Teosto awardee Jenni Kinnunen discovered new electric guitar music between Savo and Japan

Lapinlahti

Spring has come to Lapland.

The sun is shining through the clouds and the rest of the old snow is slowly disappearing from the shadows of the trees. People walk along the streets of the city center unhurriedly. The second pizzeria in the locality is temporarily closed. The other has two customers.

Lapinlahti, located between Viitostie and the Savo railway, may be just another crossing or train stop among others, but Lapinlahti has everything, such as a real rock club that offers live music.

Not to mention Lapinlahti’s past cultural figures, such as the writer From Juhani Ahoa painter Pekka from Halo and the entire Halonen artist family.

There is also the debut album, one of last year’s finest, Nekorokinguitarist and composer of the band Tinyhawk & Bizzarro Jenni Kinnunen. Together with his ensembles, he is also the second recipient of this year’s Teosto award for contemporary music composer Minna Leinonen alongside.

Now Kinnunen is waiting in the cafe of Lapinlahti’s old station.

A masterpiece-the prize amount is 40,000 euros, and half of it goes to Kinnuse and his work group. Kinnunen is confused and delighted by the significant attention.

“I had thought of it more as an award for songwriters, in art music, for composers.”

Kinnunen is not a songwriter, because he has composed instrumental music, and he does not make art music, but a fusion of numerous genres of electric guitar music that fits loosely under the umbrella of rock.

He sips tea from a large old-fashioned porcelain cup and speaks calmly, occasionally chuckling in a self-deprecating tone. The North Savonian note is heard in the speech, even though Kinnunen lived in Helsinki for twenty years. He moved back to his hometown last year.

Returning to Savo felt natural, because Kinnunen is originally from Iisalmi, and his partner lives in Kuopio. Lapinlahti had become known as a summer resort. Now he also has a home in Lapinlahti, which is still under renovation.

“There’s another S-market over there, where I’ve been a bit like a convenience store. And Höyrybari, where I have performed. Small factors like this made me think, okay, this is a nice place and there are nice people here,” he says.

“Sometimes I’m only here one day a week.”

Jenni from Kinnuse became an electric guitarist and composer through many twists and turns. The earliest memories of music are from early childhood.

“I was maybe four years old. My cousin played the piano and introduced his favorite artists, Madonnaa and New Kids on the Block. I admired him, and wanted to take piano lessons myself. At first it was nice.”

However, he had a very strict teacher at the Iisalmi music college.

“From childhood playing lessons, the word ‘nice’ is not really associated with the hobby of playing.”

At around the age of 12, Kinnunen no longer wanted to take piano lessons. At the same time, he was excited to listen to Nirvana and wanted to learn to play the guitar. In practice, it meant that the piano changed to studying the classical guitar, and the mechanics of the new instrument took its course.

Kinnunen says that he took his own time to get the brain used to the fact that in the guitar, as in other stringed instruments, the notes are not in front of the player in a row behind the keyboard that goes logically from left to right, but in a system formed by the strings and the fingerboard, where the same notes can be played from several different places.

A classical guitar is played by plucking with fingers and nails, and the strings of an electric guitar are usually plucked or struck with a plectrum. Kinnunen also plays with the plectrum now, although he sometimes uses his fingers to help.

“Yes, this still goes with me,” he says and shows the fingernails of his right hand.

“But I no longer spend 45 minutes every day grinding and putting them on.”

My own making compositions started when Kinnunen was in his second year at the Turku Academy of Music, and he was unexpectedly offered a place in an improvisation workshop organized in Denmark. Once there, it turned out that it was a three-week project, in which 11 pieces had to be completed.

Immediately after that, there were no more new songs, until Kinnunen got to know a visual artist in Stockholm, who had made a travelogue consisting of small pictures in a sketchbook.

“I looked at one picture and a song started playing in my head. Then it was like that for years. They came from somewhere, and I wrote them in a desk drawer.”

Kinnunen does not compose his songs on the guitar, but writes them on the computer keyboard in the note writing program’s memory, so the timbre of the guitar does not control or limit the final result.

It was needed however, one more unusual step before Tinyhawk & Bizzarro’s debut album took shape. Kinnunen, who graduated as a musician, also wanted to study carpentry. The studies started in 2020.

“There in the woodworking school, you had to do things with skills that were not finished, and that process went hand in hand with the songs. I am very grateful to the school for that.”

As the final project of his carpentry studies, Kinnunen made a Japanese-Scandinavian mini house kitchen.

“It’s assembleable and has everything you need. The table top is attached with six screws, but otherwise everything is wood joints. It can be assembled and disassembled by yourself in half an hour. I use it at the cottage.”

The kitchenette was ready, as were the pieces. A band was no longer needed.

Kinnunen met a guitarist from Kuopio Markus Väisänen, who had made an album of his own instrumental songs with the Bizzarro group. Väisänen suggested that we try playing together.

“From the first training sessions, everything fell into place.”

At the same time, the plan of working as a carpenter moved to the future.

Now Awarded the Teosto award Nekorok-album has received an enthusiastic reception. Traces of many different sources of inspiration have been found in the album’s music. One point of comparison has been the American band Khruangbin, which Kinnunen says he heard for the first time only after all the songs on the album were already done.

The connections with Japanese popular culture are more obvious, and Kinnunen confirms them. The collapsible kitchenette is not the only result of Japanese influences in his work. Traces lead to childhood and Hayao Miyazakin to anime movies

“The first was for sure Totorowhich I have seen so small that it is only a faint memory of that world, which was really mysterious and fascinating.”

Hidden by spirits after seeing it, he became interested in Japanese aesthetics and the Japanese language.

Nekorokon the album, the songs have names in Japanese, but the Japanese language is not heard in the songs. And no other language. Although Kinnunen might hum melodies that come to mind on his phone when making songs, he has not yet needed vocals for them.

“I’ve never separated music by whether it has vocals or not. I have the background of playing classical guitar as a soloist, and storytelling exists without words.”

Kinnus tea has cooled down ages ago, the old guys at the neighboring table have at the same time put local and national affairs in order, and almost everything has worked out.

Other than Tinyhawk, where does it come from?

Kinnusta starts to laugh.

“A couple of years ago, I was still living in Helsinki, it was my birthday, and we were eating ice cream in Tove Jansson’s park. Our mixer Tuukka Tervo said that he has a new contemporary music trio that does not have a name yet. I can’t explain why, but I suddenly stood up, raised my hand in the air and shouted ‘tinyhawk’. Then we laughed like crazy.”

Markus Väisänen’s father had later told Kinnuse that the name was given to him.

“When it came in such a strange way,” Kinnunen says and laughs again.

“When we were preparing for the first gig, there was a creaking sound from the tree and soon a small hawk was barking from above. There have been all sorts of things here.”