The music of Finland can be roughly divided into folk music, classical and contemporary art music, and contemporary popular music.
Jyväskylä is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Central Finland. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Jyväskylä is approximately 148,000, while the sub-region has a population of approximately 191,000. It is the 7th most populous municipality in Finland, and the fifth most populous urban area in the country.
Jussi Pekka Pohjola was a Finnish multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer. Best known as a bass player, Pohjola was also a classically trained pianist and violinist.
RinneRadio is a Finnish group of electro jazz pioneers. Operating on the boundaries of jazz and electronic music, RinneRadio fused jazz into ambient music and techno years before it became a worldwide trend and added hints of world music into it. In the third part, Suomi soi 3 ‒ Ääniaalloilta parrasvaloihin of a book series about popular music in Finland, it has been written that RinneRadio was several years ahead of their time when they started.
Kirill "Kirka" Babitzin was one of the most commercially successful Finnish musicians. His career spanned from the late 1960s until his death in 2007.
Anssi Kela is a Finnish singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist who has published six albums. During his career, Kela has sold over 230,000 records in Finland. He received four Emma awards in 2002.
Love Records was a record label from Finland established in 1966 by Christian Schwindt. It specialized in Finnish rock and also released jazz, leftist political songs, and ethnic music.
Eero Koivistoinen is a Finnish jazz musician and saxophone player, who started his career in the mid-1960s. Koivistoinen has worked as a musician, composer, arranger, conductor, producer and educator. He first heard jazz from the records his sailor brother had brought in from his travels. As a youngster Koivistoinen studied classical violin, saxophone and also composition at the Sibelius Academy, and later jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston. His first line-up featured the drummer Edward Vesala and bassist Pekka Sarmanto. Koivistoinen was also a member of the seminal Finnish rock band Blues Section in the years 1967 and 1968. In 1968 he released his first solo album, a "literary record" called Valtakunta which featured songs composed to the texts of such poets as Pentti Saarikoski, Jarkko Laine, Tuomas Anhava and Hannu Mäkelä; interpreted by the vocalists Vesa-Matti Loiri, Eero Raittinen and Seija Simola. Eero Koivistoinen's later solo albums such as Wahoo (1972) enjoy a considerable international reputation. His hip hop-influenced 2006 album X-Ray features such people as the vocalists Charles Salter and Bina Nkwazi, DJ LBJ and the rap artist Redrama.
"Satumaa" is the quintessential Finnish tango. It was written by Unto Mononen, and published in 1955. The most famous recording is probably the one made by Reijo Taipale in 1962. The lyrics tell a story of a distant land beyond the sea – a happy paradise – however, the narrator can only reach it in his thoughts. The song has been recorded countless times, mainly by male Finnish tango singers.
Samuli Casimir Edelmann is a Finnish actor and singer.
Slow or DJ Slow is a Finnish DJ and music producer. Slow is known for his nu-jazz style and for his production of commercial music for high-profile advertising projects for TV and cinema.
Carola Christina Standertskjöld-Liemola, professionally known as Carola, was a Finnish jazz and pop singer. Her style was partially inspired by American singers of the 1950s. Simultaneously, it was in the spirit of the modal jazz scene going down in Europe in the 1960s. Mostly, Carola's jazz repertoire consisted in idiosyncratic versions of American songs in English, while her most famous jazz track "The Flame" was an original composition by Esa Pethman and the lyrics by the singer herself. As the vocalist for Esa Pethman's quartet and Hazy Osterwald's sextet in the early 1960s, Carola made fame in Finland and Sweden, and toured Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland. Her most significant recording is a session with the Heikki Sarmanto Trio from 1966, which the Finnish Music Information Centre considers among the original blueprints of Finnish jazz. Carola's recordings have been credited for the accosting tone of her contralto voice and her phrasing. The singer also co-produced the groovy approach of her supporting orchestras. In late 1960s and early 1970s, she performed in nine languages and a wide variety of styles, including chanson, schlager, Latin, rock'n'roll, and soul. After her death of Alzheimer's disease in 1997, Carola's music was revived in 2004 with two Best of albums and Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio reaching the Finnish charts.
Kauko Röyhkä,, is a Finnish rock musician, author and screenwriter. Since the early 1980s he has been a popular rock artist in Finland known especially as a strong lyricist.
Agents is a Finnish band formed in 1979, playing rautalanka, schlager and rock'n'roll music. The head figure and musical director of the band is solo guitarist Esa Pulliainen.
SlowHill are a Finnish instrumental downtempo/lounge band formed in 2002 by Slow and award-winning saxophonist Tapani Rinne. The band fuses downtempo beats into easy listening jazz atmospheres.
Elonkorjuu is a Finnish progressive rock band formed in 1969. It was first active until 1978 and re-established in 2003.
Ode to Booker Ervin is an album by American trumpeter Ted Curson which was recorded in Helsinki and first released on the Finnish EMI Columbia label in 1970. The album features Curson with a band composed of local Finnish jazz musicians. The album is dedicated to tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin who died at the end of August 1970, a few days before the recording session.
Måns Ivar Åkesson "Måsse" Groundstroem [grʊndström] is a Finnish bass player, studio technician and music producer. He has recorded ca. 100 music albums and produced another 70 albums. Most of these albums were released by Love Records.
Pekka Heikki Tapani Gronow is a Finnish ethnomusicologist and historian of the recording industry. He studied at Wesleyan University with David P. McAllester and Robert E. Brown and at the University of Helsinki and received his PhD from the University of Tampere. He was the head of the record library at Yleisradio 1989–2006 and an archiving specialist 2007–2008. Gronow became known in the 1960s for his radio programs on jazz and blues. In 1966 he founded with M. A. Numminen Eteenpäin, a record company which issued Numminen's works and other underground artists.
Feeliks Esaias "Esa" Pakarinen was a Finnish actor, singer, accordionist and comedian, best known for the role of Pekka Puupää in the Pekka and Pätkä films from 1953–1960. He was also a skilled, self-taught accordion player.
