Niko and Jessica has on their debut album made new arrangements to old Swedish folksongs but also made new compositions to texts by the poet Alexander Slotte. Slotte wrote lyrics to old folk tunes and published them in the collection of poems called ”sånger och syner” from 1918 (authors translation: songs and visions ). Jessica and Niko have taken these poems and made new modern folksongs were the fondness of their hometown can be heard.
The album was released 11.9.2020.
We have had the joy to be already featured in beautiful radio shows and articles and you can follow us on our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/kusinernariippa to get the latest news.
Our next streamed concert will be in December, our traditional Midvinterkonsert – Midwinter concert 21.12 goes DIGITAL.
Here is our version of the Swedish folk song “Uti vår hage” .
La Riippa group will be releasing new music this autumn and here is our first single “Answers”. It can be found on all major digital streaming services.
Answers is dedicated to the youth who striv for a better world! Do let us know what you think!
When I was 6 I started playing soccer and my childhood and teens where filled with the passion of the game. I continued to play for many years and when I was in the women’s team we were quite successful, but not even near to where my “old team” is now! The women’s team in my tiny hometown are now in the women’s league in Finland and next week they will have their first game against HJK.
I was last autumn confronted by the idea of writing the team their own song. The person who also is in the music field just dropped the idea that I should do that, and actually this thought hit me hard, harder than I think the person ever would have guessed. Ideas started running through my head and it didn’t take me long to contact the team and propose a collaboration where I would make them a song for the historic year in front of them. They jumped on it, and now about a half year later the song has been born and released. It can be heard on the radio via the following link https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2019/04/04/jessica-riippa-firar-historisk-fotbollsbragd-med-ny-musik
It will also eventually be released on other channels, but for now the team has been given the gift and they may use the song in whatever way they please to promote and celebrate this year. I had a blast and am proud to have been able to do this project and you have my support! HEJA IK MYRAN!
What a start to Autumn! It´s getting chilly but I feel that I´m on fire!
La Riippa Group just finished their autumn tour. We did a great gig at Musik and Talang in Vasa and our shared gig with Månskensbonden at Vuotalo in Helsinki was real fun. I think I´ll soon put up a video from that performance!
Photo by Erik Åhman from the gig at Musik & Talang 2018.
and look what splendid playlists and features we´ve been linked to(!):
“Beyond Boundaries is a 10-track playlist aiming to feature 10 “out-of-the-box”, outstanding gems! Not exactly unclassified, but certainly unique and uncommon.”:
I´m going to Musiikki ja Media this Thursday and I´ll post about that here and on my social medias. Soon I´m also off to Norway with my class, yes I´m studying: Masters in Entrepreneurship in the Arts. We are going to Kristiansand and I´m really looking forward to all the networking possibilities.
Here we are in all our glory plus/minus a few people!
I am so happy to announce La Riippa Groups debut album is now out for digital distribution! Go check us out and let us know what you think of our music.
I am so happy to announce that La Riippa Groups album “Dirty work” is in the print and will soon be released. You can follow us on facebook to keep updated with all our upcoming gigs and for the material we soon will publish also digitally on all the common distributers like Spotify and others.
https://www.facebook.com/lariippagroup/
The other thing I am very happy to announce is that Vild will be one of the main performers at this years Vaasa choir festival. We have a lot of other things cooking and you can also find us on facebook and Youtube.
Tomorrow is the last day of 2017, so I thought I´d take this time to reflect on the year that has passed. Quite eventful both in my personal life and my career, although I´ve taken time to do less work, which is an achievement in itself.
The year started of with a huge change in my life, with the birth of my son. The same spring I got my bachelor of Culture and Arts. The autumn of 2017 was therefore the first autumn without studies since 2008. The last 9 years I´ve been enjoying the opportunity to study the Arts and finding my way of expressing myself, first via my studies at Centria University of Applied Sciencesd for the Performing Arts, and also at the Central Ostrobothnian Conservatory where I studied music. I then continued my path to Novia University of Applied Sciences to study Music and pedagogy. At the same time I took some courses of Music therapy at the Open Univeristy Chydenia. 3 degrees in 9 years feels like quite enough, but they have been so fulfilling years artistically and for me to find my own direction. I sincerely want to thank all these establishments for the opportunity to take part of the studies provided.
What can I then look forward to in 2018, and what can I already let you in on? There are a few things I haven´t got in the bag so to say yet, so they are dreams that maybe will be fulfilled. I have started meditation for my own ( and surroundings) benefit, to really see joy and gratitude in life and I recommend we all take time for reflection and well “selfhelp”. Stress is so present in all our lives, we truly need tools to comprehend the important things in life and our importance. I have found meditation to be a path I want to continue to follow. I also am really trying to find time for work and the social media part it craves, but at the same time lessen my screen time and not be connected all the time. Balance, we all need balance. Some days this is easier than others.
Well work then — Something that I really am happy about is that the project Vild will continue and have a few performances, we will for example visit Vasa this spring. So we will be taking a day of promo shooting soon and I´ll let you in on that when the day arrives.
Also La Riippa Group has promo shooting to look forward to, next week to be exact, and that is due to our album which release date slowly nears. Hopefully you’ll soon hear us on the radio. The same is with the album that I am working on with my cousin, release date to be announced shortly. But you can find us on facebook, where also all the other ensembles will get pages to easily follow our work and upcoming shows.
Let´s see how the summer will look, we´re booking with all ensembles at the moment and I’ll write all upcoming shows in the widget where you can easily find the info. There will be some reggae and folksy tunes aswell, besides my own artistic projects. Also the drama project at the museum continues with quite a few shows for the schools in Kokkola.
I am lucky to have gotten a scholarship to attend Drama Boreale in Gothenburg next August, and I´ll take my family with me. Drama Boreale is a nordic conference in drama/theatre education. Three years ago it was in Silkeborg Denmark, and I enjoyed my participation there a lot and hope for a tremendous conference once again.
As soon as I get more to announce, I´ll do so. I’ll end this post with another part from the performance Vild. There are a few mishaps with this performance, but I find it to be beautiful nevertheless, and we learn from our flaws. This is Krafte/Force, as I want to end this post with a promise of light and hope.
I am lucky in many ways and have been able to do a lot of work already although my baby is just about 10 months. I’ve graduated, done a few gigs, worked and performed a play and so on.. But at the moment I am feeling quite frustrated with the situation. I have so much I should do but almost all my time is needed as a mother, and obviously that is what I have to do. But I feel very torn on this subject. Envy is an emotion that is getting hard to quench and I start to minimize my own worth and capability as an artist, musician, teacher.. mother.
How can it be that I still haven´t managed to get La Riippa Groups album ready? How can it be I don’t publish more? Why don´t I create more? Where am I?
And then again. I sit here on the floor as my boy is sleeping in our bed. He’s been teething and the poor soul has had difficult nights. Obviously this is were I am needed and were I myself need to be, but the contradictions of the roles in my life is really harassing my mind and I feel inadequate.
What a relief then to now have some time in the morning to write down these thoughts as an artist and mother. And what a relief to have had an easier night and my son seems to be feeling better and those little pearly whites and gums are not aching as much today.
So after taking some time to reflect and get my head together: what has happened since the last post?
I had the immense pleasure to work with Rock Donna again. Rock Donna is a community that work for girls right and opportunity to do music. You can check out the work Rock Donna does on their homepage www.rockdonna.com.
The community has been based in the Southern part of our country where they have been working since 2012 more or less, and last year we had our first workshop here in Ostrobothnia were I live. Last weekend we finished our second workshop and this time it was in Jakobstad. This time the workshop was for girls in elementary school and we had a happy bunch of 8 participators.
The day was a nice one and I am quite sure the kids felt likewise. But it was a long day for me and I even managed to once again misplace my phone in the way of my people (I am one among my relatives who are prone to misplace stuff..and forget..)
As I earlier mentioned -envy, why not tackle that here and now. As I now have been nursing a teething baby who has more or less been glued to me, yes the emotion of envy has hit hard. I am in the marvelous position of having friends in the field of art and music, and these friends are very talented. Oh my how talented!! and as I sit in my dark corner with a cloud on my head I almost feel a bit resentment. Resentment with my own life at the moment. And that is a feeling I have, not good or bad, it´s just the truth. I am very lucky and I love my son and I would not want it any other way, but nevertheless I long for a bit more freedom to create and be part of a cultural life beyond the walls of my home. These are emotions, and emotions are not always rational, but they are justified to be acknowledged.
I give you envy.
Envy that women feel towards other women.
May it be about beauty, physique, relations, talent, positions.
This is an ugly emotion, and we have all known it.
With me on stage:
Wilma Mustonen and Moa Ketonen (dancers)
Maria Autio, Jennifer Marlin, Rosa Latva (vocalists)
Thank you for reading this far, and I already feel stronger. Here in Finland we also are in the middle of the KAAMOS. A lovely state when the sun rarely shows itself, what a joy!
Hi everyone, I hope you are well. We are in the midst of a snowstorm here in Finland, so I´m working today inside while my son is sleeping inside in the warm.
In my last post I told you that I finished my degree in music pedagogy last spring, and today I´d like to write about my examination concert which I did about a year ago. It was called Vild (Wild) and premiered in Schauman hall in Jakobstad 5.11.2016.
As a singer I obviously think that the voice is the ultimate instrument, versatile and wonderful. In an early stage I decided that my examination concert needed to bring that forth, and I also wanted to challenge my voice and how I write vocal pieces. I started to work on a performance where vocalists and dancers interact and together create a piece about the strength in women. I was inspired by the book “Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In the book where stories and myths about the wild woman and these stories and their explanations inspired me greatly in my composing. I wanted to compose strong vocal pieces for women with wide range and ability to use vocal effects. I wanted the voice to express emotions raw and hard, not just sweet and pleasant. I wanted to show how varied a woman can use her voice to express emotions and I wanted feelings to show, not just be heard. The dancers had the same task but in a visual context. Together we created a performance with 6 main pieces that can be named: Ritual-Awakening-Rage-Siren song-Envy-Force
I also wrote my thesis about the use of effects in vocal music and this performance was the base to that work. I’d like here below to attach the abstract for that work:
The aim of my exam concert was to study different vocal techniques and effects of the voice, and how these can be applied in non-conventional vocal music.
The overall purpose of this analytical part of my thesis is to examines and explains the artistic choices made for the concert ”Vild”. The leading questions in my work have been: In which different ways is it possible to work with the voice in vocal music, what effects and techniques can be used and how can feelings get across in singing and performance.
The conclusion is that feelings and interpretation always have an essential role in vocal technique and singing. To interpret different feelings, you need knowledge and the ability to master the instrument concerning different sounds, different conditions and different expressions, but most of all you need honesty and courage to dare to step outside your comfort zone and let yourself be touched by the present and your own depths.
I think I-ll stop here and link to a youtube video where you can see the piece Rage from the performance. Take a look and tell me what you think, won’t you.
My Rage is subtle, steadily growing. It grows and diminishes just to awaken again in an explosion. It takes pauses to think where to go next. It challenges. It lives and breaths.
I have not posted anything here in a long time because I have been focusing on my “new” role as a mother. My baby boy is now 9 months and I now feel I should get this page updated and write a post on what has been happening and what I am working on at the moment, and also write my thoughts on being an artist and how that goes together with being a mother.
I did my last singing gig about a month before my son was born, and did studio work even later, and 2 weeks before the birth I danced in a music video! 😀
FIRST SOME UPDATES!
I love being a mother and I am fortunate to have a husband who can fix his work so that even I could start doing a bit work and some artsy stuff quite early. My boy was 2 months old when I wrote my bachelour thesis and during spring I finished my education at Novia University of applied sciences, so I’m now also a music pedagog.
I started doing gigs with Niko Riippa, Armadis Rama and Soulhouse in july and did some dramatized guidning at K.H.Renlund in Kokkola this fall, and which will continue next spring. The script is written by Paulina Holmqvist and my co-actor is Viktoria Viiand. I also continued my work as a drama teacher and can be contacted if workshops are needed.
COMING UP!
I can announce that my cousin Niko Riippa and I am recording an album together. We have done new arrangements on songs with lyrics by Alexander Slotte and also composed new music to his poems. We have also recorded other traditional songs and some new original music. If we get enough orders we know we can publish a “real cd” and not only a digital version. You can already contact me with your order if your interested.
Also La Riippa group will come out with new material and our debut album will be published in 2018.
A lot more is on the horizon and I promise to keep you updated with a blogg entry here once a week. See, I wrote it so now I must live up to my promise!
