Aarno Raninen (27 April 1944 – 3 September 2014) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

singer, songwriter and musician. His main instrument was

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

but he has also mastered

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

and

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

. Born in

Kotka Kotka (; ; la, Aquilopolis) is a city in the southern part of the Kymenlaakso province on the Gulf of Finland. Kotka is a major port and industrial city and also a diverse school and cultural city, which was formerly part of the old Kymi parish. ...

, Raninen began his musical studies at a young age. After he moved to

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

in 1966 he got a job as a studio conductor at Musiikki-Fazer. While working there he made a lot of cooperative work with the likes of songwriter Juha Vainio. Later on Raninen went to work in Discophon where he wrote lyrics for many Finnish musicians, such as

Seija Simola Seija Saara Maria Simola (25 September 1944 Helsinki – 21 August 2017 Vantaa), married Franzén, was a Finnish singer. She began her career musical in the mid-1960s in the band Eero Seija & Kristian Trio, and her debut solo album was released in ...

, Carola,

Tauno Palo Tauno Valdemar Palo (born Tauno Brännäs; 25 October 1908 – 24 May 1982) was a Finnish actor and singer in what some consider the golden age of Finnish cinema. In ''Guide to the Cinema of Sweden and Finland'' Peter von Bagh names Palo as the ...

Vesa-Matti Loiri Vesa-Matti "Vesku" Loiri (4 January 1945 – 10 August 2022) was a Finnish actor, musician and comedian, best known for his role as Uuno Turhapuro, whom he portrayed in a total of 20 movies between the years 1973 and 2004. According to Yle Ne ...

Monica Aspelund Monica Aspelund (born 16 July 1946 in Vaasa) is a Finnish singer. She is the older sister of Ami Aspelund. Life and career Born into a family of Swedish speaking Finns, Aspelund danced and sang in talent shows from an early age, making her re ...

, Heikki Kinnunen,

Arja Koriseva Arja Koriseva (born 21 April 1965) is a Finnish singer. She first came to fame as a tango singer; her repertoire now includes evergreen, pop, musical theatre, and sacred music. Koriseva has sold over 330,000 certified records, making her the sev ...

, Erkki Liikanen and the Soitinmenot-ensemble. An important acquaintance for Raninen has been the songwriter for film and television, Pertti "Pertsa" Reponen. Raninen set the music for at least the following Reponen's TV-series: 1983–85, 1985–87, 1994–95, 1990–92 and . He also set the music for feature films such as , , , , and . Raninen and his work received several awards over the years, including the win at 1968 ("Näin on" performed by Kristian), 10th place at

Eurovision The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...

in 1977 ("Lapponia" performed by Monica Aspelund) and the main prize at the Menschen und Meer competition in 1978 ("Silver and gold" performed by Monica Aspelund). He died in

Tuusula Tuusula (; sv, Tusby ) is a municipality of Finland. It belongs to the Helsinki sub-region of the Uusimaa region. The municipality has a population of () and is by far the third largest municipality in Finland after Nurmijärvi and Kirkkonummi t ...

in 2014.

References

1944 births People from Kotka 2014 deaths 20th-century Finnish male singers Deaths from fire Accidental deaths in Finland {{Finland-musician-stub