At our April meeting, Dr. Carl Rahkonen, Music Librarian and Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, presented a program on Finnish fiddling. He told of how he became interested in playing Finnish folk music on the fiddle, when he went to Finland to work on his doctoral dissertation on the Kantele, in 1983. Although he had been to Finland earlier, with his mother, when he was five years old, and remembered his grandfather, Arvo Mäkelä playing harmonica and fiddle, on his later trip he found that his grandfather had passed away four months previously. However, he met his grandfather’s brother, Toivo, who also played harmonica and fiddle. The Family had made a tape recording of the brothers’ music, which Carl was able to copy. Since Carl showed such an interest in music, he was presented with his grandfather’s fiddle, as a gift. Since that introduction to Finnish fiddling, many years ago, Carl has become a very accomplished musician and scholar of Finnish and American folk music. After playing for us some of the taped music of his grandfather and great uncle, Carl treated the audience to his own wonderful playing of Finnish fiddle tunes, joined by Richard Koski on button accordion. We all enjoyed Carl’s interesting and entertaining pro-gram and hope he visits us again soon.
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