Yooper Creoles: Finnish Music in Michigan’s Copper Country – Official Trailer

In 1937 legendary folklorist Alan Lomax, launched what he called “a rapid recording survey” through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, capturing extraordinary songs with disc recorder and movie camera rom Croatian, French Canadian, German, Lithuanian, Ojibwe, and especially Finnish singers and musicians. Praising the vibrant soundscape of “the most interesting country I have ever traveled in,” 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 —Croatian tamburitzans, French Canadian fiddlers, Italian serenaders, militant miners, lumber camp balladeers, Finnish topical singers and dance hall entertainers that now pervades our film. 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. Tikkanen’s musical odyssey intersected continuously with filmmaking by cultural sociologist Michael Loukinen, and extensive field research by folklorist Jim Leary, who each have documented the full range of Upper Peninsula musicians since the 1980s. With Alex Maier’s wonderful editing our film lovingly interweaves the creative roots, sounds and stories of Tikkanen and fellow Yoopers, with a nod to Lomax, archival clips from Loukinen’s prior films, and Leary’s interspersed observations. Written by folklorist Jim Leary, PhD

-Written by folklorist, Jim Leary, PhD

This film was released in 2019 and is 65 minutes long. 

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