***GOLDENBIRD***

Whatever the Argentinians might say, the tango is considered the essence of Finnishness in Finland. The fashion dance of the 1910’s was first introduced in Helsinki by a Danish couple, who danced at the Hotel Börs in 1913. Paradoxically, the first Finnish-language tango song was a parody of the tango craze, which was seen as a temporary fad.

Note that “tanko” means “pole” or “rod” in Finnish.

TANKOLAULU
Iivari Kainulainen (1915)

Rakkaat sanankuulijani elkää pahaks’ panko,
jos mä laulan laulun teille nimeltänsä tanko.
Ja kun se kerran Ranskassa muodissa on,
kuinka silloin Suomi olis’ tankoton?

My dear listeners, please don’t take offence,
if I sing a song called tanko.
When it is all the rage in France,
how could Finland then be tanko-less?

Pariisissa kaikki muodit maahan luodaan.
Sieltä sitten hissunkissun Suomehenkin tuodaan.
Kaikki mikä Ranskassa muodissa on,
kuinka silloin Suomi olis’ muoditon?

In Paris all the fashions are created for the land.
From there gets little by little to Finland
everything which is fashion in France.
How could Finland then be fashion-less?

Ny meilläkin jo raivoopi tämä tankotauti.
Ja tuskin niitä monta lie, ken tankosta ei nauti.
Ja kun se kerran Ranskassa raivonnut on,
kuinka silloin Suomi olis’ tauditon?

Now this tanko disease rages here too,
and there can’t be many who don’t enjoy tanko.
And when it has raged in France,
how could Finland be free from this disease?

Nyt jo meillä tankotaankin päivällä ja öillä.
Kohta sitä opetetaan koulun penkkilöillä.
Ja kun sitä Ranskassa opetettu on,
no kuinkas meidän koulu ois’ oppimaton?

Now our people do the tanko day and night.
Soon it will be taught in the schools.
And if it has been taught in France,
so, how would our schools unlearn it?

The tango pandemic turned out to be not only contagious, but extremely resistant to treatment. The Finnish tango strain mutated and adapted successfully to its new Northern environment, benefiting from the heavy sentimental and nostalgic streak in the local culture. In the early 1930’s, the first serious Finnish-language tango songs begin to appear, such as Mä muistan sua (I Remember You, 1930) by E. Karjalainen:
Oi mennyt on se aika armain,
kun luonas suoja oli mulla parhain.
Sä lähdit pois mun luotain
ja tuskan, tuskan mulle jätit vain.

Oh, the time has passed, my dear
when my best shelter was at your side.
You went away from me
and left me with nothing but the pain, the pain.

And Unelma-tango/Drömm-tango [sic] (The Dream Tango, bilingual, 1932) by Arvo Koskimaa and Erkki Ranta:
… tummien silmien taa
viittoopi kultainen maa.

… beyond dark eyes
a golden land beckons.

Note that these songs were written, composed and performed overwhelmingly by men. Tango was becoming an acceptable outlet for emotions that otherwise had no place in the militantly patriotic ideal of the 1930’s. Exoticism was also an important part of the tango world (dark eyes, golden land!), evident in titles such as Donna Bella (Georg Malmstén, 1932) and Monte-Carlo (Tuominen & Puttonen, 1932). The dreamland far away could also be a metaphor for the afterlife.
After the war, the tango had its serious breakthrough as a nationalized form of popular music. In the classic Satumaa (Fairytale Land, Unto Mononen, 1955), the singer longs to a land beyond the sea, where eternal summer reigns, and where his beloved waits for him.
Vaan siivetönnä en voi lentää, vanki olen maan…
But without wings I cannot fly, I’m a prisoner of the earth…

It strikes me again that this song seems to be about death, rather than a real country beyond the sea. In my thesis work, I have encountered a similar shift among the Finnish intelligentsia from worldly exoticism in the 1910’s and 1920’s towards a gradual disillusionment (1918, 1932, 1939, 1944) and even despair. The nationalists were looking for a native Finnish paradise (Karelia, Greater Finland), the modernists tried to find it abroad (”Ikkunat auki Eurooppaan!”). But there was no paradise good enough for them… An excellent example is the writer Joel Lehtonen, who in the 1910’s wrote romantic poems about Italy, and after the civil war changed his subject to naturalist depictions of Finnish poverty, pettiness and degradation, plenty with scenes of alcohol abuse that disgusted his otherwise positive critics. Perhaps this was the backside of exoticism - the civil war had estranged him from other Finns.

Many people have folk tales about an “isle of bliss” beyond the ocean, where an earthly paradise exists. The Finns have “lintukoto” (Birdhome), where people imagined that the migratory birds went to stay during the winters. Lintukoto is located in the south-west, near the edge of the world, where the sky and the earth meet. Thus everything is very small, even the inhabitants are small like children. Oddly, Lintukoto also means Finland, as an imaginary safe haven, far away from the dangerous world. This meaning is often used satirically, with a nostalgic note: “Finland is not a lintukoto anymore!”

Joel Lehtonen finished his career in a state of serious depression in the 1930’s, with the novels Lintukoto and Hyvästijättö lintukodolle (Farewell to the Isle of Bliss, 1933). He had named his summer cottage “Lintukoto”, and literally it was a bird’s home, for the only person that he could still see with idealistic, admiring eyes, was his rooster Matti, shy but brave, with an iron will, the last real Finnish man.

I really wanted to finish this article cheerfully, but what can you do? The Finnish tango is played in a minor key - “mollivoittoinen”.

Found in Pirjo Kukkonen’s Tango Nostalgia - The Language of Love and Longing, Helsinki University Press 1996
More about Finnish tango
More about Joel Lehtonen

February 1st, 2008 | Category: 1920's, music, suomi | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL