As a metalhead as well, those sad and somber songs do it for me. "Varpunen Jouluaamuna" (A Sparrow on the Christmas Morning (written about his dead baby)) and "Sylvian Joululaulu" among the best. There's two sides to Christmas in Finland, on the other it's somber and church-like, but there are happy songs also like "Joulumaa".
Finnish Christmas songs: a tortured bird is in a cage (Sylvian joululaulu) , a pig is going to be killed (Sika), my little brother is dead and haunting to me as a little bird (Varpunen jouluaamuna). Well, Joulumaa and Tonttuparaati are quite happy songs.
My now favorite Christmas album Is Tarja Turunen "From Spirits and Ghosts: Scores for Dark Christmas." Tarja is internationally the best known Finnish singer I'm pretty sure, and one of her major genres is Christmas songs. She sings traditional Finnish songs, classical church music (which also goes as Christmas music) but this album is very different: it is actually a Gothic take on international traditional Christmas songs. There's fantastic music videos from the album in YT, for example "O Tannenbaum" (very popular Christmas song , in Finnish "Oi kuusipuu"). All of the songs on that album are very beautifully sung, if you wish to listen.
2 года назад
Thanks for the recommendation. will check it out :)
As a non Christian Finn I see a difference between Joululaulu and Christmas song. For me Joulu isn't so Christian festivity and also not all seasonal songs for Joulu are about Christianity. Christianity has made an excellent job in piggybacking on older local traditions and taking them almost totally over. I hope Burmese people can also see how such cultural invasion isn't without room for some criticism.
Recommendation: gather all your foreigner colleagues into a choir, and perform some Finnish Christmas songs in Finnish for your Finnish colleagues as your party-piece for pikkujoulou. :-)
To "fully" understand some of those songs you would need some knowledge or even experience of much older times and cultural circumstances of those times. Interpretations without such background and context can give very different understanding. But since it is art and performances, of course audience is even expected to have their own unique interpretations.
How about this one? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vD9VD6xT1FA.html ? Not the most joyful Christmas Carol ever, but it surely rocks...
