Yooper Creoles: Finnish Music in Michigan's Copper Country

(2019) 65 minutes DVD

In 1937 legendary folklorist Alan Lomax, launched what he called “a rapid recording survey” through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  He lamented that “there was more material than I had time to record. Yet the region’s singers, musicians, and dancers carried on: sustaining, modifying, merging, and creating a dizzying, continuously emerging array of traditions.

In the 1970s a Finnish miner’s son from Calumet, Oren Tikkanen, like U.P. performers before him, embraced both the many-splendored soundscape of his home region’s music. Yooper Creoles: Finnish Music in Copper Country features Tikkanen’s collaborative adventures with stellar performers past and present, at house parties, halls, taverns, and festivals.

-Written by folklorist, Jim Leary, PhD