| Poropetra | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Finland |
| Genres | ethnic rock |
| Years active | 2002–present |
| Website | http://hirwenkota.havusiipi.fi/ |
Poropetra is an ethnic rock band from Finland, founded in 2002.
Poropetra is ancient Finnish and it means the same as Elk of Hiisi (hiiden hirvi in Finnish) from Finnish mythology. Elk is an old totem animal of Uralic and Siberian peoples, thus it describes so well Poropetra's unique ethnic rock music, combining together Uralic myths and legends, Finnic kantele- and runo-singing traditions, Tuvan throat-singing, world music, psychedelic rock, progressive music, blues, punk and heavy rock. The more specific and exact genre definition shall be left for a listener to decide.
Contents |
Poropetra was founded by Juha Jyrkäs at the year 2002. Kuuraparta and Hittavainen joined the band already in the beginning. The first demo, Poropetra, was published at the year 2004. It represented almost pure modern Finnish folk music. After the demo, the band wanted to electrify the sound and bring some more influences into the soup. Lineup changed at the year 2005, when Nancy and Elsa Pardonen came along as singers and Aapo Hopeakoski joined in as a drummer. Susanna Mast played the guitar a short time in Poropetra, but she left the band already at the end of the same year.
It took two years to record the new songs little by little. After the long and hard recording sessions, Poropetra's debut album, Sinihirwi saw the daylight at 18.07.2007. It had much elements from the rock music and heavy rock. Along with the electric guitar sounds, there was also some distorted kantele-effects on the album.
In the autumn 2007 skilful guitar player Markus Ylikoski joined the Poropetra crew, which made their sound even more guitar-driven than before. Lineup was changed once more very soon, as kantele player Kuuraparta and drummer Aapo Hopeakoski left the band because of their other duties. Pretty soon the new drummer was recruited. He was Lari Hammarberg from the band Auringon hauta. Poropetra also found the permanent bass player, when Leo Herranen joined in. Band has made some new music with the new line-up. There are now more and more different music influences in it; progressive music, psychedelic rock, blues and punk – and of course all the previous music influences too. Right now Poropetra is writing some new songs to be published sometimes in the future..
In the autumn 2008 Poropetra signed a licence deal with Open Grave Records in order to reissue Sinihirwi. Unfortunately the label closed before nothing happened, so Poropetra is still looking for the licence deal. At the same autumn, however, the band took a part into a compilation album – published by Ukrainian ug-label called Boyanov Gimn – with a song Sinihirwi. The name of the album is New Dawn. Alongside with Poropetra, the compilation represents many other good European artists and bands playing good ethnic music.
Juha Jyrkäs also writes Finnish lyrics for Korpiklaani.