Jukka Kuoppamäki was a popular finish singer in the 70ies. He is not well known in Germany or other countries of the world. In Germany, only the people in the context of Rudolf Steiner may know some of his songs. I’ve got known about him also on this way. I liked the lyrics and the harmonies of his songs very much.
Before I started the research on him, I already knew that he was priest in The Christian Community (Christengemeinschaft) and that he had been a singer and song writer earlier in his life.
Jukka Kuoppamäki was born the 1st of September 1942 in Helsinki. At the age of 15, he began to be interested in music. He took lessons in guitar and singing. After a break because of his puberty vocal change, he began to study music.
1959 at the age of around 18, he founded a vocal ensemble together with Antero Luoma, Markku Marttina, Hannu Maristo and Jaakko Kyläsalo where he sang and played the guitar. After one year at the army, he began to study at the Pedagogical University Helsinki.
Then he worked as a teacher for a few years, but he never stopped singing and doing records. He began to write songs by himself in folk music in this time, too.
But the popularity of this type of music became to fade. So Kuoppamäki started to write in pop-music style. 1966 he started song writing as his main job. He didn’t write all songs to sing for himself, he also wrote songs for other singers. In my own experience, the youth today don’t know the name Kuoppamäki that well, but his songs are still very popular in Finland. In contrast, the older generation knows him and his songs very well.
1969 his real career as singer-songwriter begins because he wrote his first bestseller ”Kiskot vievät etelään / Yli pahan päivän” which reached number 6 in the finish charts. In the following years, he published many albums and songs, until he had gotten very famous in Finland. Two of his songs he wrote during this time were “pieni mies” in 1971 (little boy) and “sininen ja valkoinen” in 1972 (blue and white). He also took part in some festivals or competitions in that time.
Jukka Kuoppamäki became a real star in the 1970ies. In these years, he had the aim to become to international fame, but that never worked out.
In 1976, his life got a turn. Kuoppamäki decided to move to Germany to become priest in the church of Rudolf Steiner. He has lived in Germany all the years together with his family and is still living there. But he also returned frequently to Finland to his homeland. In 1992, he went back in Finland to a record studio and composed many songs again. In 1996, he founded a folk music group together with his daughter where they sang the songs of Jukka Kuoppamäki.
With another folk music group, the “big family” he went on tourneys several times. They performed also at the church of The Christian Community at Karlsruhe. Some people still remember this event with very special circumstances. The musicians had prepared everything for the performance in the church, all the instruments were ready on the stage. But on the next day, everything was gone. Somebody had broken into the church and stole everything. In this situation, the community members were asked to bring their own instruments to the church so that the concert could take place.
In 2012, Jukka Kuoppamäki retired as a priest, but he keeps on publishing albums and songs in Germany and in Finland. 2022 Ari Mennander and Kaisa Rautasen wrote a biography about him which is named “Jukka Kuoppamäki – Elämän mittainen laulu” (Jukka Kuoppamäki – a song for the life).
Some final words about his family. He has a big one because he had seven children. Jukka married Sirpa Mirjam Salosen in November 1961. They stayed together for their whole life.
By Elisa