Emmi Kujanpää

Folk Musician and PhD Researcher @ University of Helsinki
Finland °1980
research interests: Folk singing, art-based research, transnationalism, Gender and Music, politics, Balkans, Folklore Studies, ethnomusicology, Finno-Karelian folk singing, Bulgarian folk singing, intersectional feminism, artivism, feminist art, composing, pedagogical research
affiliation: University of Helsinki
orcid: 0000-0002-8254-8541
en

Emmi Kujanpää is a researcher-artist based in Helsinki. She is a folk singer, kantele player and composer specialising in Finno-Karelian and Bulgarian folk music. Emmi Kujanpää studied at the Sibelius Academy (MMus., Folk music, 2011), the University of Helsinki (M.A., Musicology / Educational studies, 2017) and the Plovdiv Academy of Music in Bulgaria (Folk music, Erasmus studies). Her current PhD research at the University of Helsinki (2021–) explores the activist agency and the experiences of gender in transnational European contemporary folk singing. Her PhD research is supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation [00230659] (2023–2025) and Kalevalaseura (2025–2026). Emmi Kujanpää is affiliated with the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki (2025–), and is a board member of Suoni (2024–), an association that contributes to activist music research. Kujanpää works as a part-time lecturer at the University of Helsinki, teaching on Balkan music and politics, and at the Käpylä Music Institute and the Sibelius Academy where she teaches folk singing and kantele playing.

 

www.emmikujanpaa.com

Photo: Venla Helenius

research

research expositions

  • Becoming a Goddess in a Music Video Trilogy: Applying Intersectional Feminism in a Transnational Folk Singing Collaboration in Finland and Bulgaria (2025) author(s): Emmi Kujanpää published in: Journal for Artistic Research
    In this exposition, I explore my artistic practice based on collaborations between female folk singers in Finland and Bulgaria from 2018 to 2022. The artistic material of the exposition consists of a music video trilogy (2019, 2020 and 2022) based on my compositions and arrangements in the solo album Nani (2020), produced in cooperation with the younger generation of the Bulgarian women's choir, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. In addition to the collaborative artistic practice, I interviewed six of the Bulgarian singers. Insights from the data gathered in these ethnographic interviews are intertwined with the analysis of the artistic practice. Throughout the artistic and ethnographic research processes, I applied a feminist intersectional pedagogical approach by focusing particularly on the power relations and the question of female agency in the arts and wider society. In this exposition, I argue that the incorporation of intersectional feminist perspectives in transnational artistic work can contribute to both artistic practice and transnational interactions in ways that may strengthen women's agency in the folk music field of their respective cultural and social environments. Feminist folk music composition was applied at all stages of the artistic and research work. By highlighting the stories, voices, and bodies of women of different ages and cultural locations, the artistic practice represented the construction of counter-myths and transgenerationality. In addition, an intersectional feminist approach helped to identify the power relations involved in transnational collaboration, particularly regarding economic inequality and the roles and different opportunities of women musicians in Finland and Bulgaria. Download Accessible PDF
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