Name: Elin Pöllänen aka Kieli
Nationality: Swedish-Finnish-Karelian
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: Kieli's From Summer to Spring is out via Cognitive Shift.
Recommendations: We are the weather by Jonathan Safran Foer; Our symphony with animals by Aysha Akhtar.

If you enjoyed this Kieli interview and would like to know more, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Many things happen, depending on the moment. I love walking with music and experience how the soundscape merges with the landscape around me, how sounds, movements, colours, shapes and contrasts rhythmically unite.

Sometimes when I’m overstimulated from impressions, I close my eyes and feel how the sounds fall like soft snow on my inner landscape or how a song holds my hand from the inside and invites me to dance.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

Music was my first love and language and I started performing and playing music early. It took time to release my own music and now, I feel like I’m constantly re-experiencing or even taking first steps because every release and every performance is different.

Soon, I am releasing my debut album! I think that experience brings with it an increased appreciation for steps, may they be first, forward, backward, small or large. Music-making to me always feels like a combination of experience and new steps.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I think that is when I really started realising what music I loved. A top moment must have been when I was 15 and dad drove me and my friend to Dalhalla to hear Sigur Rós. We sat under blankets and felt how the music echoed in the mountain walls.



My love for the bands and artists I listened to then has remained (and nostalgically increased), and my understanding for music as a collective experience has deepened. I think the biggest difference is that now I know what kind of music I want to make and share with the world.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

One important thing has been to dedicate time to explore the vast potential in the most minimalistic sounds and the joy that comes out of that exploration.

My main instrument is violin (apart from vocals), so that has been a major inspiration, as well as the old harmonium and kantele in my family home. It amazes me how much magic those instruments can create.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

To indulge in cheesiness: it is the journey itself that motivates me. I feel embodied when I write music, so however satisfying, it is not the final result that is my main motivator.

However, the idea that my music could make people feel seen or represented, and raise awareness of social issues that I hold close to heart, are great motivators to finish and release my songs.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I agree! I try to hear the overall soundscape and how everything interacts because music is always about interaction for me. Even if it is just one chord played on the piano, it is still fingers on keys, vibrations in the air, a feeling in the room. When I listen like that, it is easier to appreciate the details for what they are.

I absolutely love and cherish unrefined sounds in my recordings because they give the songs life and represent the process. My personal sound could be described as cinematic and heartfelt with Nordic and Karelian roots.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Thank you for this amazing question. It immediately makes me think of creaking trees, heavy rain, bird song and the cranes arriving every spring, and the sound of insects flying by your ear.

In my artistry, which is much influenced by my work as a researcher exploring human-animal relations and my many years within animal and environmental advocacy, I want to emphasise the need to dissolve the nature-culture dichotomy and dismantle human exceptionalism and supremacy beliefs. When we talk about biological diversity being threatened, we are also talking about losing cultural practices and social structures that we have barely started to admit exist.

I published an article on this topic a few years ago where I took whale singing and traditions, spanning long distances and time, as one of many examples of cultural expressions in (other) animals. It is a matter of degree, not kind, and to me there is not that much difference between me and a whale singing.

Ultimately, music / sound is about navigating through life, connection, remembrance, and survival. 

[Read about and order 15 Questions's book on Animal Music via Strange Attractor Press]

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I am drawn to compositions that can be quite chaotic, with noise, disharmony and sounds popping up and ducking, but also the minimalistic and slow-moving.

I think they represent my two extreme modes of being, and interestingly, sometimes the messy music calms me down, and the slow-moving music excites me, instead of the opposite.   

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I think that I’m generally unstructured when I write, and I try to go with what is best for the specific piece I am writing, which usually unfolds with time. Sometimes it is the traditional verse / chorus format, and sometimes it is another one that I don’t know the name of.

I’ve noticed that I might be more inspired by classical music than I thought I was, because I love to think in themes and recycle melodies within and between songs, and my music often gets referred to as having neoclassical influences.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

My forthcoming multilingual debut album, From Summer to Spring, is particularly dear to me as it honours my belated father and is written during our last years together. I wrote songs to process and portray emotions, and I noticed that different styles, expressions and languages (English, Swedish, Karelian Livvi, Finnish) helped me with that.

I was inspired by the notion of Karelian lamentation, an old, female-led tradition that my mother has taught me about. In every transformation there is an array of emotions, grief and joy walks side by side. The lamentation always ends in gratitude, something which really resonated with me.

The album format enabled me to explore this circle-shaped notion of time, where life transitions are symbolised by and strongly connected to seasons of a year, and where elements from songs reappear and the end ultimately attaches itself to the beginning.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Music has helped me to embody all the insights I have received by science and working as a researcher, and also made me realise how easy it is to get stuck in your head and forget about the body.

I do believe that for several issues, such as environmental degradation and climate change, both fuelled by our mass exploitation of animals and nature, we already know enough but haven’t embodied the urgency of change.

Art can tackle that indifference and show us that these issues are not just technical and outside of us, but highly relational and living in all of us.  

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Absolutely. When people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would reply “music”, because I experienced early on that music was a more integrated way to communicate with myself and my surroundings.

With music, we often give ourselves more permission to feel many feelings simultaneously without restricting ourselves, and I really experienced that when writing my debut album, that music helped me to cope with life and death.

Music contains those nuances that we so desperately need in our everyday lives to thrive, and I do believe that music can help us visualise and build those supporting structures and rituals in society, for ourselves and others.    

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I would say that music-writing / performing could be similar to making a great cup of coffee in the sense that they are both rituals that elevate life.

However, I think one difference is that if I make a mistake while performing or make a song that isn’t that great or finished, it is in a creative space where I want to embrace vulnerability and imperfection, which is harder for me to apply on more “mundane tasks”.

If I brew my coffee and it comes out too weak, that is just… not okay.  

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Does Sigur Rós’s untitled album and their “hopelandic” count? But I know why it affects me because it is absolutely beautiful.



Another example is “Fitter Happier” by Radiohead (OK computer). I was scared of that track at first, but now I find the song haunting, tragic and validating at the same time.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Oh wow, what a question. Perhaps developments that encourage the diversity, beauty, noise and flaws in music that represent the world that we live in.

And a less ageist music industry and songs about other kinds of love than the romantic.