Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Tanda of the Week 52 / 2011 - Olavi Virta (tango Finlandia)

Listen to the tanda - MP3 
Finnish Tango Playlist on Spotify

1. Bruno Laakko & Lepakot / Olavi Virta - "Unohtumaton koti" 1939
2. Bruno Laakko & Lepakot / Olavi Virta - "Vain yhtä pyydän"1939
3. Isku Orkesteri / Olavi Virta - "Mikä mielesi muuttanut on" 1944
4. Isku Orkesteri / Olavi Virta - "Marjukka" 1944

Merry Christmas and happy New Year! I had the pleasure of dj'ing in a grand new years eve ball in Helsinki. The event was organized by the "We Love Helsinki" collective that has had great success organizing retro-dance parties where people dress up and dance all night to 30s to 70s finnish music from tango to foxtrot, swing and rock and roll. It was my second time dj'ing at these events and the massive party had probably close to 800 people and I also gave a short argentine tango lesson to about 150 students!

Anyway... inspired by playing a 2 hour set of only finnish dance music I'd like to share another tanda of finnish tango and from none other than the Carlos Gardel of Finland: Olavi Virta (1915-1972), who made almost 600 recordings in 1938-1963 of which 136 were tangos. Here's four songs that are less well known and I surely could find songs that would present the maestro better but these songs have been some of my personal favorites for a long time so here goes. The first two were recorded for Columbia recordings in 1939 and at the beginning of the songs you can hear the young singer introducing the orchestra, song and the vocalist as it was the custom of Columbia at that time. The orchestra was Dallapé who made these recordings under the pseudonym "Bruno Laakko & Lepakot (The Bats)". The last two songs were recorded in 1944 for a short lived finnish record company "Isku" and Olavi Virta recorded with the company orchestra "Isku-orkesteri".

I will add some more description of the songs and lyrics later when I have more time. I hope you enjoy the music.

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