Probably the most popular Finnish fiddle tune, a polkka (Finnish), is Säkkijärven polkka, according to Finnish button accordion player and Finnish Dance Music historian and ethnographer Richard Koski. Richard writes, “Russia invaded Finland in November 1939. When the Finns beat back the Russians, the Russians left behind radio controlled mines. The Finns played Säkkijärven polkka over the radio about 1,500 times whereby its frequencies would confuse and defeat the Russian mines. This Winter War ended in March 1940… As a result of the peace treaty, Finland retained ts sovereignty, but ceded 9% of its eastern territory to the Soviet Union.” Richard’s new book of fiddle tunes, Finnish Dance Music of the Finger Lakes of New York State, includes numerous area references to the Finnish community, past and present, from the lower Finger Lakes area of Central New York.
Musicians
History to Song:
For me, it all began in the Paul Smith’s
College Library, looking at historical
photos of Paul’s hotel with the librarian,
Neil Surprenant. Neil kept telling me
how major parts of the Paul Smith empire
were the idea of his wife, Lydia: the electric
company, the sawmills, the training of
their sons in hospitality. As he finished telling
me their story, I asked why there was
no large portrait of her on campus, and
only a dormitory named after her. He said,
“You’re a songwriter; write her a song.”
The Sasha Polinoff After-Story:
This is the story of how seemingly disparate communities coalesced around a formerly prominent musician and sustained him in old age. As such, it takes place in comparatively humble or domestic settings and with a smaller audience.
It is very much the story after the story. It begins in the closing decades of the 20th century, when Russians and all things Russian were no longer in vogue—particularly, in the wake of the McCarthy years. It begins when Lower Eastside nightclubs that once featured a variety of ethnic music, were losing patrons, in part, because their first-generation audiences had moved out of the City to the “burbs” and could no longer find a place to park.
In Praise of Women
At nineteen, Maeve Flanagan is one of the
finest young Irish fiddlers in New York and
the world. Daughter of fiddler and multi-instrumentalist
Mike Flanagan—“My dad
knows every tune imaginable,” says Maeve—
and fiddle player and teacher Rose Conway
Flanagan, Maeve is well aware of the Irish
American musical and cultural legacy she
has inherited:
Play
In the years before the Revolution made it
America’s patriotic anthem, “Yankee Doodle”
was a song of derision that the British
heaped upon ignorant colonists hoping to
attain foppish stature by aping English gentlemen.
Upstate
A
new web site that we recently launched at Traditional
Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY),
which we call “W is for the Woods”: Traditional
Adirondack Music and Music-Making.
Located at www.northcountryfolklore.org, it’s
a very impressive piece of work, a thorough
introduction to the traditional music of our
region, collected over a period of at least 75
years.
Xiao Xiannian:
It was a beautiful spring day in Chinatown when I stopped by the Mencius Society to talk with Xiao Xiannian, a virtuoso of the Chinese hammered dulcimer known as the yangqin. Housed in a building on Grand Street near its intersection with Delancey, the Mencius Society—also known as the AiCenter, formerly the Wossing Center—provides instruction in Chinese and Western musical instruments, as well as a number of other arts education programs for youth and adults. It is also the home base of the EastRiver Ensemble, one of New York’s leading Chinese music groups.
Songs
New York City is special by any measure.
Who would think that “Finnegan’s Wake”—
immortalized by James Joyce, the ultimate
Dubliner—was actually written in Manhattan?
It’s true. John F. Poole, a theater manager and
writer, composed “Tim Finigan’s Wake” for
the singer-entrepreneur Tony Pastor sometime
around the beginning of the Civil War. It appears
in Pastor’s “444” Combination Songster, first
published in 1864…
Diego Obregón:
It was another dog day in August 2009 when we joined Diego Obregón for an interview at his Woodhaven, Queens, apartment. Diego kindly agreed to meet us at his home so that he could play a few tunes from his native Colombia, along with his vocalist Johanna Casteñeda. There in the basement, over the hum of the air conditioner, the sounds from his marimba (wood xylophone) were magical—all at once playful and effervescent—and with Johanna singing the traditional tune “Mi Canoita,” the sounds from Colombia’s Pacific coast spilled out over hot pavement.
Songs
Over an average twelve-month period, the restaurant [Grand Central Oyster Bar] serves between fifty and seventy-five varieties of oysters. Each is somewhat different in appearance and taste, but nearly all are variants of the eastern oyster or Crassostrea virginica, the species native to the Atlantic and Gulf seaboards.
First Person
My name is Julissa Vale, a native New Yorker born of Puerto Rican emigrants. I do not remember a time in my life when the sound of music was not present. I was raised on Spanish ballads, salsa, and the Jíbaro music typical of rural Puerto Rico. During the holidays, bomba and plena were also played at home. The songs played in my household weren’t just from Puerto Rico, but from all over Latin America.
From Central Park Rumba with Love
Central Park Rumba is an internationally known music event. I first heard about it in Mexico City in 1980, described in great detail by Cesar Sandoval, a drummer who had lived in New York and frequented the rumba circle in the 1970s …When traveling to Havana to visit my family in the 1990s, rumberos (rumba drummers) and other musicians asked me if I knew their rumba friends from Union City, the Bronx, and Central Park. I arrived at my first CP Rumba the second week of
September 1994, my first week living in the city. There in Central Park, I was told that rumba was addictive. I got hooked! I became a regular to the scene.
Bringing Old-Time Fiddling into the Twenty-First Century
The North American Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame and Museum is located in the township of Osceola, New York, in the Tug Hill region of northern New York. The hall of fame and museum was born along with its sister, the New York State Old Tyme Fiddlers’ Association, in 1976…. My grandmother, Alice Clemens—three times New York State ladies’ fiddling champion—was a cofounder of the museum and association. She thought it was important to document not only the lives of the hall of fame inductees, but also the lives and music of other fiddlers. She also worried that some of the older fiddlers might soon pass away without teaching anyone the tunes they played.
Voices in New York
Grupo Rebolú’s CD, Abriendo Caminos
(or Opening Roads), offers the listener 10
high energy tracks featuring the sounds of
Colombia’s northern Caribbean coast. Nine
of these tracks were written by the group’s
director, Ronald Polo, with arrangements
by co-director, Morris Cañate. Friends since
childhood, Ronald and Morris grew up together
in Barranquilla, Colombia, and first
met as youngsters enrolled in the Escuela
de Música de Barranquilla, Carlos Franco.
Low Bridge, Everybody Down!
Canal season may be over, but at The Erie Canal Museum in November 2012, the music of the Canal resounded in “Low Bridge, Everybody Down!: An Erie Canal Music Celebration.” The two-day public celebration, co-organized by The Erie Canal Museum and The New York Folklore Society, was the first-ever event devoted exclusively to an exploration of the rich musical heritage created, developed, and transmitted by means of the Erie Canal. Workshops, concerts, presentations, discussions, and displays provided activities that appealed to a wide variety of audiences.