Prayers Long Silent Famagusta 2016 (original) (raw)

Menneiden ja tulevien äänten risteyksessä

Tekniikan Waiheita

In Finnish popular music, the adoption of electronic musical instruments, such as synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, samplers, computers and musical software progressed slowly and was a complicated process until the early 1990s. Compared with Swedish, German and British pop and rock the electronic instruments remained longer in the margins of rock and pop rock. Regardless of the breakthrough of synths and drum machines in certain styles, such as progressive rock, funk and disco, synth pop and hip hop, the majority of Finnish bands and artists shunned synthesizers until the mid-1980s. Only after the waves of hip hop, house, techno and euro dance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, synthesizers were widely accepted as ‘normal’ and equal rock instruments. In this article, I focus on the adoption of music technology among Finnish rock and pop musicians of the 1970s and 1980s. I have interviewed three electronic musicians from three different generations. Esa Kotilainen (b. 1946), P...