In the year 1991 the rock music association Ämyri organised a competition in order to add fresh blood to the world of rock music. The idea of this competition was to find and promote new writers of rock lyrics. This competition has been held in the county of Etelä-Pohjanmaa (Southern Ostrobothnia) annually. Nowadays the organising has moved to the hands of Rytmi-instituutti, Selmu and Vilkuna. This year the finals took place in Rytmikorjaamo and before the finals there was also a seminar about the Finnish rock lyrics. The performers at the seminar were the judges of the competition. To me this was a great experience, because during the seminar I heard many different insights about the Finnish mentality and of course about the local rock scene as well.
The first speaker was Pekka Ruuska and the subject was „The lyrics as the promoters of the song“.
Pekka Ruuska is a well known singer, songwriter and promoter. He has promoted famous artists such as The Rasmus, Zen Cafe, Maija Vilkkumaa and The Crash.
The main idea of his presentation was that a song becomes popular when the lyrics are in the public domain. The public domain is a subject, that most of the people can relate to such as love, money, nature, sorrow or even death. The song has to be timeless as well. To fit into the public domain, the song should have many aspects, so that everyone can find something of their own out of it. I really liked the way Pekka Ruuska explained the psychology of a song. It was quite clear that he knew what he was talking about. One of the most interesting points was when he said, that a song should only describe what's happening, it should never speak about actual feelings, because the feelings should be added by the one who listens to the song. When that opportunity is taken away from the listeners, then they probably won't listen at all.
The second speaker was Kauko Röyhkä. He became famous in the 80's during the rockabilly scene and by now he has released more than 20 albums. To me it seems like he has always stood out of the crowd because of his unique (and a bit melancholic) style and being unique (or alone) is something that the Finnish people can relate to very easily. He has always written his own lyrics and his presentation was about how and why he writes them. He explained that he usually writes the song first and then listens to what the notes have to say. Many of the lyrics are of course about the girls, because that's always a fun subject. His first song was Dora (a girl's name). He started learning the guitar when his friend fixed an old broken guitar for him, but he didn't like to be taught so he just started experimenting with the chords all on his own. The song Dora just came to him and after that he thought that the tune just sounded like laying on the grass with a girl, so he wrote it down. And after that, it's all history :)
The third speaker was Matti „Sere“ Huhta, a Finnish rap musician. His subject was „Why do we love the cliche's“.
Even though his subject cleary stated, that people love the cliche's, everything he spoke about proved the opposite. According to him the Finnish people have created their own cliche's. About 80% of the Finnish song lyrics are about misery, which is not that common in the rest of the world. To the Finns, happiness is too shallow and love usually just hurts. According to Sere, this can be one of the reasons why Finland has never really succeeded in the Eurovision competition – the whole Eurovision scene is based on one cliche after another, but the Finns could not imagine sending a happy cliche to represent their culture. Instead, they like to stand alone and write songs about loneliness.
The fourth speaker was Heikki Salo, the singer of a very famous Finnish rock band called Miljoonasade. He is also a songwriter and he has written lyrics to dozens of Finnish musicians. The subject of his presentation was „The song is free, the song is tied“.
He started his presentation by explaining how the music industry is changing because of the fast paced development of technology. This has turned a song into a product. At the same time it's still music combined with poetry, a language that speaks with the inner world of a person. Music explains and gives shape to things, that can not be described simply with words. So a song is free in this sense, but then again it is tied to the music industry. A song is also tied by syllables, since the lyrics just have to match the tune, otherwise it would sound ridiculous. So making music can actually be a mathematical assignment. He also explained that writing catchy lyrics in Finnish is a bit hard. There are 21 million words in the Finnish language, but many of them have too strong syllables. Like the word love - „Rakkaus“, it's hard to make the syllable „RAK“ sound as soft as love can be.
After the seminar a band played all of the songs, that were competing in the finals and the lyrics were displayed on the wall as well. Unfortunately the letters were too small so I didn't understand almost anything. Most of it sounded like mainstream rock music so I was a bit disappointed. One of the judges also said that none of the winners from the previous competitions have ever succeeded in the Finnish rock music scene. Maybe this is one of the reasons – the lyrics can be good, but the music is just too simple and boring. I did like the winner though (Rasmus Mäntymaa - Maali). The song was about football, but true meaning of the lyrics was actually about a boy trying to make it in this world as a hero and achieving his goals. The song sounded edgy enough to actually make it in the music industry, so hopefully it will.
http://www.rytmi-instituutti.fi
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