Finnish folk music is taking the world by storm! The tradition, thousands of years old, is alive in a number of ways: the music-making of ordinary people remains at its core, yet it can also be studied at the Sibelius Academy, the only university-level music education institution in Finland.

Over the past decades, contemporary Finnish folk music has enjoyed two great revivals. In the 1970s, folk music became all the rage in Finland with the emergence of performers and festivals in the media. A culture that had been given up for dead had come back to stay. New musicians steeped in the tradition were celebrated models for the re-introduction of folk music as a leisure pursuit.

From the mid-1980s onwards, new models emerged, and folk music found itself competing with rock music for the attention of young musicians. The international success also attracted interest in other proponents of contemporary Finnish folk music.

In the 2000s, folk music will remain alive and well in Finland in a number of different ways: as a hobby for many people, as music made by professional ensembles, in archives and on the desks of scholars, in recordings and books, as a music education option available from comprehensive school through to university level, as a source of inspiration for composers of art music and jazz music alike... Perhaps we also understand the historical basis for all folk art better today: music must be understood as everyman's right to creativity and art. Folk music and dancing activate people, offering everyone the opportunity to express himself or herself in a new way.