Interview
JARKKO NIEMI FROM SLOBO HORO
MAY 2001
Slobo Horo, from Finland, plays what could be called "rocked up Balkan Music." I first heard of Slobo Horo in 1995 when I bought their 1994 album Esma. Since then, they've appeared on the Balkans Without Borders compilation and released a 2000-model album called Divane.
Basic information about Slobo Horo can be found on their web page: http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~latvis/yhtyeet/slobohoro/index.html
Here is an e-mail interview with vocalist and guitar player Jarkko Niemi from April-May 2001.
-----How does Divane differ from your earlier albums; the quote from your record company is that it is "more mature?" I hear the same "sound" in each, but there is a change...
Something peculiar happened after our silent years, in 1997-1998. We just noticed from the very first session that we play a lot better, as individuals and as a group. Therefore the maturity, presumably... Each of us, I guess, had rearranged our musicalities in our heads, in terms of giving ourselves license to give it all out. The most obvious change in our sound profile is, of course, the inclusion of the drum-set and the exclusion of the hand percussions (darbuka + tapan in particular; they were essential in the percussive sound during the previous albums). I feel that has made some of our friends and fans nervous, because we sound l e s s the way an ethno-band s h o u l d sound. In my opinion, this matter deserves a second thought: since we believe in our own obsessions, through which we can create musical expression, which we feel genuinely ours, we have to risk, at a certain point, our status as an "ethno" group that is supposed to have some "ethno" in the sound, that is, through "authentic" instrumentation. In fact, we also risk our "location:" we seem to be neither "rock" nor "ethno", but something in between..
-------Much of Divane features Turkish music, why?
Actually no special "why" - I personally very much like Turkish/Anatolian traditional music.. Just as "Dostlug," "Sâhâne gözler" and "Säkhra gözeli" are more like "just dance music," "Divane" and "Semah" have that eternal substance of ancient musical expression which connects to individual spiritual experience. While the modern international commercial music scene is full of "trance" genres, I am personally most elevated by the Anatolian kind of folk devotional, recursive music. Contemplating with the Anatolian or Sufi material, I usually have sessions with my baglama saz, or get inspired by, say, Arif Sag, Muhlis Akarsu, Musa Eroglu or Neset Ertas. Those voices are so powerful in carrying the messages past the remote centuries... It is through great masters like them the voice of perhaps the greatest Anatolian Sufi mystical poet, Pir Sultan Abdal, does not cease to accompany us in our confusing modern world. Although loaded with mysterious, unrevealed meanings, his words are written in the language that the Anatolian peasant understands. It is an extraordinary mystery of revelation through "understatements". In this sense, Anatolian devotional poetry opens a complex poetic universe with means quite opposite to that of the "classic" wealth of eloquent poetry born in the royal Oriental courts, whether in Baghdad or Constantinople, mixing together Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
--------"What are you ethnic connections to the original music? What are your methods of dealing with the original music? How long have you been doing this? What languages you use? Why don't you sing in Finnish? You don't have much original instruments included (except Azeri tar on "Dostlug")? What are your personal or inner "Oriental" "experiences"? Why Pir Sultan, of all the poets? You seem not to explore systematically the wealth of Balkan rhythms or modal alternatives... why? Do you have experiences about the practices of modal music or improvisation anyway?"Slobo Horo has had three stages of existence - stylistical periods if you wish. During the initial period of 1986-1990, we drank the cup of young enthusiasm to Balkan folk styles. It was a period of learning to play and perform this stuff. During this period we were more happy to sound as close as possible as the originals.
The second period 1990-1997 was the classic period, during which we created our sound and models for interpreting music in our own way. This period was documented and profiled with our two first records, Mastika and Esma. In 1996 we planned for continuation and the third record, but with a big group with individuals living in different places (at times even in different countries), and having many kinds of important periods in their civilian careers, it seemed clear that the band would become gradually more virtual.
We can't fully specify the force that does not let us free. It is there and during 1997-1998, after a period in which we felt the band was not a lifetime engagement after all, it all started anew. First it was casual: "how about a jam session night, with no further agenda?" There we were in the middle of our reunion session and got carried away with how we actually played together! That was the beginning of the third period, in 1999. "How we played together": this is one of the main substances of this band - how we s o u n d together.
It has always been the unexplained power of musical expression that has kept us going. We have no political engagements, although sensitive Western European journalists thought for a while in 1992-1993. We are all ethnic Finns, all revealing our ancient tribal background through our dialects and the myths concerning our tribal, inherited attitudes. Heikki is an Ostrobothnian, Risto is a Boreobothnian, Timo, Karo, Junnu and Mikko are Tavastians and I am an Isthmus Carelian.
It is mostly I who provide the basic documentation of musical material (transcription of music and words), and sometimes an idea for arrangement. Very often, though, it is Heikki Autio who works a perspective to musical piece or makes the composition of it. In final phase the whole band joins in the processing.
The material comes mostly from the Byzantian Eastern Balkans, and we have wanted to retain the corresponding local languages. We have had lots of songs in Serbian or Macedonian Roma, in Southern Slavic Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, in Albanian and Turkish. (One song in Central Asian Turkmen on Divane, for that matter). Personally, it is an exciting adventure to try to push my pronunciation as close as it is possible with my language competence. Eventually, though, although exotic, these Balkan languages are not so complicated to pronounce. Actually one of the admirable qualities of Serbian, for example, is that it is clear as a mountain stream. Easy to pronounce, compared to, say, Russian, which ridicules the poor foreigner trying to battle with it, as the formidable amount of palatalization forces your whole face in another position.
Perhaps we translate ourselves some day into Finnish. The advantages should be that we could achieve more publicity and airplay in Finland and the language would remain very exotic for the foreign listener as well.
-------Why did you use the tar in "Dostlug?"
I just wanted to spice the Azeri dance song, "Dostlug," with the sound of the tar. It is an instrument that is frustratingly difficult to use in a normal concert situation, both because of amplification and tuning, so that I'm afraid you'll just hear the "ordinary" guitar twang in live situations. It was a coincidence that the pitch we use in "Dostlug" matches best the tuning I am accustomed to use in my tar so that you'll hear also the sound of the resonance strings decently.
-------Tell me about "modal music." Much of American traditional music is "modal," right?
Right... well, to put it shortly, all the music is modal. It has been opposed by the last few centuries of canonized tonal music in Western Europe. However, European tonal music with its functional harmony has become the overwhelming norm just like the European-based world colonization or lingua francas of the modern world. Doing tonal music you have to deal with the "Major" or "Minor" scales and chordal framework into which you embed melody. Doing modal music, you in a way begin with the melody, which you can optionally flavour with chordal environment, drone, or just experience the pure melody. In the Arabic, Turkish, Persian or Indian theoretical systems of music, the modes are presented as processes of melody.
In the context of local Balkan music, however, the nearest formalized modal framework with an autonomous musical theory and codification of performance practices comes from the "Oriental" source of Turkish art music, which has historically evolved in the Arabic-Persian Oriental soil, and as well in Greek-Byzantine cultural history.
Let's say that in the Balkan area you have the wealth of local styles that have various historical contacts with European harmony, but which can all be defined as historically autochtonous. This complex culture history in the area is the reason for the stylistical fusions that make this area so extraordinarily rich. More powerful as a historical fact was of course the 500 year period of Osman occupation. There were changes in world view, changes in musical thinking, especially in urban environments, and most importantly, the impact of the Turkish music theory.
It is not the conservatory type of music theory, of course, that has spread in Balkan popular styles in the course of the recent historical period, but modal performance practices heard in improvisations, mostly by Roma musicians playing in urban environments. They didn't need the modal theory, of course, they just knew some of the art music repertoire by heart and therefore also the rules, but they made the modes "rock". Therefore you hear the Turkish Roma clarinet masters, like Deli Selim or Mustafa Kandirali performing sovereignly some of the modes that correspond to the art music makams, but not so rigidly. Only the very basic modes are in use in Roma dance music (like Ussak, Hicaz, Rast or Saba), but not the more academic ones used in art music.
We have studied Turkish makams and Roma dance music and their ways of modal improvization so that it is actually quite important an interest to some of us, although not of central importance in the whole of the Slobo Horo sound. We have had separate projects with Turkish art music, in order to go deeper to the understanding and performance of Turkish makam.
---------You said there was not much of Finland in this music. Are there similarities, though, between the more eastern european style of Finnish music...or perhaps Russian music... and the Balkan music you play? Is there a common root?
It is only the fact that we are Finnish musicians. We have our own attitude, but we just happen to express it in the very peculiar way, through musical material with lots of foreignnesses or othernesses for us.
In the Balkan sense there are no such asymmetrical meters in Finnish music. Surprisingly, the nearest equivalent comes from the Northern Sami, whose yoiks include very often ones which could be described as asymmetrical, although they themselves don't explicitly figure them like that. If described that way, the Sami can be said to have a perplexing multitude of asymmetrical meters... More generally, any historically old singing style, independent from instrumental accompaniment is more free in form than more recent styles synchronized and calibrated by instrumental or generic (e. g. dance genres like polskas or waltzes) practices. In this sense, Carelian epic singing could also be surprisingly rich a style in metrical sense.
It's just that we are engaged with our material... Some people have tried to explain our deviation with the "Byzantian connection". Historically, an imaginary waterway could be established between the South-Eastern Europe and the Baltic North. As such, it is not even imaginary. Considering the historical and archeological evidence, the Iron-age Finns did travel to Constantinople, as they reached the Dnepr through the Baltic river-system. Thus, it was not the Russian period of 1809-1917 in the Finnish history that made the Byzantian connection, it was the Iron-age merchant, who sailed from the subarctic coniferous forest to the metropolitan wonders of Constantinople.
It is as if that genetic memory trace gives me unexplained peace in Constantinople every time, whether surveying the antiquarian rarities in Kadiköy, whether sailing back to Sirkeci side at sunset, whether approaching the Turkish music conservatory in an electric springstorm in teleferik, whether reconstructing the dusky moods of romance of Münir Nurettin Selçuk's evergreens in the Kalamis park or whether attending the Mevlevi dervishes home-meeting in Üsküdar.
It was not in Constantinople, though, where I got stuck with the music of the ritual gatherings of the Alevî. It was in Smyrna, where I finally got really acquainted with the age-old Anatolian Zeybek music, which, along with the Alevî traditions, both have a resounding historical echo through Inner Anatolia, back to mythical Khorasan. This flow reconciliates the barrier between Islam, Christianity and animism. Some of the pieces most close to me in our repertoire are exactly these: expressing the thirst for individual revelation already informed by a multitude of world religions, whether, say, Christian or Islam. The real connection, after all, is not the Byzantian one, it is the age-old connection of Ugric and Turkic peoples along the Volga water system. That is the historical place to put in the shamanistic-animistic part of this thing, reflected in the weld of hypnotically recursive music and poetry of, say, Pir Sultan Abdal or Kul Yusuf.
----------With this type of "foreign" music, it is more likely that a listener will hear the human voice as an instrument, rather than a conveyer of information. If I listen to Finnish folk songs, all I hear is "music," whereas if I heard songs in English...or even to some extent Spanish or French or German...I would HEAR the words and follow the meaning of the song.. Even with the liner notes, one cannot pick up the meaning if one is cutting up a whole salmon or entering data on a computer. Can you say something about voice as an "instrument?"
That was (and still is) our strongest and most valid excuse for sticking to the original languages: you lose so much if you translate the songs in Finnish. You lose the language sound and intonation, especially when Finnish language as such different rules of transforming language into a song than the Indo-European or Turkic languages.
-----------On your albums, how does the basic "ethnic" song you play and sing correlate to the arrangement....ie is there something you "say" with the arrangement?
It is our style in the arrangements and increasingly also in composition: we don't take a song just because it sounds nice or its from the Balkans. We need to have a perspective to the original music. Sometimes the perspective is revealed through rhythm... I guess you can find retrospective stylistic pastiches in some of our pieces. Sometimes the original lacks something in the form-for our purposes, something that needs to be created. Sometimes the form becomes a negotiation between the recursive litany-like musical form and popular music which needs, for example, refrains or transitional parts, like bridges.
------------What are YOU doing with your vocals? I hear "good" vocals, like perhaps the Tex-czech polka vocals I heard so much in Texas, but with a humor to them.
The language is a very important level for me. Through the language I can merge with the language speakers in a totally other way than both speaking bad English or communicating with an interpreter. Recently, however, dealing in Russia has taken so much my time that the Balkan languages become all harder for me to keep up with. Humor and singing... the last thing I wish is that by singing "exotic" Balkan songs in "foreign" languages we reinforce the European representation of the "Oriental" or "Balkan" as something intrinsically funny, of bad quality or negative. I just want to sing as good I possibly can. "Good" means here first to sing so that your soul becomes felt in your performance, second, that your performance with the language is passable.
--------------In affluent western European culture it seems to me that Finland is unique. It is isolated, backed up against Russia, and has a language group not shared with other "western" countries. Do Finns feel this way? It seems you especially must use English to communicate with anyone from outside the country. Does this affect the music in any way?
No, not much, really. As we can communicate with Europeans (Swedes also) with English, I personally have no clear opinion about this. From my standpoint as a Finn, it has never occurred to my mind to think of us as "isolated" because of the language. There are so many other things to it also. It is true that our language is unique among the European languages, like Hungarian, or Basque, for that matter, but otherwise we are synchronized to Western Europe, even frustratingly much, because of the EU. But frankly, I don't know what should be the basic definitions to state about Finland, when conversating with foreigners... we do not have penguins and iglus all the year round in the streets of Helsinki, we are not part of Soviet Union etc.
On the other hand, towards the Russians the average Finn has a regrettably huge mental border and a very superfluous and touristic experience of Russia, with no mastery of Russian whatsoever. At the best, most of them know few basic words read with Latin spelling from Cyrillic signs, like "tamohka" (customs) or "pektopah" (restaurant).
---------- I notice you play fiddle, though I really don't hear it on Divane. What else have you done in terms of playing music?
I am a lute player. I am self-taught folk fiddler, guitar player, and of the Oriental lutes I have played Turkish folk saz, the baglama saz with the "modern" tuning and the meydan with the traditional tuning on the other hand, and the art music tanbur on the other. Experience from various kinds of musical projects (folk dance accompaniment, theatre music, project bands, kindergarten music).
There are strong Swedish-Scandinavian influences in Finnish folk dance music, also in fiddle music. The basic dance forms are general (polka, waltz, mazurka) to the whole Baltic area, to the continental Europe, for that matter. In Western and coastal Finland they have these beautiful fiddle tunes for two fiddles, with harmonious two-part melodies. As I have heard Finnish-Swedish fiddling, the rhythms are here not so wild as in Sweden and Norway (e. g. in polskas).
---------Is there a Rom culture in Finland? If so, what kind of music do they play? How do they fit in with Finnish society in general?
The following is Risto's answer to this. At the moment he is working with his thesis on the song styles of the Roma of the Finland/Baltic area so that you should engage with him in discussion about things related to the Roma of this area and their music:
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Yes, there is an unique Rom culture in Finland. Many researchers have said, that because of the long distances to any (except to Russian one) other main Rom centres in Europe, the Finnish Rom culture that has been preserved is quite archaic. I don't know in details what they actually mean, but for example the language and also music of Finnish Roma people differ from other Roms in Europe. In short, the Finnish Romani-language doesn't belong to either to s.c. Vlach or non-Vlach Romani-dialects, in spite, it's supposed to form a group of it's one. And music, the oldest stratum of Finnish Rom songs (and it is true, they have almost no instrumental music) is purely influenced by Finnish folk songs and newer ones are related to Russian popular songs from the 20th century. If you are interested in social and educational questions, you could probably visit the home page of Finnish Ministry of Education. There´s good collection of Rom related www-pages. And of course, mostly in Finnish but also some in English, too. http://www.oph.fi/info/romanit/linkit.htm Risto Blomster Bassist
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Let me add briefly that although the Roma language in Finland has some problems of surviving in everyday usage, there has been some attempts to revitalize it (language courses for the Roma, for example), from the initiative of the Finnish Roma organizations themselves, not from us, the Kaaye (<gadzho, 'non-Roma man', original meaning 'house-man') as the Romas call us (themselves they usually call as the Kaale 'the Dark (ones)', both words coming straight from old Indic!) They have strict traditional moral codes in everyday life, regulating the behaviour of sex and age groups. To the moral code can be added, in a way, also their dress. Men never go outdoors with just a shirt on (e.g. in summer), they have to have a coat or woolen shirt on the shirt. Women still use their traditional, very elaborate and ornamented dress complex with huge amount of skirts under the external one, which makes them look big.
------------Does the theory of western european countries being rational and the Balkans and by extension the eastern lands being driven by emotion and image have anything to do with your music? How does Finland fit in this scheme?
Well, if not a theory, at least a blossoming myth - although worth studying (and studied, for example in the Orientalism debate in cultural studies). It is obvious that "we" (as Westerners) have built up the representation of the Oriental emotion-driven personality - for our purposes.
Of course it is also obvious that our attitudes towards responding to music are connected with thinking through that myth. Examples of initial attitudes that must have crossed our minds in the half 1980's, when we started this could have sounded like: "This is so different, but yet so exciting!" "I'd like to try, if I could sing or play like that!" "I got totally lost with the asymmetrical rhythms, but want to study it more, in order to understand and be able to play it..." "The Oriental modes are so exciting, because they were censored in Europe so long ago (in Middle Ages)."
It would be interesting to think Finns in particular with this topic as silent, skillful and gutty people of the peripheral Europe. "What we engage to, we do it with guts and soul that contains all the green forests, fresh air, glistening winter snow and the magic midsummer paradise of the lake milieu." The result can compete with the creative soul and guts of a Central European (including post-Columbian Americans) mind with a thousand-year urban experience in genes.
"How does Finland fit in?" Matter of perspective... You seem to have been in Finland. Did you feel yourself isolated? I think it every time I am far away in hinterland Russia... Still, when you settle to a remote place and organize the world around you, negotiating with your personal and local habits, you start to feel like home, no matter where you are. The most horrifying isolated places are the international public, "official" transitional spaces like big airports, where you have to spend time sometimes (not days, though)...
Finland and Estonia have come more together, which is great. Last time I returned from Tallinn to Helsinki in August in post-summer sunshine, seeing the Tallinn towers disappear beyond the horizon and at the same time Helsinki coastline appearing in the North, I thought of the way these related countries have come together so much, although not totally... And yet we're different. I see Estonians mostly through their cultural history: they have more experience of the "European" old - urban, for that matter - civilization.
Even during the Soviet times I noticed that the Estonians folk musicians had (still have) an extraordinarily strong interest towards Irish/Celtic folk music. No surprise, because Celtic music does have this mysterious quality that makes it sound "ancient" (anhemitonic modalities... with no "small" leaps in the melody) and "modern" (these modalities fruitfully applicable for harmonization) European music at the same time. I guess that we would have had more success in Estonia, if we had played that kind of music. But eventually, I think we found our audience in Estonia as well... (there is a Real Video from our gig in Viljandi Folk Music Festival, http://www.bumpclub.ee/real/arhiiv/kava.html).