By Steve Korby
The Pine Knot/Cloquet, Minn.
A dictionary will tell you that ambidextrous means the “ability to use the right and left hands equally well.”
But what do you call it when a person can use their right and left hand and right and left foot, and throw in the head, simultaneously? That’s what Steve Solkela and his self-described “Over-populated One-Man Band” demonstrated at the Cloquet Public Library earlier this year.
Steve has been playing in all parts of northeastern Minnesota lately thanks to the Arrowhead Library System and state funding. He was introduced by Keiko Satomi, Cloquet’s adult services librarian.
Steve was born in 1996 in Palo on Minnesota’s Iron Range. He says he was “diagnosed as a Finn” and is very proud of it and refers often to his Finnish ancestry.
It is a treat watching him prepare for the concert. He has more than 20 instruments with him on stage. He’s telling jokes, pushing a drumstick between his toes and through his sock that he uses for striking a drum, a bell, and a rubber chicken. His happy tunes are usually centered with the accordion in his lap, but he will also break out the trumpet, harmonica, tambourine, train whistle, and cymbals that are attached to his head on a hockey helmet.
He’ll often conclude songs with a string-pulled loon call.
When he was done with his presentation, Solkela pedaled around the library on a unicycle while playing the accordion and singing the Minnesota Vikings “Skol” song to the delight of the all-ages crowd.
Steve said that when he was in kindergarten, he began to write left-handed. The teachers forced him to change to his right hand. When he was playing sports, it was easy for him to shoot baskets right or left-handed or be a switch hitter in baseball.
The first instrument he learned to play in school was the trombone. His brother played the trumpet and the baritone and, after cleaning the mouthpieces, he taught himself how to play those as well. The accordion was probably next.
His love for music continued in college, where he attended and got his degree from Rowan University in New Jersey. He is trained in opera singing as well.
Most of the musical pieces he played at the library are his own. He still practices dexterity when seated by swinging his leg one way and the arm the other way and then reversing the two. People tell him that when he is sleeping, his legs will often twitch like they do when hitting the drum or cymbals.
Solkela’s presentation brought the audience on a worldwide tour, beginning in northern Minnesota with several songs about sauna, mining, and living in a cold environment. He said one particular song was sponsored by Iron Range funeral homes, with the line “if heaven don’t have saunas, I don’t want to go.”
He then switched to Europe and sang songs in Finnish, French, Spanish, Swedish, German and Norwegian.
Solkela kept the audience laughing with intermittent jokes and had kids dancing in the aisles. He sprinkled in some Polish, Russian, Irish and Italian music - saying he loves pasta. He even went to music from Asia – Japan, South Korea, China - with many pieces that he wrote and sang in the native dialogue. Next was South America, Africa, Australia, and even Antarctica. It was an amazing adventure and presentation.
Accompanying Steve at the Library was his friend, Neal DeYoung, who was representing the Finnish Historical Society of America. DeYoung, from Hastings, was dressed in a Finnish army uniform from the 1940s, and brought display tables that featured munitions, helmets, medals, and other artifacts his group has collected from wars in Finland. It was an impressive historical display.
Reviewing and explaining some of the various tools and other items to DeYoung was Kalli Lipponen from Esko.
The two of them met in Duluth a few years back at Finn Fest. Lipponen grew up in Finland, spent some of the World War II years as a young child in Sweden, and was part of the Finnish Army in the 1950s at age 14. DeYoung, a reenactment expert, has a passion for Finnish culture. His uniform was made in Finland, produced for wardrobe in war movies.
DeYoung has been friends with Solkela for several years. Solkela’s tour continued with many engagements. We hear he is coming back to Cloquet for the Fourth of July, when he will make multiple appearances.
He’s working on a full opera with a working title of “Ole and Lena’s Untold Love Story.” The fun never ends.