The music I’m crazy about. Part 5: Kantele

Kantele is a Finnish folk instrument. It is plucked string instrument similar to zither. It is made of wood and has strings the number of which varies from 5 to 40. The traditional kantele had horsehair strings but in the modern instrument the strings are metal.

According to the Finnish epic Kalevala the first kantele was built by hero Väinämöinen. He made the body of the instrument from a reindeer bone, the strings were a few hair of demon Hiisi’s horse which were attached to the body with the jawbone of a pike.

Kantele playing consist in plucking the strings with fingers. Nowadays kantele is used not only in folk music but also in other music genres such as heavy metal. When I heard the sound of kantele for the first time I felt in love with it. The two bands I’m listening to which use kantele in their songs are Nest and Kardemimmit. Nest is a finnish band composed by two musicians Aslak Tolonen, who is the kantele player, and Timo Saxell. Their music can be classified as neofolk, ambient and dark ambient.

Kardemimmit is a Finnish quartet composed of female musicians. They play folk music.

Four months passed

In this post I would like to summarize the first semester of this academic year but not only in terms of studying. Since I started writing my blog from the stories of my dreams, in this summary I would also refer to one of my dreams from the past.

In the beginning I should mention that it is my first year in Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Previously I studied in Cracow where I had a lot of friends and where I was close to my hometown. Then I decided to enroll to the University of Poznań and I left Cracow. I moved to the new city where I didn’t know anybody, any places etc. All my friends, my family and my boyfriend left in Cracow and Bielsko. Now I’m living in a room the walls of which are painted grey. I like this colour but in combination with the greyness of this year’s autumn and winter it had a negative impact on my mood. The last four months were very hard for me. I had to acclimatize myself to the new reality, new city, new people and first of all to the new university. New subjects and exams proved to be more difficult than ones I had before. And the worse thing was the loneliness, the feeling of longing for my home, friends and of course for my boyfriend who I saw rarely because of the distance. The image of this time reminds me of one of my dreams I had some years before:

"I was alone in the world. The world was an extremely long and wide empty hall with all the walls painted grey, without doors and windows, furniture, equipment, flora and fauna. It has very overwhelming atmosphere. I was walking in that greyness looking for any sign of life and after long time I saw a slight sun beam coming to my world through the window as small as a notebook. There was an old wooden chair and a book on it. I sat on the chair and opened the book. It was an album with photos of my family and my friends. When I saw them I told: You all were always close to me and now I’m alone in this sad world."

It was very depressing dream. During these four months there were some moments in which I felt just like in that dream and that’s why I remembered about it.

Now the new semester started and I hope it will be better. Every day I see more and more sun through my window pane and I hope the spring will come soon. The thing which now gives me the will to live and makes me feel happy is the fact that my boyfriend moved to Poznań and we can see each other everyday!