Iivana Mišukka & Arja Kastinen - Iivana Mišukka

Arja Kastinen returns with another volume for Death Is Not The End, weaving her meticulously transcribed kantele performances around 110-year-old wax cylinder recordings made by folklorist Armas Otto Väisänen. This edition focuses on Iivana Mišukka (1861–1919), a master player from Border Karelia captured in 1916 and 1917 as the ancient runosong tradition gave way to newer musical forms.

Mišukka played a 26-string kantele using traditional plucking techniques, drawing on both archaic runosong material and more contemporary dances. The original cylinders—now held in the Finnish Literature Society archives—are fragile documents: the instrument often sinks beneath surface noise, rotation speeds drift, and parts of the music blur or fracture over time.

Working from Väisänen’s detailed notes, Kastinen restores the intended tunings, tempos and melodic contours. Her newly recorded kantele parts partially overlap the historic audio, clarifying texture and pitch while preserving the raw presence of the source. The result is neither reconstruction nor simple remaster, but a dialogue across a century—ancient wood and wire resonating through time.