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Finnish psych-folk band Kiila is making a trip to the U.S. next weekend for ISSUE's two-night event Minor Musics: Finland. Kiila started as a folk duo but is now a 7-piece group playing sprawling jams sometimes taking their form and meter from ancient Finnish epic poetry. I've attached a couple of tracks below: the first, explained below, is an example of runo-song (the oldest form of Finnish folk song), while is the second is an older track from their 2004 album Silmät Sulkaset, released on Fonal.

Pekko Käppi (vocals, violin, jouhikko) and Juho Kaitajärvi (electric guitar) wrote a bit about Kiila's use of runo-song and other folk elements. I've included the beginning below, and the rest (with a video!) after the jump.

National-Romantic issues of Kiila

Part I: Archaic meter and rhyming

Here the question is: Are there any elements of “archaic” Finnish tradition in Kiila’s music from the point of view of kitchen ethnomusicologists? If so, what would they be? Oh, these are good questions indeed…We are really writing this from top of our heads so please be kind to us while reading…

Runo-song tradition is the oldest form of Finnish folk song, famously captured in Kalevala, epic poetry collected in Eastern Finland in the 19th century. It has a distinct metric system (trochaic tetrameter) and certain stylistic features like strong alliteration and a quite sophisticated system for repetition. There are many kinds of repetition: One can say the same thing in various different ways. In long epic songs there are even longer sections of the story that can be repeated, or in the songs from the magical context there are naturally numerical symmetries etc.

Let me demonstrate the basic metric features of runo-songs here:

"Ite vanha Väinämöinen" (Old Väinämöinen himself)

1.	2.	3.	4.
Va-ka	van-ha	Väi-nä-	möi-nen

So, what we see here is that the verse has four strong beats (as tetrameter strongly implies) and the sress in the words are always on the strong beat. Also the most basic line has eight syllables and there's also a tendency that the long words end up in the end of the line, for example the "Väinämöinen" here. I have underlined the strong syllables of the word. There is a kind of a counter system for the basic line, and it sort of gives some alternative boost to the lenghty songs, heh. The phenomen is called murrelmasäe (broken tetrameter) "Ois tuolla sata sanoa" (Over there would be a hundred words)

1.	2.	3.	4.
Ois tuol-	la sa-	ta sa-	noa,

So what happens is, that the first word has only one syllable, so the next word has to start on the weak stress of the meter and next beat with the weak stress of the word! The line could be numerfied as 323. Crazy! You can probably note the alliteration and such too. Let's pick Kiila's "Kevätlaulu" from the "Tuota, tuota" –album. The first verse goes (I try to make the translation as ethnopoetically matching as possible): Taivaan kaita, pilviraita (the narrow sky, stripe of cloud) Lisää tilaa lupaa antaa (more space promises to give)

1.	2.	3.	4.
Tai-vaan	kai-ta	pil-vi-	rai-ta
Li-sää	ti-laa	lu-paa	an-taa

So, it seems that in theory the trochaic form of runo-song meter works here. But, wait a minute, there's something wrong! First, the alliteration is missing. The lines have a strong rhyme in the end (4.) and it sort of turns the consept upside down or something. Murrelmasäe doesn't exist here, so the structure is the "clinical" 2222, 44 etc.) all the way. Also the structure of the song is based on verses which is contrary to any runo-songs. Runo-songs are basically just long strories with many lines.

However, we have to remember that we are also talking about a singing tradition, not just lyrics and meter—but let's delve deeper to the musical side in our next post. Stay tuned!

Kiila: Kehotuslaulu (Live) from Fonal Footage on Vimeo.

Minor Musics: Finland is made possible through the generous support of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Consulate General of Finland.