Finnish musician Marjo Smolander was born in 1986 on Oravisalo island in Rääkkylä, a tiny village in Northern Carelia. She grew up playing in lakes and forests with the neighborhood kids.
Rääkkylä is the very same village where the renowned world music group Värttinä comes from. As a child Marjo was strongly influenced by Finno-Ugric music. There was a big folk music boom in Rääkkylä led by the founder of Värttinä, Sari Kaasinen at the time. Sari Kaasinen was Marjo’s teacher for more than ten years. Sari and Värttinä’s musical style have had a strong impact on the development of Marjo’s musical language, too. 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 national epic, Kalevala.
Thanks to her childhood 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 had the possibility to perform at a festival in Dakar, Senegal. 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.
Marjo finds West African music highly intriguing. 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.