Putting the rock in Ragnarok

It was one of those wonderfully wet Finnish summer days — unexpected, slightly comic.

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I was on the Kuopio leg of a bikeand-train trip through the country, halting for a snack, when something stopped me short. Music. A groove so fat, so irresistibly New Orleans in character, that for a disorienting moment it felt like I'd teleported.

A quartet had materialised on a festival stage — drums, bass, guitar, keyboards — and were playing like they'd been raised in the French Quarter. They were The Cuacuas from the nearby village of Kinahmi, devotees of Meters and Booker T.

That evening crystallised something I've been thinking about for years: the Nordic countries have built one of the richest blues scenes anywhere outside the US. It doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Let’s do our bit to fix that.