Chapter 2: Radio as Resonance Chamber

Suomi Mainittu…

A favorite saying in Finnish internet comment culture is Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan! translating to “Finland was mentioned, let’s meet at the square!” It is typically deployed in tongue-in-cheek reaction to mentions of the Nordic country of Finland outside its national borders, considered a rare occurrence because of Finland’s supposed obscurity as a nation.[1] The square here (tori) is the market or town square, where in-person celebration might well break out on short notice following, for example, national sporting victories. “Torilla tavataan” or, more briefly, torille (“[let’s go] to the square”) might be used as either sincere or sarcastic jubilation, but the implicit or explicit addition of “Suomi mainittu” (“Finland was mentioned”) pinpoints this specific national imaginary that can be both/either deprecatory and/or a point of pride for Finnish nationals positioning their home country and, to whatever extent, themselves within the wider world.

It's hard to gauge the obscurity of a country, and Finland, recognized as an independent sovereign state by all other United Nations-recognized sovereign states at the time of this writing, does not seem to be existentially endangered by such a perception. There are, though, some striking differences between Finland and its neighbors. The first of these is the Finnish language, which falls entirely outside of the Indo-European language family that otherwise dominates the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). Finnish is instead a Uralic language, along with Hungarian and Estonian, and any shared vocabulary it has with the Germanic and Slavic languages around it comes from interlinguistic encounters. The pronounced difference between Finnish and other nearby languages has earned it an anecdotal reputation of being difficult to learn. Most Finnish-born Finnish nationals speak at least one additional language, with the vast majority studying English and/or Swedish in school per a 2023 survey by national statistical office Tilastokeskus.[2][3] “Finnish language learning is much like putting all your eggs in one basket,” wrote columnist Elisa Aikkila of the news outlet Helsingin Sanomat in 2024, “there’s no benefit anywhere else.”[4] Compounding this anxiety about global positionality is Finland’s youth as an independent state relative to its neighbors, having been ruled by Sweden for several centuries before being captured by Russia and administered as an autonomous grand duchy before gaining full independence in the early 20^th century. Traces of Swedish identity—most audibly mandatory language classes, regions in which Swedish is still the most spoken language, and certain forms of folk music with strong followings in the “world music” scene—are still easy to find and have long been contentious for groups seeking a truly independent Finnish identity. The circulation of “Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan” as a predominantly internet-based meme is one especially pithy manifestation of a feeling of Finnish identity as being internationally undervalued and uncelebrated.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of world music as a global marketing phenomenon gave artists new ways to express national identities on the world stage. In Finland, the most internationally successful “world music” came in the form of uusikansanmusiikki (literally “new folk music”). Framed as a category of folk revivalism, this genre was “associated with tradition, the past, and continuity, [although] musicians borrow and absorb new ideas and influences from other traditions” (Ramnarine 2003, 14). In many ways, this phenomenon echoed the romantic nationalism that shaped Finnish artistic culture in the 19^th century. Many of the most popular uusikansanmusiikki groups performed music from the eastern Finnish runolaulu (rune song) repertoires. Many of the texts they have used overlap with the source material for Finland’s national epic poem Kalevala (1835), considered a symbol of Finnish folk identity during the movement for Finnish independence. The key difference: where Kalevala became a rallying point for identity within Finland, uusikansanmusikki was meant primarily for outsiders.

One prominent example of the uusikansanmusiikki phenomenon is the group Värttinä, which musicologist Yrjö Heinonen has referred to as “‘the brand name’ of Finnish World Music” (2005, 138). Formed in 1983 as a group of largely self-taught young singers (mostly women) and musicians (mostly men, but a more diverse mix) reciting poetry and playing kantele in village festivals of their home region of Karelia, Värttinä stood out among Finnish folk revivalists as a vivid alternative to what was then the prevalent image of folk music as predominantly performed by older male performers playing instrumental, Swedish-influenced pelimanni music. The youth of Värttinä instead adapted and performed music and poetry from the Finnish-Russian borderlands, especially drawing on women’s repertoires, in local dialects and often archaic language (90). In 1990, the group underwent a major shift from being a large teenage collective in the parish of Rääkkylä (a village 19th century folklorist Elias Lönnrot pinpointed as especially “rich in folk songs” [89]) to a more streamlined group of female vocalists and male and female instrumentalists, many now studying music at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. By the time of 1991 album Oi Dai, the band’s adaptations of older song forms were more directly under “the influence of rock, blues, and pelimanni styles” (91). It made enough of an impact to attract attention outside of Europe. Before long, the group was touring internationally, easily the most prominent uusikansanmusiikki band worldwide. Heinonen has analyzed the transnational discourse surrounding Värttinä in the 90s and early 2000s, noting specific comparisons that followed the group from place to place and year to year:

Comparing Värttinä to ABBA is nothing new. In fact, the circulation of Värttinä as a mixture of Les [Mystère des] Voix Bulgares and ABBA has circulated in the press for several years. This comparison was probably presented for the first time in 1993, during Värttinä’s first US tour… Indeed, in Musician (September 1993, 79) the reviewer states that “what’s front and center here is a female vocal quartet whose spine-tingling harmonies simultaneously bring to mind Les Voix Bulgares and ABBA” (NorthSide 2004). In Germany the slogan “Bulgarische Stimmen treffen ABBA” [Bulgarian voices meet ABBA] has been used in advertising Värttinä’s tours. (2005, 157)

By invoking the Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares project, a mixture of Soviet-era nationalist folk revival and commercial “world music” marketing, the reviewers and promoters Heinonen mentions interpolate Värttinä into “the international marketing trend locating modern, stylized renditions of… traditional music within discourses of feminine mysticism, ruralized authenticity, and cosmological phantasmagoria” that has marked publicity surrounding Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ releases and performances (Buchanan 1997, 133-134). The reference to ABBA, Heinonen suggests, may allude to “the ‘wall of sound’ produced by [Värttinä’s] strong female singers and professional male backdrop” that is also prominent in pop music like ABBA’s (2005, 158). Perhaps Finland’s border with Sweden is also relevant to these comparisons, as well as the fact that Finland and Bulgaria both sit in eastern Europe, almost entirely between 20° and 30° east of the prime meridian.

This discourse surrounding Värttinä in the 1990s and early 2000s, when they were perhaps at the height of their international fame, is relevant for what it reveals about Värttinä’s influence as apparent representatives of Finnish culture to other parts of the world—as well as about the music industry’s often problematically flattened representations of Värttinä as other. Even so, the groups’ albums were my first inroads to imagining Finnishness as a child. My father bought me each new Värttinä album (from stores in the United States) on CD as they came out. I was an avid listener. I read through the liner notes of each release over and over, familiarizing myself with the English translations of each song’s lyrics, taking in scraps of information included about musical traditions of the Karelian region, and poring over Finnish orthography with the help of my father’s Berlitz language guide. I realized that there was a larger audience for the group in 1998, when a season three episode of popular PBS children’s program Arthur used Värttinä song “Matalii ja Mustii” diegetically to play the role of a massive hit song by a fictional Finnish band within the series’ universe. This was a moment of intermediation that signaled success for uusikansanmusiikki as a dominant projection of Finnish identity in the United States. It was accessible to publics beyond Finnish and Finnish diaspora contexts, situating the “recorded new folk canon as a sonic representation of ‘Finnishness’” (Ramnarine 2003, 204). Other musics recorded in Finland and in the Finnish language did not circulate internationally to this degree in spite (or because) of their closer connection to contemporary Finnish life. John Westhues’ programming, though, has provided an alternative to these aural imaginaries of “Finnishness” prominent in the U.S. mainstream.

Figure 2.8: Every Värttinä studio album released between 1991 and 2012 in the WFHB library.

Throughout the duration of Scenes from the Northern Lights, John received at least dozens of albums from primarily Finnish promoters and reviewed many of these for airplay on WFHB. Many are still stored in the station library, each one’s case sporting a glowing typewritten endorsement from John along with brief descriptions and favorite tracks. Some might be expected from a non-commercial radio station that broadcast “world music” in the 90s—WFHB’s library includes all nine Värttinä studio albums released between 1991 and 2012 (Figure 2.8), some reviewed by John and others by me—but there’s always been more to John’s programming than echoes of (or reactions to) 19^th century romantic nationalism. In a 1998 article of the Indiana Daily Student newspaper, Westhues lists a few of his favorite Finnish artists, such as prog rock and jazz guitarist Jukka Tolonen, poet and punk rocker Ismo Alanko, and ambient electronic group RinneRadio. Figure 2.9 shows albums released by Alanko, rock band CMX, and John’s brother Mike, reviewed by John and deposited in the WFHB library.

Figure 2.9: An eclectic mix of Finnish releases at WFHB.

Figure 2.10: A script (c. 1990s) for WFHB programmers to read promoting Scenes from the Northern Lights.

This insistence on a wide array of genres from a relatively small place has been a mixed bag for the program as far as growing an audience. After moving to WFHB in 1993 and receiving his 1994 Finlandia Foundation grant, John successfully syndicated his show on community station KAXE in northern Minnesota, an area with a relatively high proportion of residents of Finnish descent (Alanen 2012). This required him to record his usual WFHB programs and then record himself reading announcements specific to KAXE, all of which he would then edit together to make a version of the show tailored to KAXE. On KAXE, Scenes aired on Sunday afternoons as part of the Finnish Americana and Heritage Show until 1996, at which point, per the Indiana Daily Student article, “the local audience, mostly older, was not as interested in the wide variety of music John programmed” (Sadik-Ogli 1998a, 20). This didn’t change John’s thoughts about what he wanted to play. Eventually, Scenes was integrated into Planetary Caravan, a WFHB show with a more broadly international focus. As part of Planetary Caravan, John became one of a rotating crew of hosts, coming in once a month at first, then later quarterly, taking the fifth Sunday of a month when applicable. He has since decided to move away from regular hosting in favor of being an on-call substitute. When he does take a shift, John continues to focus on old and new Finnish and other Nordic music from across styles. On the air, he sometimes refers to his episodes of Planetary Caravan with the “subtitle” Scenes from the Northern Lights, his passion project standing in a different context but largely holding the shape it has had for over four decades.

John’s body of work stands out as one specific case study of how ordinary acts of programming on community radio can generate aural imaginaries of identity. Through Scenes from the Northern Lights, he has expressed his own distinct and multifaceted sense of Finnishness and Nordicness, albeit as an outsider in the sense of being born and raised in the United States, through an accessible public conduit. The archival materials he shared with me show how John has connected WFHB to transcontinental networks of Finnish music making and Finnish American heritage production (including, among other bodies, community radio stations elsewhere in the United States) and activated those networks in ways that have directly contributed to the station’s broadcasting resources through monetary grants and donations. Several of his archival documents are letters accompanying contributions to WFHB from listeners who specifically mention his show as a personal favorite. Others are copies of newspaper articles in publications that cater to Finnish American diasporic populations, such as New Yorkin Uutiset (“the New York news”), the Finnish American Reporter (based in Hancock, Michigan), and Finlandia Weekly (based in Lake Worth, Florida). In some ways, his inclusive selections help counter the limited images of Finland inherent in the romanticism of uusikansanmusiikki marketing. A 1995 letter of recommendation from Finnish singer-songwriter and producer Marja Mattlar to the Finlandia Foundation on John’s behalf even makes the claim that John’s programming presents a greater diversity of Finnish music than any radio stations she has listened to in Finland. John is, she writes, “familiar with Finnish music thoroughly, widely, and without prejudice.”[5] While John, like any programmer or listener, can only present a finite number of examples of Finnish music, his work has nonetheless diversified Bloomington’s airwaves and the Finnish American radioscape as he has integrated his deep personal interests and expertise into local programming.

A wider range of styles produces a broader spectrum of resonances and opens up more possibilities for concrete effects. An article accompanying the aforementioned Indiana Daily Student article quotes late Bloomington music promoter, record store owner, and WFHB weekly host Tom Donohue[6] as saying of Scenes, “I’ll order whatever I happen to like from the show. It really helps with this otherwise small market; when something gets air play, people are more willing to give it a try… People are constantly amazed at the wide variety of music that comes from this little country” (1998b, 20). In 1993, WFHB sponsored a Värttinä concert at now-defunct Bloomington venue Jake’s. In John’s archive is a newspaper article from the Bloomington Herald-Times discussing the upcoming show and quoting John throughout (Mills 1993). In 1994, Finnish artists Maria Kalaniemi and JPP, who were then on a U.S. tour, played a benefit concert in Bloomington for the station. One of John’s tapes includes a recording of his promotion for that show, and while it is unclear exactly what parties were involved in organizing the concert, the tape places John at the forefront. These archival materials are demonstrations of resonance. Some show appreciation from listeners, musicians, and industry professionals who find that John’s work resonates with them or hope that John’s work on their behalf will resonate further with new audiences. Others frame John, in his role as a WFHB programmer, as a mediator of on-air and in-concert encounters between listeners in Bloomington and artists with ties to the Nordic region.

[1] Arguably the pinnacle of this national imaginary is the fictitious conspiracy theory “Finland Does Not Exist,” a joke originating on the social media platform Reddit which gained enough traction to garner coverage by provocative news outlet Vice in 2016 (https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-dude-accidentally-convinced-the-internet-that-finland-doesnt-exist/), its own entry on meme reference website Know Your Meme (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/finland-does-not-exist), and a now mostly inactive subreddit of its own (https://www.reddit.com/r/finlandConspiracy/).

[2] “English the Most Studied Language in Upper Secondary Education in 2022,” Statistics Finland, December 13, 2023, accessed August 18, 2025, https://stat.fi/julkaisu/cl8lflczsnwl50dutlpe8l0yj.

[3] Studies of Finnish language at the university level in the United States are found in a range of different area studies departments. They are nestled in the Scandinavian Studies program of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in Harvard, for example, while at Indiana University, they sit alongside a host of Turkic languages in the Central Eurasian Studies Department. I studied Finnish in the Scandinavian department at University of California, Berkeley, where we were taught early on that Finland and Iceland were not Scandinavian countries, but Nordic ones.

[4] Translation mine.

[5] Translation mine.

[6] Tom Donohue was the founder and proprietor of TD’s CDs and LPs, which existed under this same name until its new owners moved it and renamed it in 2024.