BIOGRAPHY
Musician and composer Antti Paalanen (b. 1977) has been prominent in the field of Finnish contemporary folk music for many years. Antti Paalanen makes his music on the bisonoric (diatonic) accordion, a common instrument in Finnish folk music for the past century. Paalanen has employed an organic performance style, new techniques and new expressive sonorities to expand the potential of the instrument to embrace a variety of genres.
Paalanen comes from South Ostrobothnia, a region in the western Finland rich in the pelimanni (’traditional musician’) tradition of Finnish folk music. Between 1989 and 1996, Paalanen won the Finnish pelimanni championships on the diatonic accordion four times, and he placed second in the diatonic accordion world championships in Austria in 1999. He enrolled at the Department of Folk Music at the Sibelius Academy in 1997 and completed his M.Mus. degree in 2006. In 2015 he completed a D.Mus. degree at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.
Paalanen has released four solo albums: Äärelä (2007), Breathbox (2010), Meluta (2014) and Rujo (2019). Meluta was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize 2016 and for the national Teosto Prize in 2015. Breathbox and Rujo albums has been nominated as the Etno Album of the Year 2011 and 2020 at the annual Emma Gala, which is equal to Grammy's in Finland. Meluta was also the final component of Antti Paalanen’s artistically oriented doctorate, Bursting bellows – Bisonoric accordion’s bellows rhythmics in composition, which was examined at the Sibelius Academy in May 2015. His doctorate focused on writing new music for the bisonoric accordion from the perspective of instrumentality. Antti Paalanen received Nordic songwriters organizations NPU prize in the year 2022 and was awarded as the Composer of Finnish Contemporary Folk Music 2019 by the Finnish Music Publishers Association (MPA Finland).
For the last few years Antti has been touring festivals all over the World – mostly around Europe, but also in USA, Canada, Russia and Japan. Paalanen is active as a musician and a composer in a number of contexts in Finland. He appears on 15 albums by various bands to date, contributing compositions and arrangements. He has written music for the stage and been employed as a stage musician at the Finnish National Theatre and other major Finnish theatres.
Meluta (We Wanna Make Some Noise)
Combining traditional Finnish music with Electronic Dance Music, all on the accordion. Antti Paalanen superimposes the good-natured atmosphere of the accordion on the heady beats of electronic music.
After all, the accordion has always made people dance. With Antti Paalanen it's just a little bit tougher. Metal lover since adolescence, Antti Paalanen adds to this blend of accordion and technoid influences a throaty singing inspired by Siberian traditions. This fusion of the ancient and the modern gives the impression of participating in a Viking festival under acid.
In Paalanen’s music, man and accordion breathe the same air and exude the same energy. He creates a one-man band, simultaneously producing bass, harmony, melody, vocals and percussion. The result is a massive, pulsating wall of sound where at times it is impossible to tell whether it is the musician or the instrument producing the sound. This dialogue between musician and instrument has given a birth to an alter ego, a volcanic man who screams at his accordion, kicks at the floor and snorts like a raging bull.
Paalanen has a vision of bringing the accordion into modern genres of dance music, which means mining the capabilities of the instrument for the sort of sonority and power expected by listeners of contemporary popular music. Paalanen combines lovely melodic lines with a modern techno beat and throat singing that resembles the grunting vocal styles of metal music. The sound of the accordion is augmented with a sound world created by sound technician Samuli Volanto that elegantly supports Paalanen’s vision.
Meluta as part of an artistically oriented doctorate
Meluta album was the final component of Antti Paalanen’s artistically oriented doctorate, Bursting bellows – Bisonoric accordion’s bellows rhythmics in composition, which was examined at the Sibelius Academy in May 2015. His doctorate focused on writing new music for the bisonoric accordion from the perspective of instrumentality.
A bisonoric accordion commonly has one, two or three rows of buttons on the right hand keyboard, with each row producing the notes of a single diatonic scale. As the name indicates, the instrument is built so that each key produces one of two pitches depending on whether the bellows are being pushed (closed) or pulled (opened). The bisonoric accordion is also known as the ’melodeon’ or ‘button box’.
An accordion is classified as an aerophone, meaning that it produces a sound by causing a column of air to vibrate. What is interesting about the accordion is that the sound is not actually produced by the free reeds within the instrument; the air pressure created by the bellows causes the reeds to make the air around them vibrate at specific pitches. Paalanen has given his instrument a new name: ‘breathbox’.
Paalanen uses the special properties of his instrument to create music that cannot be performed on any other instrument. He has devised his own keyboard layout for his three row button accordion and developed new techniques based on a rhythmic use of the bellows of the instrument. He has coined the umbrella term ‘bellows rhythmics’ for these techniques. Most of the pieces on the Meluta album are based on bellows rhythmics and other playing techniques developed by Paalanen himself.