Arthur A. Kylander (February 16, 1892 – September 23, 1968) was a Finnish-American singer, songwriter, and mandolin player.

Biography

Born in Lieto, Finland, Kylander immigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1914 at the age of twenty-two. There he became an itinerant laborer and worked as a carpenter and logger. In 1925 he met his future wife Julia Varila, a

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

and

accordionist Accordions (from 19th-century German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed in a frame). The es ...

with whom he began performing and touring. During the Depression the Kylanders moved to

Hollywood, California Hollywood, sometimes informally called Tinseltown, is a List of districts and neighborhoods in Los Angeles, neighborhood and district in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles County, California, within the city of Los Angeles. ...

, where Julia worked as a cook and Arthur was a butler and chauffeur. In 1943 they bought 240 acres of wooded land near

Placerville, California Placerville (, ; ''placer'', Spanish for "sand deposit", representing the placer mining that was predominant in the town's development, and ''ville'', French for "town") is a city in and the county seat of El Dorado County, California, United S ...

and started a

tree farm In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated Plant stem, stem, or trunk (botany), trunk, usually supporting Branch, branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only Bark (botan ...

. In 1964 Kylander was named the Outstanding Conservation Rancher of the Year. Kylander died in 1968 in Placerville.

Music

Between 1927 and 1929 Kylander released twenty songs on the Victor label. He also published several songbooks with the title ''Humoristisia Lauluja'' (Comic Songs).''Songs about Work'' by Richard A Reuss and Archie Green, (Bloomington: Folklore Institute, Indiana University, 1993) pp. 268-271.
/ref> His repertoire included ''Kulkuri'' (The Hobo), ''Muistojen Valssi'' (The Waltz of Memories), and ''Suomalainen ja Sauna'' (The Finn and the Sauna). A member of the

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...

, many of Kylander's songs dealt with the hardships facing immigrant workers while retaining a strong sense of wit and humor. He sang in a mixture of Finnish and Finglish in a manner similar to his contemporary Hiski Salomaa.''Siirtolaisen Muistoja'' (The Immigrant's Memories) (Helsinki: Finnish RCA, 1978). Since the 1970s, Arthur Kylander's recordings have been reissued in both analog and digital formats.''Stranded in the USA'' (Munich: Trikont, 2004).
/ref>

References

External links

Book excerpt
''A Passion For Polka''
at the

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

.
Arthur Kylander in ''A Passion For Polka''.
Discography
Arthur Kylander
on

Victor Records The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. Victor was an independent enterprise until 1929 when it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became ...

.
1978 LP with four songs by Arthur Kylander2004 CD with two songs by Arthur Kylander
Videos
Arthur Kylander
Streaming audio
Finnish Wobblies
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

.
Finnish songs
at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kylander, Arthur 1892 births 1968 deaths American folk musicians Finnish emigrants to the United States Industrial Workers of the World members People from Lieto 20th-century American singers 20th-century American male singers