Konsta Jylhä

The musical traditions of Finland were preserved by fiddler, composer and bandleader Konsta Jylha. A third generation fiddler, Jylha is best remembered for his work with the Kaustinen Potpourri Players, a group that recorded a two-volume collection of Finnish folk dances between 1970 and 1972. The albums were described by Folk Tales as "something of a musical link between folk music and some of the classical orchestral compositions that used the folk tunes of their day." Learning to play the harmonium as child, Jylha spent hours in his mother's coffee shop, the Santer's Cafe, listening to the fiddlers who gathered daily to play. Initially focusing on traditional music, Jylha began writing his own tunes after an accident forced him to retire from his truck driving job in 1964. Over the next twenty years, he wrote more than one hundred and twenty fiddling tunes and spirituals.His most successful composotions were "Konstan Parempi Valssi (Konsta's Better Waltz)" and "Valennut Viulu (The Silent Fiddler)." ~ Craig Harris