- Good evening. How are you doing? Great. Greetings from Finland.
- Thank you very much. Yeah, feels crazy to think that it was way over 20 years ago since we stood on
- this very same stage the first time. It's been a while and great to be back here in Bloomington. We
- were walking around in the town and
- Today we had some spare time in the afternoon. And yes, we really like it here. Great to see you all.
- We really like it here, for real. We started with the tune Tero has written. It's called Lemminkäinen
- Tempelissä in the Temple of Lemminkäinen.
- Lemminkäinen is one of the main characters in our national epic called Kalevala. A very stubborn character.
- Everything tends to go wrong with him for some reason. And there was this eccentric guy in Finland who
- was kind of a cult leader who had a lot of followers some time ago. And he claimed that he's actually
- related to Lemminkäinen. And he was so serious about this.
- that he actually told that there's a spot in southern Finland in a small town called Sipo and the temple
- of Lemminkainen is there deep underground so we need to dig it up so him together with his followers
- started to dig up the temple but for some reason they didn't find it I don't know why yet yeah but a
- few years ago a group of international investors bought this very same piece of land and let's see if they're
- going to dig some more dirt. Maybe they'll find it someday, you never know. We have the music ready
- in case they find the temple. All right, we're gonna play some dance music. This is the type of music
- that people in our home region in the valley of River Perho in Western Finland, this is the type of
- music people like to dance to in the weddings. There's Polska and Flikuleeri.
- Thank you very much. That was music from Kaustinen also, but it's composed by the most famous folk fiddler
- in Finland ever so far, called Konsta Jylhä, and the tune is called Tähtisilmä valssi. But now we'll
- play something we actually learned here. This is a Swedish tune, but I think that was our last time
- here, which was
- time before that I kind of remember exactly but it was over 10 years ago easily yes anyway and after
- our concert we went to a jam session and and the people there played this melody which we didn't know
- at that point and we learned to tune and we decided to make our own version next day we were driving
- somewhere else from here and we're singing there the melody in the car and decided to do our own version out of it
- And a few years later, we found out that it's actually composed by Roger Talroot from Wesson. And yeah,
- here it is. It's called Come Hem, Come Home.
- And that was 250 years old party music from Finland, two traditional Polskars. And we call this set
- Spoof. Next we'll play something that I composed. This is called Loimu. And Loimu is a light that you
- get from a fire when it's not burning anymore. From a fireplace, for example.
- we play something I composed for a cooking video. My friend was doing a cooking video, and he was doing
- a traditional Kaustinen dish from our region, Juusto Paisti, which is a cheese and meat stew. And he
- wanted me to compose background music for the video that would remind him of Kaustinen Folk Music Festival,
- so I did my job, and here's the Juusto Paisti Polska.
- and we'll combine it with Esko's tune, A Bit of Shottis. Yeah, it's called A Bit of Shottis.
- In many cases, it's much easier to write a tune than come up with a good name for it. There you go.
- Jäähubäis poloneisi, a farewell poloneise that I composed after my dad passed away way too early.
- Thank you very much. We've got time for one more tune. Before that, we want to thank Wayne, Tony, Eli,
- all the people here in the house taking good care of us and doing the sound, the lights, everything.
- Of course, all the volunteers of the festival who have been also taking really good care of us while
- we've been here so far. Big thank you. And we believe it will continue.
- We're gonna play a tune from Konsta Jylhä, who's the most famous Finnish folk musician ever.
- And in fact, he was so famous that in the 70s, he went to places by helicopter so that he was able to
- catch all the gigs he was ordered to play. Me and Tero, we're not quite there yet, but we believe that
- the direction is correct. And in case someone is interested, we brought some CDs and also sheet music
- books, so feel free to check out the merch.
- shop. Thank you very much and see you around. Have a good festival everybody.