Folk music, at least here in the States, suffers from the mass embrace of a stereotype: an overly earnest singer-guitarist plucking overly earnest tunes, some mined from the Appalachian mountains and others from the headlines. How many well-intentioned songs must a man listen to before he pulls out his hair?! The answer, my friend, is seeping through my open-back headphones.
Finnish folk band Polenta, whose name is slang for “stomp,” is a quartet that performs stringed delights. Graduates from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the group includes Aino Kinnunen (violin), Veera Kuisma (five-string violin), Mikko Malmivaara (guitar), and Olli Sippola (five-string violin, mandolin). Matkaaja (The Traveller) is their third long player; Karkelo, their last, was honored by the Finnish Folk Music Association as the “Finnish Folk Music Album of the Year” and also received an Emma Gaala (aka Finnish Grammy) nomination.
The 10 songs on Matkaaja, which is out this Friday (17 April), hail from the traditional musics of the Nordic region, Poland and Scotland, and sound similar to what we in the U.S. know as “old-time music.” (The reason: Much of old-time music can be traced to the British isles and Europe.) Aside from high-spirited “hey ya” (and similar) chants on occasional tunes, the outing is an instrumental affair that’s guaranteed to have listeners tapping their feet—or, as I did a little while ago, lifting a not-so-willing cat from the floor and tripping the light fantastic for a spell.
That said, it’s not entirely uptempo. The stirring “Suru puserossa,” for instance, encapsulates the sonic strains of grief, while the equally moving title track conjures the plight of pilgrims (or maybe just life on the road), “Valse Carassius” glides on outstretched wings across the sky, and “Kokoo koko kokko” spurs smoke to swirl from the speakers. It’s a wonderful collection.
Tracklist:
The Old Grey Cat 