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Poijat Celebrates Twenty Years of Performing and Recording
By Arthur Koski
This is the twentieth anniversary of the Boys of
America (Ameriikan Poijat), a seven-piece brass
band founded in 1990 by Paul Niemistö, the
band’s director and euphonium player.
This seems like a good time to review what the band
has accomplished so far, and what it’s likely to do in the
future. We’ll cover some of the highlights of the Poijat’s
appearances, its recordings, and what its activities have
added to the rich traditions of Finnish America. The band
has become a very significant part of those traditions. This
type of brass band is called, in Finnish, a torviseitsikko.
The instruments and their players in the Poijat’s latest
recording, Immigrants, include E-flat cornet, Russell
Pesola; B-flat cornets, Marko Foss and Denise Pesola; Eflat
alto horn, Tracey Gibbens; euphonium, Paul Niemistö;
and tuba, Roger Gomoll.
I’ve known the group for 15 years, going back to
meeting them at FinnFest in DeKalb, Illinois, in 1994. I
met Paul a second time at the second Project 34 meeting in
Dallas. Later, we worked together on Finlandia Foundation
National’s (FFN) Performer of the Year program (POY).
Together with John Kiltinen, we produced the first
recording of music from a FinnFest, the FinnFest Pot
Pourri CD, a selection of international performers in
Marquette, Michigan, in 1996.
In 1997, the Poijat performed at the Scandinavian Ball
Ameriikan Poijat in Wisconsin in 1994
in Denver and kept the crowd dancing to their well-planned
program of traditional pan-Scandinavian dance music,
including waltzes, tangos, jenkkas, humppas, schottisches,
and polkkas.
So, what are some of the highlights of the past 20 years
of the Poijat? For one thing, the Poijat have played at most
of the FinnFests since 1990. This has included concerts,
dances, and presentations.
Brass band playing started in Finland in the 1880s
and came to Northern Minnesota with Finnish
immigrants not much later. The bands played at church
events, in temperance halls, in socialist organizations, and
other social organizations.
In Paul’s doctoral dissertation he says: “My motivations
for doing this work have been consistent throughout: to
collect and preserve information about Finnish brass bands
that may otherwise become lost, to measure the value and
influence that these bands had on the cultural life of early
Iron Range citizens, and to present the old Finnish brass
bands as a distinct and worthy cultural phenomenon with
its own repertoire, soundscape, and history.” (Paul received
his Ph.D. in music from the University of Minnesota in
2004.) He launched his doctoral studies in 1990, the same
year Ameriikan Poijat was formed.
He says his first introduction to Finnish brass bands
Ameriikan Poijat, 1990
took place not in Minnesota, but in 1981, in Finland. He was
attending a newly created summer brass festival in Lieska, Finland,
near the Russian border. On subsequent visits to Lieska Brass
Week, he learned much more about the torviseitsikko.
In 1987, a colleague from Kokkola, Sakari Lamberg, presented
a complete set of parts from old septet books used by one of
the earliest septets in Finland. A group of Midwestern brass
players who had expressed an interest in this music got together
and organized themselves as Ameriikan Poijat, using an old
Ostrobothnian spelling.
In 1992, during Finland’s 75th anniversary celebration, the band
toured Finland, appearing at the Kaustinen Folk Festival, Lieska
International Brass Week, the “Roots in Finland” Family Fair in
Turku, the Valkeakoski Music Festival, and the Finland Society
Grand Festival in Helsinki. During the Grand Festival, Poijat played
an entry march for Finnish President Mauno Koivisto before an
audience of 5000, plus an international television audience.
Another stop by Poijat in Finland in 1992 was in Salo, where
they were hosted by the Salo Fire Brigade Band, a septet founded
Poijat continued on page 10
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