Lapland’s active club music culture is facing a new renaissance, says Juska Wendland.
Rovaniemi was once known as the club capital of northern Finland, where people travelled by train and bus all the way to Oulu to enjoy machine music. The city even had parties at the Lappia House and the Arktikum.
– Doris’s Thursday night club sold out several times and there were absolutely insane queues at the door.
The culture is perhaps different at the moment,” Wendland says. The activity started to go underground at the latest when nightclubs such as Tivoli and Doris closed down.
Now the recovery is noticeable. Lapland’s club music genre is bubbling under the surface again and the underground activity is growing even more, says Wendland.
Wendland has returned to Rovaniemi again, temporarily. He is doing a program bearing his own DJ name at the Yle Lap studio in Rovaniemi today, Friday 27.1. and February 3. The program comes from the YLEX channel at 19–22.
When club music plays on the ice of Lake Pohtimojärvi
Wendland laughs that in Lapland it has sometimes been played in very strange places.
– One of the most exotic is definitely Pohtimojärvi ice in 2003. The situation was so funny and strange that I played a gig there before Bomfunk MC’s.
In the past, sound reproduction and DJ sets have also been moved to different places and only parties have been held there. It was the culture of that time, which is less seen today, when the activity is focused on nightclubs, Wendland says.
– By the way, I’ve been gigging all over Lapland, from Kemi via Kolar and Sodankylä to Inari.
Wendland feels that it’s great to play in small venues because people are mainly very open and in a good mood when it comes to new music.
Wendland himself sees the field of club music in such a way that it currently includes all functional music intended for dancing.
– Whereas in the 1990s it was strongly techno, nowadays you can read many different genres under it.
Manhattan can also be found in Greenland
Arctic gigs have always been close to Wendland’s heart. Greenland and Alaska have been great places to play, he says.
– It would be interesting to see the club culture of Vladivostok and Northeast Russia from behind the DJ counter, but I do understand the challenge of this in the current world situation, he says.
The most exotic place he has played so far is Greenland’s Manhattan Club. It couldn’t be further from the original Manhattan, Wendland laughs.
There, too, Club music united people.
– For me, club music has always emphasized community and working together. When you add these things to the music, you’re on the verge of something pretty good.
On the radio, Juska Wendland aka DJ Orion is strongly in the service profession, but at gigs she is more of an artist.
*You can listen to DJ Orion on YleX’s Friday nights from 19:00 to 22:00. Today and on February 3, he will do his program in Rovaniemi at Yle Lap’s studio.*