Finnish Music on Cape Ann

This Sunday evening May 13 at 7:00 you will have a chance to enjoy Finnish music presented with a glimpse of its vitality in the early generations of the immigrant community.

The program will include live music and vintage recordings at the St. Paul Lutheran Church in Lanesville where services were conducted in Finnish during the same decades that music served as "probably the strongest glue in the culture," according to organizer Valerie Nelson whose grandparents arrived from Finland a century ago.

 

Valerie Nelson at the doors of St. Paul Lutheran Church

Planning began as a focus for the Third Annual Lanesville May Day History Festival with intriguing references in Barbara Erkkila's Village at Lane's Cove (1989). Valerie recalled that it "started with some 'wouldn't it be nice'  thoughts. Then we did all this research and talked to university professors. The first thing we learned was how central music was."
 

Brass bands established by military units, business companies, and unions among others had been a prominent part of life in mid-nineteenth century Finland. Along with choirs the bands performed competitively in summer festivals. Lullabies, folksongs and legends particularly from the national epic Kalevala added to the musical fabric that accompanied Finns to America. At the turn of the twentieth century they took pride in the international popularity of their countryman Jean Sibelius, composer of Finlandia and a trove of symphonic scores.
 

Wäinö Band of Lanesville, 1903

The Wäinö Band formed in the 1890s almost entirely of Finnish players. Notable in the photo above is the number of boys in the ensemble. Valerie Nelson points to this inter-generational encouragement as the seedbed for widespread musical appreciation and for the development in the 1920s and 1930s of several nationally prominent artists from the little community on Cape Ann.

 

Julius Kaihlanen leading the Wäinö Band c. 1930
Note the attentive children.

Barbara Erkkila relates stories of the Wäinö Band playing at dances, at Gloucester City Hall and on trolley whistle-stop tours around the Cape. As their audience and composition diversified their selections came to include other ethnic and particularly American music, in keeping with the common trend of assimilation into the melting pot.
 

Visiting musician Viola Turpeinen, right

For many years musical cultural exchanges among immigrant communities kept Finnish descendents engaged with each other across the country. On a less ethnic note, but arising from this rich village life, Cape Ann sent its prodigies out to play in prestigious ensembles of many genres.

 

Sylvester Ahola's Orchestra

The upcoming celebration flows in part from the energies of the newly founded Cape Ann Finns. Its membership has reached 166 descendents of the immigrant group. Sunday evening they will have on display a collection of gathered family memorabilia and are constructing a website relating to their Finnish roots. Rockport resident Rob Ranta capeannfinns@gmail.com leads the association.

 

Besides the natural interest in our predecessors, learning more about the Cape Ann Finns promises an inspiring story of resilience, cooperation, and self-reliance. The immigrants arrived in a strange land to work under brutal quarrying conditions. Before long they managed to build homes, churches, and social halls as well as be at the forefront of labor reform. By the time the granite industry collapsed in the 1920s they had created a resolute community on a scarred landscape that charmed world-renowned artistic immigrants to foster their own enclave here. That achievement of wholeness blended fellowship with individualism just like synthesis in the musical sphere.