Edited by Simo Westerholm, translated with additional notes by Thomas A. DuBois and Marcus Cederström.

Songs of the Finnish Migration presents music, lyrics, and chords for more than eighty Finnish-language immigrant songs, alongside singable English translations and detailed notes on Finnish migration history and music making in the New World. At times boisterous and confident, wry and irreverent, or impassioned and sorrowful, Finnish immigrant songs provide a vivid and imaginative portrayal of the momentous process of migration that forever changed Finnish and Finnish American society.

The current volume expands upon Simo Westerholm’s 1983 groundbreaking collection Reisaavaisen laulu Amerikkaan: Siirtolaislauluja, which drew from archival sources, manuscripts, sound recordings, and a wide array of published songbooks to recover the musical culture of the more than 300,000 Finnish immigrants who traveled to North America to try their luck in the New World.

A volume in the series Languages and Folklore of the Upper Midwest published in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Joseph Salmons and James P. Leary, Series Editors.

Simo Westerholm’s 1983 Reisaavaisen laulu Amerikkaan: Siirtolaislauluja was a joint publication of the Kaustinen Folk Music Institute and the Central Organization of Folk Music.

Julkaisija: Kansanmusiikki-instituutti 2019