We had to make Fiddlers because you rarely hear anything like it. To counterbalance the usual pop-ified folk, we wanted to go to the roots of the tunes to find the power in them. We can’t jump into the boots of a fiddler from a century ago, but we can resist making an arrangement even before playing out the original music. We recorded this album in a way that the cover could say “No pop music added”.

We had to make Quiet Rapture because you never hear anything quite like it. We play archaic tunes together although they have always been played solo on the kantele, jouhikko and other antiquated instruments. We wished to seek and to find a flow between two players. A flow that a lone old geezer would have had when playing his never-ending kantele tune in the darkening cabin: simple elements, endless variation.

It was worth it to go through A. O. Väisänen’s collection. The old music turned into something new. The melody and accompaniment merged. When the harmonium imitated the kantele, there were no separate hands for the melody and accompaniment anymore but two interlocking hands hitting the keys one after the other. We had to rethink how to play and think of music. Although we could find the jouhikko deep inside the fiddle’s timbre, the kantele was not present before we drafted it out with the bow and the five strings.

And we had to make it a double album because we have been playing together for ten years.

Juuri & Juuri

Emilia Lajunen & Eero Grundström