Diane Jarvi

Diane Jarvi is a singer, songwriter, and poet who is known in Finland as Minnesotan Satakieli, or "The Minnesota Nightingale." In addition to her own compositions and traditional Finnish music, she sings tangos, ballads, waltzes, and gypsy music from around the world, and she is an expert player of the Finnish folk harp known as a kantele. Her latest CD, Wild Gardens, features several local musicians, including Dean Magraw (guitar) and Clint Hoover (harmonica).

GREW UP: Twin Cities. When I was young, we lived in Columbia Heights, close to Silver Lake, where I learned how to canoe. We then moved near the University of Minnesota campus, where I walked to Dinkytown and took guitar lessons at The Podium.

MUSICAL BEGINNINGS: My mother played the violin and my brother was gifted at the piano. I started writing songs right after high school. Most of those early songs were dreck, but some of them I still sing today.

INSTRUMENTS: I play guitar and the kantele—the Finnish folk harp. Kanteles come in different sizes. I play five-, eight-, ten-, fifteen-, and thirty-six-string kanteles. I also play the jouhikka, a kind of Baltic three-string lyre—though you'd never want to hear me play. When I do, it sounds like an old, rusty pump.

EARLY MUSICAL INFLUENCES: There was a lot of folk music in our house when I was growing up: Malvina Reynolds, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez—as well as Finnish folk music. When I was eighteen, someone gave me a record by the Brazilian singer Ellis Regina, which sparked a never-ending love for world music.

ON BEING BOTH A SONGWRITER AND POET: I would say that I'm a poet who sings. But then, all poets sing. I just have more sound equipment than your average writer.

ON INSPIRATION: I primarily compose music before I write lyrics, so the music dictates a direction for the lyrics. Writing poetry is much more about facing the blank page. Sometimes I will have a kernel of an idea, but the end result may be quite far from that original idea. Recently, I wanted to write a poem about my father and the time he served during World War II, but it ended up being a poem about bears.

NEW PROJECTS: I'm working on a new manuscript of poetry. Many of the poems seem to be about music. Who said that writing or talking about music is like doing a card trick on the radio? For me, it's that difficult. Maybe it's because music is such a visceral thing; it's really kind of mysterious how it enters our bodies, how it makes us feel. There are a couple of ideas I would like to bring into the studio, tooÑand they seem to include some cycles of poems. Who knows where that will go.

ON HER CD PLAYER: Wimme, a great Sami jazz singer from Finland; the Mexican singer Lila Downs; The 12 Girls Band from China; John Prine's Fair & Square; and the Brazilian singer Bebel.

LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Whenever my daughter and I pretend we're in the movie The King and I, I always play Yul Brynner.

CATCH HER ACT: Diane Jarvi and Friends. Jan. 25. The Cedar, 416 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls., 612-338-2674