Saturday 10am-3pm
It was only right for our own kantele maker, Larry LaBounty, to introduce our speaker. After all, Larry has made some beautiful kanteles over the years. Carl Rahkonen presented his program Finnish Kantele in America to the members of the Finnish Heritage Museum. The museum was gifted several beautiful kanteles a few years ago.
The kantele is the National Instrument of Finland. Perhaps the most intriguing piece about this rather simple instrument is that it can be both pagan and spiritual. Rahkonen is an Ethnomusicologist, folklorist, and Professor Emeritus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Rahkonen’s keen interest and love of the kantele and its place in Finnish folklore and musicology helped him to choose his doctoral work around this interest. The kantele’s birth is told in the story of the Kalevala. Vainamoinen, a wizard-minstrel, made the first kantele out of a giant pike bone. The story goes that the first kantele was lost at the bottom of the sea. The second one made by the wizard was made out of birch wood. In the 1980’s Rahkonen and his wife lived in Finland for two years as he did his research on the Kantele and its impact on the folklore.
He was inspired by the MEMENTO of FINLAND: A MUSICAL LEGACY by Joyce E. Hakala which contains 100 original pages of sheet music and lyrics of Finnish immigrant music. Interestingly, the Finns who immigrated to this country brought the Kantele with them and it has continued to inspire Finns throughout the US. Today there are only 200 kantele makers and one of our museum members is counted in on that. All kantele players taught themselves and it is an instrument that is improvisational. Many old instruments have been found in the attics of homes. After reading and meeting so many who played, built and cherished these instruments, Rahkonen wrote of his journey and in 2010-11 he was named the Lecturer of the Year for his work, Finnish Musical Journey.
Locally, J.F.Jacobson owned a beautiful kantele. He was a band director in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. He passed away in 2023 and left his Kantele to his son Steve Rowland who donated it to the Finnish Heritage Museum where it can be viewed. The Finnish Heritage Museum has been gifted several kanteles and Mr. Rahkonen encouraged the group to play them - if you have any musically talented members (and they don’t need to be Finnish), encourage them to put a group together. It is a beautiful instrument and when someone puts their fingers to those strings, amazing tunes come out.
In 1982, Wilho Saari who started playing the kantele at 50 years old, started composing his own tunes. Wilho is quite prolific and it’s estimated he has written over 1700 songs and tunes on the kantele. He won a lot of awards including the National Heritage Fellowship in 2006. Wilho was from Naselle, Washington. Saari’s great-great grandmother, Kreeta Hapasalo, who was also known as Kantele Kreeta traveled throughout Finland, Russia, and Sweden performing for the public.
One kantele builder, Jim Lohmann of Covington, Michigan, decided to begin supplying kits that people could put together. He used his CNC machine and suddenly people were able to make their own Kanteles. Gerry Luoma Henkel may be a familiar name to this audience as he was an editor of FAR as well as a woodworker. He builds traditional Finnish Kanteles in his small shop near Duluth and provides most of the Kanteles to North Americans. As Mr. Rahkonen relayed to us there are several Kantele players who have put together ensembles and/or teach kantele. Kantele.com is a website that contains music, a poem about the kantele, and other things Kantele. Lani Thompson runs that site. Celia Jones teaches kantele in Thomaston, Maine, Sarah Cummings studied with the Maine Kantele Ensemble, and has a book called Finnish Kantele: Techniques, Exercises, Tunes and Arrangements for Five and Ten-String Kanteles. This book also gives the buyer access to online audio. In the West, we move to musicians Sylvan Grey, in Arizona, who played new music on the Kantele. And there is Merja Soria of California who has a career in kantele music and was highlighted in the 2011 Finn Fest USA Kantele Ensemble.
Our museum, the Finnish Heritage Museum, has enough Kanteles to produce an ensemble. Any musicians interested? You don’t have to be Finnish and you don’t ever have to have played the kantele. You need to be able to read music and want to make creative music. We are located in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, so please reach out. We also have one of only 200 kantele builders in our membership. You can arrange to meet him and talk with him about your interests in the kantele.