“They Played it on Saturday Nights in a Barn”

Abstract

This article studies rural gramophone use in Finland from the 1920s to the 1940s, based on source material of written memories related to the long Nordic tradition of folklore surveys. The characteristic rurality of the Finnish pre-war and war-time society offers an opportunity to study the non-urban appropriation of modern technology and to approach rural modernity as locally produced on the one hand, but crucial to the societal and cultural modernisation processes on the other. The article uses a practice theoretical approach and argues for an understanding of grass-root modernity as a dynamic system of practices combining old and new elements. By scrutinising the material elements, meanings and competencies linked together in rural gramophone practices, the article describes and analyses diverse forms of rural activity and innovativeness around the gramophone, peaking in the popular phenomenon of secret dances during the Second World War.