Pelimanni music meets pixels in Finland

Folk music and video game music are polar opposites – or are they?

“I was wondering what it would sound like to play pelimanni music [Finnish folk music] with 8-bit sounds, and I presented that idea to my bandmate Antti Janka-Murros, a die-hard Nintendo enthusiast. We soon realised that it would be even more fun to have the music playing in a video game. I began to figure out whether I could create such a game, and now, a few months later, this game is available to download for free in the App Store and Google Play.”

A game which draws inspiration from our own tradition is the mobile game titled Pelimanni 8bit, created by the folk music polymath, multi-instrumentalist and graphic designer Jimmy Träskelin . Composer and sound designer Anni Tolvanen and Träskelin talk about the encounters between folk musicians and the world of pixels.