Is it’s summer again, and in honor of that, a journalist has once again come up with something to interview Alex “Uncle” Keskitaloa to the magazine. So who?
Keskitalo is a coder and family man from Helsinki. It’s almost a rule that reporters approach him once a year around midsummer. His band Valvomo released an iconic summer hit in 2006 What summer?.
That is, the eternal summer rally whose words include:
This is where summer can start
Get up, dancer, get up
At one point you get into rhythm, hypnosis and trance…
What summer? is above all a carefree and light summer song.
Or is it?
In newspaper articles the song has been described as upbeat, eternal, good-natured, a sign of summer and an annoying earworm.
Keskitalo told Ilta-Sanomie’s reporter in 2013that “the message of the song is probably some kind of cynicism, in the style that summer is the best time to live for a person”.
But why is there a question mark in the title of the song?
What summer?
Wouldn’t an exclamation mark be more natural?
What summer! Ah, what a summer! That’s what the song seems to be shouting.
The question mark feels strange. What is the question here?
More oddities are revealed when you take a closer look at the song’s lyrics.
Towards the end of the song it is said:
All parties come to an end, everyone knows that
You are full of anticipation until the bubble bursts
What the hell bubble? After all, the bursting of a bubble refers to, for example, economic cycles. It is certainly not a summer natural phenomenon.
And How about a music video?
When you stop the video made in 2006 at point 1.15, in addition to the woman sitting on the cliff, the image shows the text:
Rainfall will increase by 35–65% by the end of the century. [Suomen ympäristökeskus (Syke) ei vahvista HS:lle sademäärän arviota oikeaksi.]
And in section 1.37 it says:
Energy production causes approx. 2/3 of all greenhouse gas emissions in Finland.
And again in section 1.43:
Each liter of fuel causes approx. 2.5 kg of carbon dioxide emissions.
At this point, everything is already clear. This is a climate activist’s song.
“Hietaniemi to the shore…”, the song sings. We have suggested that place to Seda Valvomon for the interview, and he has arrived here wearing a green shirt.
The shirt is Globe Hope’s shirt, which the record company once offered to wear on the members of Valvomo as a commercial collaboration. The speech immediately turns to themes of selling the soul.
When Alex Keskitalo came to the interview site, he listened to Mika kesain? from the car speakers and put on the shirt he wore during the band’s peak years. “Yes, I can also relate to the point of view that it’s a hell of a tiring song,” he says.
Not all band members liked the commercial collaboration patterns.
“Every now and then, I would get sponsorship questions about the ethics of these companies. The band often had different lines on this, and these kinds of things ultimately practically broke up the band,” Keskitalo recalls.
A clear activist band.
Keskitalo thinks that WHAT summer? an over-the-top positive song like that wouldn’t pass muster at all in the current spirit of the times filled with threatening images.
Large the audience mostly remembers Valvomo’s songs What summer?. The topics of the band’s other songs have been, among other things, anti-war, criticism of capitalism and injustice.
Born from the pen of Keskitalo What summer? is a snapshot of the ecstatic spirit that prevailed in 2006.
The economy grew and it was a record hot summer. The financial crisis was around the corner, but there were still celebrations.
“I had the same feeling that it’s too cool now. It can’t always be this cool. So you had to have a sour aftertaste, when it was otherwise such a happy upbeat song.”
You are full of anticipation until the bubble bursts.
The narrator of the song seems to be looking at people’s summer boom season parties from afar and is criticizing.
Keskitalo emphasizes, however, that the song also contains a lot of real summer joy and a call to rejoice.
“You don’t even know what good things will happen. My life begins now. Now don’t stay inside. Go out. It is foolish to hold a candle under a bushel and not experience it. I think that’s the essence of it after all.”
What summer? tells about the financial boom that was ending. “The best thing of all is when there is that beginning, when that first rise. But everything will end in time, there is a time for everything”, says the author of the song, Alex “Uncle” Keskitalo.
A music video secret messages, on the other hand, were born largely by chance.
When the music video was shot, the director had decided to include a picture of a woman sitting on a beach cliff in a bikini in the summer video.
“We saw the raw edit and we were like, for a moment, there’s a model like this in a bikini hanging out every now and then. There was no talk of this. Well, then it occurred to me that let’s save this situation by putting climate facts here,” Keskitalo says.
Alex Keskitalo managed to add a climate activist message to the summer hit that became a classic. He has felt some kind of pleasure about it, but also disappointment.
Keskitalo says that he regularly receives video messages that his song has been performed at school spring parties as a secular substitute for Suvirirre. It amuses him because What in the summer? however, the word “creation” is mentioned.
“Suddenly it started to upset me that it doesn’t affect anything at all. It’s just the same kind of linking. Jogging doesn’t do anything at all. Of course, the majority did not take it to heart that I am now listening and following these ideas, what is here and internalizing them.”
When journalists gave Valvomo media space after the release of the song, Keskitalo tried to use the opportunity to speak for the band’s political ideology.
“Back then, nuclear power, for or against, was a hot potato. I thought yes! But no, journalists rarely included them.”
In the middle of the big lift of the control room, he felt like a monkey being told to dance.
“There, the gang danced on the table and celebrated summer. In the middle of it all was one 26-year-old guy who was like ‘wuuuu, remember the climate!’ It’s a bit difficult…”
Eventually the record company got tired of Valvomo and the mutual relations between Valvomo’s band members became strained. The band ceased to exist in 2008.
Alex Keskitalo says that he did “all kinds of activism” even after Valvomo. Now he talks about himself as a middle-aged activist who wants to make an impact through his work as a coder.
Keskitalo’s activism is middle-aged. In his free time, for example, he cultivates meadow flowers in public places, where he doesn’t necessarily want them to grow.
“Demonstrating suits a 20-year-old really well, better than a 40-year-old who could do something about climate issues. For example, put ones after zeros in such a way that it affects the matter physically.”
Central house currently works as a coder. Recently, he has been working on the green transition: he helps the Finnish electricity grid adapt to the demands brought by renewable energy.
The man obviously gets along well as a coder: he says that he lives with his family of children on Espoo’s “golden shore”.
Keskitalo has recently bought a used Tesla after previously living a car-free life. He says he feels a bit of an identity crisis about it.
Is this always the case with middle-aged activists?
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