Finnish musician Marjo Smolander was born in 1986 on Oravisalo island in Rääkkylä, a tiny village in Northern Carelia. Marjo’s music combines the Finno-Ugric kantele with global rhythms. The kantele blends naturally with rap rhythms, vocal compositions, and polyrhythms.
Rääkkylä is the very same village where the renowned world music group Värttinä comes from. As a child Marjo was influenced by Värrtinä’s Finno-Ugric music. There was a big folk music boom in Rääkkylä led by the founder of Värttinä, Sari Kaasinen at the time. Marjo plays the Finnish traditional instrument called Kantele which has a long history. It was, for instance, the instrument played by Väinämöinen, the legendary master poet and singer in the Finnish so called national epic, Kalevala.
Marjo is firmly rooted in the Finno-Ugric and Nordic music traditions. After moving away from her native Rääkkylä she has been studying folk music from different cultures and also music pedagogy. She has three master degrees: in Folk music (Sibelius Academy, Finland), Global music (Royal music of Aarhus, Denmark), and Cultural Well-being (Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland). He also has a degree in music educator.
In 2006 19-year-old Marjo could travel to Senegal to perform at the Afrikaner festival in Dakar. At the same festival with this young Kantele player also performed Ellika Frisel and Solo Cissokho Duo. This occasion became a turning point in Marjo’s musical career. A year later she returned to Senegal to study music for five months. Since then she has visited Senegal and Western Africa regularly.
Her long-time dream became true in 2014 when she moved to Bamako to study kamalen-ngoni and kora – as her first visit there in 2012 had been interrupted by a coup d’état. Now she is firmly based in Finland and lives in Helsinki with her children.