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Written by Petteri Kainulainen
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Put together Argentinian tango, Slavic melancholy, and German march music, and what do you get? The Finnish tango. The Finns are a melancholy people and we have tangos to match. While Finnish tango is rather mournful, the original Argentinian tango is dark, hot, and sensual - although Argentinian philosopher Ricardo Gomez has noted that while people believe that tango is about passionate love, it really is about loneliness, yearning, and sexual passion.
World War II created an opportune moment for the Finnish tango. People were taken apart, sometimes for good - the yearning was intense and often endless. Toivo Kärki, the father of Finnish schlager, filled the void with his woeful tangos. His song "Siks oon mä suruinen" ("That's why I'm mournful"), written in the 1940s, is still a favorite in karaoke bars.
"...niin paljon meni kanssas kaunista pois
siks oon mä suruinen..."
"... I lost so much beauty when I lost you
That's why I'm mournful..."
When a Finn likes something there is no changing his mind. The Seinäjoki Tango Festival has been the largest annual summer festival in Finland ever since the 1990s. There might be some anti-tangoists who can hardly tell you where Seinäjoki is, yet every July the small town is flooded with 130,000 tango enthusiasts - bear in mind that there are only five million of us!
At the festival, tango dancers hit the streets and tension mounts up to the Tango Singing Contest final as the new singing royalty are chosen. The true blue Tango Queen and Tango King propagate the gospel of tango and sing themselves into the hearts of Finns - and, as the song goes, make a grown man cry.
In addition to the tango, Finns are enthusiastic about beauty pageantry. Combine these two and you get a beauty pageant called Miss Tango. The competitors are not tango singers nor tango dancers, but just beautiful people. Thus, the singing competition is reserved for real singers, and beauty - well, it ends up in the tabloids.
Finnish tango and dance pavilions live on in our hearts.
www.tangomarkkinat.fi |
