Mauno Jarvela: the Ostrobothnian music man

Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Summer, 2006 by Andrew Cronshaw

Two-hundred-and-fifty young fiddlers, plus double bass and harmonium players, ranging in age from four to teenagers and beyond (including some of the finest fiddlers in the land) fill the stage and half the dancefloor of a big circular outdoor festival arena under a yellow and white striped tent at the Kaustinen Folk Festival. All relaxed and enjoying themselves, playing impeccably tight and strong on the springy, swinging dance tunes from their locality, singing with gusto. For this annual festival show they've added intricate suites, written and arranged by members of the group, based on well-understood Hungarian and Chinese traditional music. No music stands, no stiffness; a glorious, fluent silvery sound, excellent music with not a hint of schooliness. Children among the 4,000 in the audience are asking their parents if they can learn the fiddle, too. So much for the usual: "Y'know, I wish I could play music; I tried to learn the violin when I was at school, but ..."

Kaustinen, a cluster of small rural townships on the river Perho that winds slowly through Ostrobothnia, west central Finland, has been well-known for several generations as a hotbed of pelimanni music--folk music--predominantly fiddling, as well as having its own regional tradition of kantele playing [the Finnish cousin to the psaltery]. The community's crest is a fiddle, and today its musical life, both traditional and classical, is probably more active than ever before.

The annual nine-day Kaustinen International Folk Music Festival has been running, thronged with tens of thousands of people, since 1968, initiated and organized by the Kaustinen people themselves with their local music very much at its heart. There's also a chamber music festival, a music school and summer music courses. Because of Kaustinen's strength in living traditional music, the national Folk Music Institute is located there. It's one of the organizations now based in the new high-tech national Folk Arts Center, a concert hall, studio, instrument museum, rehearsal rooms, restaurant, shop and office complex of white wooden walkways built into a cavern blasted out of the silvery rock of the hillside across the road from the town center.

Music, and particularly folk music, is a Kaustinen industry. That in itself, though, isn't necessarily going to get children enthused; up against many present-day distractions, peer pressure and other ambitions, taking up the instrument of one's forbears isn't automatic.

But, a mile or so up-river from the center of Kaustinen, in the scattered farming village of Jarvela, in a fine, big old farmhouse in the Nordic architectural tradition of red ochre painted pine logs with white window-frames, lives the man whose teaching has filled that festival arena with fiddlers: Mauno Jarvela.

After graduating in the early 1970s from Finland's national music university, the Sibelius Academy, Mauno stayed in Helsinki, playing in Finnish radio's symphony orchestra and the orchestra of Finnish Opera. In 1978 he returned home to Kaustinen, where he played in the symphony orchestra of Kokkola, the nearest big town, and began to teach private violin lessons part-time. Since 1985, the teaching has been his main occupation--that and playing in Kaustinen and Finland's flagship fiddles, harmonium and double-bass band JPP. (The initials stand for Jarvelan Pikkupelimannit--"the little folk musicians of Jarvela").

He obviously puts a huge amount of work and energy into his teaching, but he is a typical calm, self-effacing Finn, with a quiet ability to inspire and get things done without condescension or self-advertisement. His work has become nationally noticed, though; in 2004 he was one of ten annual recipients of the prestigious Finland Prize for creative arts. The key to Mauno's method, apart from his patience, empathy and sense of what the children enjoy playing and singing, is that not only does each child have a one-to-one lesson at least every week, but also they get together weekly to play in a larger group.

"The idea is basically to play for your own enjoyment. Like in the old days, in the weddings; at a wedding they didn't play for the audience, they just played for themselves, playing and dancing, and this is the same idea. Gather together and play, a lot of people."

There are no auditions to join Napparit, the students' group performance ensemble; the criterion is just a willingness to learn. Fees are kept low, really a demonstration of commitment. "The smallest ones who are starting and get just a 20-minute private lesson per week plus the group rehearsals, they pay 22 Euros per semester. We don't want to make it too expensive, so that everybody can afford it."

In the one-to-one lessons the children--who often begin when they are six or younger, but are free to start later--are shown the technical aspects, starting with how to hold the fiddle and bow. Then, in the group sessions they immediately use what they've learned, contributing at their own ability level, be that playing the melody or just bowing open strings. "With the private lessons I use very formal material, classical material, classical music teaching; I try to get them to make the right positions. The difference is that we're going to try to play something in quite a big group quite soon. And in group lessons we mostly play other material, and here that means folk music. New and old."