Polkas

This week I taught you three tunes from Denmark, Finland and Estonia. The common denominator was that they all were different kinds of polka, or at least 2/4 polka-like tunes. Although there are lots of different types of dance tunes played in these countries, the polka has definitely been very popular in both Denmark and Finland. For those of you who want to here some more music from these areas I am putting together a play list on spotify, which I will add below in the coming days.

The first tune we did was ‘Jysk Fynsk’ ,  a local name for Rheinlænder-polka, from a recording with fiddler Levy Vilsen from Læsø, Denmark. The second one was a polka recorded by the influential Finnish folk group Kankaan Pelimannit, I don’t know much about the tune other than it was called Stövelpolka (Boot-polka) on a Swedish issue of their 1977 LP ‘Kangas Spelmän’ . The last short little tune was a Swedish-Estonian polka-like ‘laik’ (tune) from the bowed harp (talharpa) player Hans Renqvist from Ormsö in Estonia.

Jysk Fynsk

Stövelpolka

Laik