Friday, August 13, 2004

Humppa!

You've been craving it your whole life without even realizing it: Finnish polka/oopmah (humppa, to those with Finnish leanings) covers of the hits of yesterday and today. And, lemme tell you, Erkelaiset will give them to you in spades. It's just up to you to rifle through their immense catalogue and listen to the songs repeatedly in order to try to discern what's what. (A procedure I've still not completed. You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to suss out even the most familiar tunes when rendered in a foreign language by an oompah band who changes all of the titles to incorporate the word "humppa.")

As one who's only familiar with Latin-based languages and, of course, English, I have no idea whether the lyrics come even close to proper translations of the songs. I'm guessing not due to the aforementioned humppa in each title. Perhaps some of the Scandinavian readers (I know you're out there, I check my stats) can shed some light on the situation. Until then, this is all we have to go on:

  • Elakelaiset "Humppa (Zombie)" (Finnish Cranberries cover)

  • Elakelaiset "Humpatarzan (Monkey Wrench)" (Finnish Foo Fighters cover)

  • Elakelaiset "Heil Humppa! (Kids in America)" (Finnish Kim Wilde cover)
  • 2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    I would love to hear those... I found a humppa version of "Kung Fu Fighting" and "Ace of Spades" which are pretty fantastic

    Karri said...

    The lyrics of the Eläkeläiset songs don't come anywhere close to translations of the original songs... They're just funny/bizarre stories of humppa-loving senior citizens. The band is insanely popular in Germany (don't ask me why :)