Divided Nation on Records: The Transnational Formation of Finnish Popular Music During the Gramophone Fever

Abstract

Tikka and Suodenjoki explore how imported gramophone records shaped the idea of Finnish popular music and thereby fed the experiences of the nation among Finnish consumers in the late 1920s. They focus on Finnish-American records, which were imported to Finland by transnational agents during the so-called gramophone fever. As these records reached consumers, they tapped into experience communities that were based on the deep political divides of the newly independent nation-state, which had witnessed a Civil War in 1918. In a very short period of time, modern popular music, played and danced to in homes and public spaces, became a key means by which people lived out the nation and its class-based demarcations in their everyday practices.