Globalisation, Hybridisation and the Finnishness of the Finnish Tango
YRJÖ HEINONEN Yrjö Heinonen GLOBALISATION, hyBRIDISATION AND THE FINNISHNESS OF THE FINNISH TANGO The tango arrived in Finland at the threshold of the First World War. Most ac- counts state that the year was 1913. Within a quarter of century, this originally indigenous genre from the Rio de la Plata area of South America was domes- ticated in Finland. Within another it had become a cultural institution. After a decline of two decades or so, it has, once again, played an important role in the cultural life of Finland. The fascinating history of the tango in Finland is examined here in the frame- work of cultural globalisation and hybridisation or, as Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2009) has put it, globalisation as hybridisation. The complex relations of the tango to global flows and Finnishness are explored in relation to global waves of popular music, changes in thinking concerning Finnishness and the function of the tango in Finland at different times. As for hybridisation, the focus is on from which repertoires, foreign and domestic, tango in Finland has drawn, why has it done so and how is the impact of these traditions audible in Finnish tangos of different periods. These issues are explored both on a general level and through detailed musical analyses of selected examples representing different periods of the tango in Finland. © SES & Yrjö Heinonen, Etnomusikologian vuosikirja 2016, vol. 28, ss. 1– 36. 1 GLOBALISATION, HYBRIDISATION AND THE FINNISHNESS OF THE FINNISH TANGO Globalisation, hybridisation and Finnishness Tensions between the global and the local have been addressed since the early 1990s in numerous books and articles representing various disciplines.
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