Dallape Orchestra with popular artists like Harmony Sisters, Georg Malmsten, Tauno Palo and Olavi Virta.

Finnish schlager: fear of hell and hope of heaven.

The schlager is perhaps the most popular of all the types of popular music. It has always been something of an outsider beside European sophistication and Afro-American avantgarde, a conservative and escapist beggar that never changes.

This never-changing image has to do with the therapeutic function of the schlager. Constancy creates security, however melancholy the immutable mood may be. The minor-key mindset of the basic Finnish schlager seems to be at its most effective in exploring the territory between two basic poles, despair and melancholy, the fear of hell and the hope of heaven.

Text Finnish Music Information Centre