SATUMAANI

Nine Finnish tango sketches for solo guitar and lyrics

“What has the tango got to do with Finland?” you may be asking. A great deal is the answer. 

Among the most reserved and introspective nation in Europe there are even those who claim that the tango does not come from Argentina, but rather from their homeland.

In a country where it has been normal to keep your distance and avoid large gatherings since long before the rest of us, this music has sometimes provided a great opportunity to come together, touching each other (and why not?), falling in love on the dance floor. But it has also provided an outlet for the melancholic spirit that pervades the culture of the Finnish world in an alternative way to the more high-brow works of the “hero composer” Sibelius, and to traditional folk music. 

Passionate (but with a typical Finnish demeanor), as dark as the long northern winter, demurely sensual, poignant, occasionally very sad, with outbursts of tenacity and vitality, but well-hidden hope, it provides a unique way of expression through both the lyrics and the harmonies and melodies, exotic and easily identifiable to the ears of the non-Finnish, like the midsummer midnight sun between the West and Russia, and the spoken language, in fact somewhat alien to speakers of Indo-European languages. 

“Satumaa” is the title of the most popular Finnish song, a tango, which translates more or less as “The Fabled Land”, or “The Enchanted Land”. We do not know where this place is, apart from the fact that it is across the sea. 

From this comes “Satumaani”, or rather “My Enchanted Land”, my vision of the Finnish tango and my conception of an intriguing world (in some ways dying out), in an instrumental guise, for solo classical guitar, my personal palette of colours, to depict my time in Suomi, the “strange cousin” of the Nordic countries. 

Please note that this present work is instrumental, but the overall project is one of program music. In fact, the lyrics to the songs are an integral part. They can be found in the booklet in the original Finnish, Italian and English, to inspire the listener, should they wish it.