Fin-a-Billy: American Roots Music and Rebellion in Finland

Due to the ongoing pandemic, FinnFest USA chose to go virtual once again after a successful 2021 line-up. This year's online programming includes the Finnish American Folk Arts Series. The first presentation of the year, Fin-A-Billy: American Roots Music and Rebellion in Finland, featured the work of Nathan Gibson.

During the 1970s, there was an enormous American roots music boom in Finland, spawning hundreds of Fin-A-Billy (Finnish rockabilly, country, bluegrass, blues, and related genres) bands with thousands of fans. Folklorist and ethnomusicologist Nathan Gibson will share his research and musical samples of the ways many Finns have connected with American culture through American roots music over the last 60 years.

Nathan Gibson is a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, musician, and the Audio-Visual Preservation Archivist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At UW–Madison, Nate runs the audio preservation studio at Mills Music Library and works on the “Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest” and “Nordic Folklife” projects. He’s also the author of the award winning book, The Starday Story—The House That Country Music Built, and recently completed an amazing musical project called Nate Gibson and the Stars of Starday in which he recorded 24 songs with 14 stars of Starday.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Nathan was a guest researcher at Tampere University between 2012 and 2013, during which time he was researching his dissertation on American Roots Music in Finland and both touring and recording with several Fin-A-Billy bands.

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It's been said, that Finland is Swedish, sometimes Russian, so why not American too—all that is probably true to some extend. The Finnish emigrants played a part in American design and also in introducing the latest music to Finns from over seas. Jazz and so on. As did the sailors, travellers and so on. Jazz was played in Finland first time in the 1910s and 1920s.The leading chewing gum brand "Jenkki" (Yank) came to stores in 1951. Name given to the chewing gum after the US soldiers, who introduced chewing gum to Europeans during the WW2. Coca cola arrived to Finland in 1952 during the Helsinki Olympics etc. The 1st OSCE Summit probably wouldn't have taken place in Helsinki in 1975 if Finland would have been considered to particularly be culturally or ideologically on either side of the Iron Curtain. Leningrad Cowboys is probably a good allegory for Finland geopolitical and cultural position between the West and the East. That been said, there's a humorous saying among the Finns, that Finland is the most American country in the world. Example of Finlandization was how Renny Harlin's movie "Born American" got censorized in the 1986. A year after Rocky IV hit the theaters. In Finnish context, for the most Finns the Conference Flag is probably just part of the Americana relating to Rockabilly. In general, most of the Finns probably like to enjoy Americana as an apolitical thing. The most popular fast-food chain in Finland is the Finnish chain called Hesburger. The yuppies in Finland in the 80s were more yuppies than anywhere, because they had the first mobile phones. I'm not sure if they were buying particularly American products, though. Their cars were probably German and suits were Italian. The Finnish baseball (Pesäpallo) was invented by Lauri Pihkala in the 1910s for military purposes. It combined the American baseball and the Finnish ballgame called kuningaspallo (Kings' Ball), which was played from late19th century to 1914. As a sports, pesäpallo isn't considered to have much to do with the American baseball. It's more popular or essential sport in the small rural towns than in the bigger urban cities. I'm not sure how accurately youth magazine Suosikki and record sales reflect, which music was the most popular at the time. Considering who were buying records. If you consider E.g. Punk bands, they were clearly part of the underground culture and mostly produced and sold their records themselves. Sex Pistols wasn't even allowed to perform in Finland in 1978. Copying albums to C-cassettes was also very common. The most popular music genres were probably Iskelmä/Schlager, Tango, Pop and in the 80s Suomirock; Rock sang in Finnish about Finnish culture and lifestyle. Singing about Finnish culture and lifestyle is something, which foreign bands and artist obviously seldom do. Many nations don't have a national epic like Kalevala. The most popular comical fictional character was Uuno Turhapuro, who probably hasn't got much to do with Amaricana in any way. Some bands wanted to do songs in English and sound as an authentic American/British band. Most didn't. Hurriganes was managed to that and was partly popular for being able to do so. Keeping also in mind that modern day American design owes to European immigrants like the Finnish-born Eero Saarinen.