Mauno Jarvela: the Ostrobothnian music man

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

By "old" folk music he means the extensive local repertoire of dance tunes including polkkas, sotiisis, waltzes, wedding and funeral marches and songs, often connected to local people or places and many written by fiddlers in living memory; Kaustinen's most famous tune and song writing fiddler is Konsta Jylha, who died in 1984. "New" folk music, the ongoing living tradition, is an unlimited field, including compositions by present-day musicians such as Mauno himself, his JPP colleagues Timo Alakotila and Arto Jarvela or other Kaustinen tune writers and arrangers such as fiddlers Ville Kangas and Mauno's son Esko Jarvela.

The songs are a key factor, too, giving variety and memorability to the material. Many of them Mauno writes himself. "When I write texts I try to make it so that you can learn about history or something." One of his most popular is a catchy little number about Finland's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. "And a couple of years ago I made a song about philosophers, and there are five- or six-year-old children singing all the words." The adults I was sitting next to at the arena concert were obviously fond of the lyrics, enthusiastically explaining them to me.

The material is memorably melodic, swingy and satisfying to play, and though it caters for all skills there's no question of difficulty for its own sake; it has to both entertain the players and work in front of an audience. I put it to Mauno that for the children there's no line between folk and classical music. He answers, "I try to make it so."

In performance, even with the most complicated arrangements, the young musicians in Napparit play by ear and heart, with no music stands. "We learn tunes with music, but the style, that's by ear. It's not important to teach everything by ear, though, it's good to have sheet music as well."

If they take their playing further, as quite a few elder Napparit do, it's in all directions, some taking further study at music institutions in Finland and abroad, playing folk, classical, rock music or jazz. But they're always happy to come home to play the fiddle music of the Kaustinen tradition.

That instrumental tradition consists largely of dance tunes, and most people know how to dance to them. There's a lot of social dance at the festival, and all the fiddle bands are accustomed to playing for it. This contrasts with the situation in, say, Scotland and Ireland, where the leading musicians, even though much of their repertoire is dance music, usually play concerts or in sit-down musician sessions rather than for dancing, so the music is often not played in a danceable tempo or format. I wondered if Napparit were taught the needs of the dance.

"They don't normally play for dancing, but the tunes are dance tunes. And when we had this other concert on Monday evening people were dancing, because the music was sotiisis, waltzes, polkkas and so on."

"Actually we have connected the dancing to the courses," adds Alina, one of Mauno's four daughters. As well as playing with brother Esko, cousin Antti and others in the band Frigg, Alina is one of those who assists her father with the teaching these days. "For example," she continued, "last winter we had a course here, with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish people teaching, and on one or two nights we danced with the kids, and taught them dances."