Description
Uusikuu celebrate their Sweet Sixteen anniversary with their fifth album “Karuselli” and light 16
candles on their birthday cake. In 2006, Finnish singer Laura Ryhänen, violinist Mikko Kuisma, and
German accordionist Norbert Bremes founded the world music ensemble Uusikuu (New Moon) with
their colleagues at the time. Their ambitious goal: to breathe new life into the traditional Finnish
tango! Today, the ensemble’s line-up includes James Geier on guitar and Florian Dohrmann on double
bass.
Uusikuu bow admiringly to the traditional Nordic light music of the 1930s to 1960s. The band calls
their style “Vintage Sounds of Finland”. On “Karuselli”, the band again celebrates the Finnish dance
style jenkka, which is relatively unknown outside Finland in this country. So not “Tango Nuevo”, but
“Jenkka Nuevo”!
Three elements characterise Uusikuu’s repertoire: new interpretations of classics, rediscovered jewels
of Finnish dance music and pieces written by the band members themselves. “We tell fairy tales for
adults about the bizarreness of Nordic life,” Laura Ryhänen sums up the band’s philosophy. On
“Karuselli”, the musicians lovingly remind us that life turns like a fairground carousel. Sadness
follows joy, hopeless love dances with ecstasy and loneliness holds hands with intimate togetherness.
According to the philosophy of Uusikuu, true joie de vivre only comes from kaiho, the Finnish
equivalent of the Portuguese saudade, i.e. gentle melancholy. Kaiho, however, does not exist among
the musicians without a large portion of self-irony and wit.
GENRE: Folk Finland
BARCODE: 4251329501884
