the audio examples cited here can be heard online at http://etno.net
or at the individual artists' websites.
10.The most avant-garde improvisation often occurs in live performances at small venues
in Helsinki. For examples of live performances of avant-garde folk music, see the author's video
field recordings available at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, especially Kamu ja Jazz Juhla
Konsertti 2003, Kyhala 2004, and Pulkkinen 2003. Commercial recordings of folk musicians per
forming avant-garde or free jazz fusions include Liedes and Korpela 2002,Liedes 2003,Pohjonen
2002, and the World Mankeri Orchestra 2004.
11 .The value "p" is the probability that the results are due to chance and is determined by
comparing the variation within each group to the variation between groups. A p value below. 1
is considered a tendency, below .05 is statistically significant, below .01 is highly significant, and
below .001 is extremely significant (for it means that there is a 0.1% chance that the answers
occurred randomly, or in other words a 99.9% chance of accurately predicting a musician's
behavior based on these factors/attributes).
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Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological Transformation, and Creative Freedom in Finnish

Contemporary Folk Music

Rebellious Pedagogy, Ideological

? 2009 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

The ethnographic material presented here draws from an initial field

The Formation of the Folk Music Department

narrative singing was gradually suppressed by missionaries for its magico

Musical Creativity and Artistic Freedom

The department requires that students engage in the creative activities of

Dissatisfaction with Western Art and Popular Musics

In addition to the general decline and limitation of creative activities in

Laitinen proposed that folk music education could be an alternative to a music

Limitations Imposed by Folklorization and by Folk Music's

magical kantele played by the legendary hero Vainamoinen have served as

The nationalist legacy is a double-edged sword for Finnish contemporary

Regardless of how important a (modern) Finnish identity is to contemporary

Simulated Oral Composition as Teaching Method

Nelipolviset (TheTetrametereds, after the kalevalaic meter), which focused on

Heikki Laitinen and other folk music pedagogues endeavored to recap

^^E.a?ori ^ J^Jip p j J [J J/J j |J ^e"'^pa^

Miesten tapparan teria, Astupa paivan helkytteli Laksi vanha Vainamoini;

Tako rautasen korean. Suuhun Antervo Vipusen, Vaapaht' on vasenki jalka

Astu paivan heikutteli Eika puoltana sanoa. (Viitta virren tutkalmutta).

Suuhun Antero Vipuisen

Ei kirves kiveen kayta.

Figure 2. The introductory lines of four versions of kalevalaic runolaulu

personal variation and uniqueness inherent in auditory-memor

Experimental Free Improvisation As Pedagogical Tool

Avant-garde projects have been standardized in the curriculum in the

In my interviews with Folk Music Department alumni, several of them

Results and Conclusions

ornamentation, and rhythmic patterns in new compositions and minimalistic

Figure 4. Teaching material devised by Timo Alakotila to teach spontaneous

improvisation (notably, Heikki Laitinen, Anna-Kaisa Liedes, Outi Pulkkinen,

they will be to engage in these creative activities) (see Hill 2005:312-35).n

-. forthcoming. "The Impacts of Institutionalizing Oral Traditions into Conservatories: A

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