As an American of Mexican descent, I was downright shocked when I heard a 🔥🔥 fire 🔥🔥 cumbia instrumental intro turn into a Finnish-language verse. This was [Autiosaari](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-RPlqtN7Ws) by Tuure Kilpeläinen …

Aside from wondering how this genre from South America ended up in Finland, I also wondered how many more songs like this there are. Or is this a one-off thing from what might be considered a very niche genre in Finland?

TLDR; send me your Finnish cumbia recommendations!

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Thanks everyone

5 comments

  1. I had no idea where that song came from, but it’s pretty common thing throughout time. Personally I hate those kind of Latina/Cuba rhythms, since I’ve just always heard them in our hit radios. I guess they basically just take some hit tune from South America and insert local lyrics. I have been wondering why they are so popular – I mean, culturally there’s no attachment to these southern rhythms in here, but for some reason some people seem to really love them.

    Italian songs have also been hugely popular. In olden days hit producer went to Southern Europe and just bought in bulk local vinyls and redid them with new Finnish lyrics. I am guessing they do the same thing all over the world. I was watching Narcos Mexico just last week and they had some European hit from 80’s but with Spanish lyrics.

  2. Not exactly cumbia, but Jukka Poika is an iconic reggae artist in Finland. Especially his newer songs have a lot of modern latino music influence, not just reggae. [Souda kesämies](https://youtu.be/HJlTBb04cz0) and [Papaija](https://youtu.be/6oNn_0hPIgE) are the first ones to come to mind.

    Many Finnish artists have taken influence from Latino music over the ages. Tango has been hugely popular in Finland to this day (even though nowadays it’s mostly for old people). I guess there’s a sense of exotic escapism in the Latino sound, but I don’t know a real answer as to why.

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