Kirill Eliutin Suurkurkuksi/for Master of Songmasters 2025

Hakemukset / Applications 2024
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Heeeeei moooi, I’m Kirill, 5th-year teekkari and 2nd-year tikkiläinen. As you might calculate, I was a corona fuksi, who had just a single sitsit throughout the entire fuksi year. Nevertheless, through the following years my passion for the sitsit culture grew stronger and stronger, and about a year ago I songlead a sitsit for the first time. Through the past year I songlead multiple different sitsit, both organized by our guild and other associations. I also spent a lot of time promoting the student singing culture in ARA, translating the classics and writing new songs for several sitsit in Russian. In summary, last year I dove into the song culture way deeper than I did before. Now I consider singing culture one of my main areas of interest in the teekkari culture as a whole, which reminds me of a song that I am applying for for the position of Suurkurkku 2025.

Being in this year Herkkukurkkutoimikunta, I liked its day-to-day operations quite a lot - selection of the songleaders for a sitsit was streamlined and smooth. Hovewer, I think there are always things that can be improved, for example:

  • The committee members didn’t have much chances to meet in person, other than songleading together. I think there is a need to organize semi-regular casual meetings for the committee, where songleaders can meet each other, practice donkey bridges, share some good songs they discovered, etc. Of course it would be quite logical to organize them as a low-key sitsit, but the exact format can be figured out next year inside the committee
  • Searching through the old läsys to find the texts for the songs can be challenging at times, and probably contributes to many läsys being lookalikes of each other. I think creation of a proper digital index of songs is in order. Of course we wouldn’t be the first people to think about it, e.g. have a look at https://laulut.athene.fi/ and https://laulum.me/ , but we should consider if having a TiK-specific catalogue of ALL THE SONGS might be a worthy investment of our time (xkcd: Standards)

One problem that also saddens me is a lack of songleading activities from the international members of our guild. We need to clearly communicate that they are welcome to songlead, even if the sitsit is otherwise in Finnish, that songleading doesn’t necessarily require a big and long-term commitment and that there would be a lot of help from the others.

If you have any questions, I would be happy to discuss them here on the forum, in telegram @KVTiK or if you catch me doing a donkey bridge before the election.

Otaniemi, 15.10.2024, 01:39
Kirill Eliutin

Heeeeei moooi, mä oon Kirill, viidennen vuoden teekkari ja kahdennen vuoden tikkiläinen. Laulukultturi on mun opiskelijakultturin lempiosa, siis ma haen Suurkurkkuksi 2025. Mä lukkaroin vuosi sitten, killan ja muut yhdistuksen tapahtumassa. Mä myöskin järjestin venäjän kielen sitseja, ja siis kääntin ja kirjoitin monta sitsilaulaja sitä varten.

Kun mä olin herkkukurkkulaulaja tännä vuonna, mä pidin miten toimikunta on järjestetty: lukkarien valintaminen toimii ihan hyvin. Ajattelen etta voimme järjestää virkkitykseja toimikunnalle missä laulajat voivat tavata, testaa aasinsiltoja ja jää utta mielenkiintoiset lauluja.

Lisääksi ma haluan mainostaa lukkaritoiminta killan KV-jäsenille monempi.

Jos sulla on kysymyksiä, voit kysy se foorumilla, telegramissa @KVTiK tai jos sä näet mä IRL. Anteeksi kun ma en voi vastaa sun kysymykseja suomeksi, mut toivotavasti sun englanti on parempi kuin mun suomi. Mä voin käytää kääntäja jos sä haluat kysy suomeksi, mut mä vastaan englanniksi. Kiitos ymmärtämisestäsi.

Otaniemi, 15.10.2024, 01:39
Kirill Eliutin + pieni autta google-kääntäjästä :D

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Hey Kirill, great to see you applying for the Master of Songmasters! I’ve got a couple of questions for you!

  1. Who’s the Master of the Master of Songmasters?
  2. What are your top three favourite sitsi songs and why?
  3. How would you balance between traditional Finnish songs and newer English songs to ensure that international people feel included? Would this balance be different for different sitsit?
  4. How good are you at finding items that slightly resemble a gong mallet approximately five minutes before one is needed?
  5. Should the committee focus on the song culture part of events or also organise a couple of its own events? If yes, would the events be sitsit or something completely different?
  6. Otherwise a great house, but could you share a donkey bridge in text form for the song I first saw on Athene’s song wiki, 12 Days of Binge Drinking?

En skål,
Emilia

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Hi Emilia, thank you for your questions!

Well, that would be the LutKu director, logically, or if you want to go about it in a funny way - it’s a sitsi-enjoyer who came up with a tricky question during your donkey bridge.
Replying to what I feel is the spirit of this question though, I do feel that the Master of Songmasters is a bit cumbersome and blant alternative to the Suurkurkku. Some options I have in mind are: “Songleader-master” or “Songmaster” (if we establish that lukkari=songleader in English), Big Throat or Grand Throat

Not sure if it’s my top three, but three songs I love for different reasons:

  • Hyvät ystävät/Dear friends. Even though you hear it on every sitsit, I value it quite a lot. You can look around, check out the people mood, and usually by how they sing the first song you can already gauge how much they want to sing, and account for it in your songleading. Besides, not all the sitsits outside of Otaniemi start with it, so it is also a DEAR FRIEND to me for .
  • Fast food and others - obviously for the choreography during the song. While I find the choreogpraphy of Pyöreän pöydän ritarit/Knights of the round table more amusing, I decided on this song as it’s one of the songs that usually makes its way to the Finnish-speaking sitsit not for being in English, but simply for being fun.
  • Ko-ko-ko-koskenkorva, for the abundance of continuations and ease of picking up those continuations even if you don’t know them, stemming from its repetitiveness

I feel like this balance can be found by looking for the songs which you want to sing not just for the sake of being in English, but because they are good. E.g. the Fast Food and Others I mentioned before is an example, recently I’ve also seen many people enjoy Beer Romance - a song coming from the last year’s song competition sitsit - being quite popular. Replacing some songs with their English equivalent can also be an option if the translation is good, or if the song is short, singing it in Finnish+English(+Swedish, Estonian). Of course the balance would still be shifted towards songs in Finnish for a primarily Finnish-speaking sitsit, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of songs in English as well.

All I have to say is that most recently I’ve done it three days ago, and it took me about a minute to come up with several options for our sitsit’s songleaders :sunglasses:

The committee traditionally organizes the singthrough of kovalevy, that of course shouldn’t go anywhere. In addition song hackathons can be organized, maybe even more than once a year? In-guild song competition would also be a good idea.

Heeei moooi, my name’s Kirill and I’m one of the songmasters of this forum topic. I want to share a story about my old classmate from school, who was an avid football enthusiast. He would never study, spending most of his time at school on his phone or chatting with others in class. But on the football field the guy really was a star: no one was equal to him in physical form nor in tactics. So, one day a big important tournament was approaching, and our guy had a slight problem - their team had a new trainer, who for some reason had a grudge agains him. They would always argue during the practices, some even say that the trainer was the one who wrote guy’s name sucks on the changing room’s wall… Anyway, to the point: the first day of the tournament comes, the first game, and right before the game the trainer says that the guy won’t play today, to save his energy for later matched… Well, fair, the first opposing team was fairly weak and they could’ve dealt with them without their best player. But then this repeats for the next day’s game, and for the other one… In the end the guy spent the whole tournament just sitting on the bench and drinking water… Some of his teammates got noticed by the bigger teams on that tournament, and got places there after it. but all he got was 12 days of bench drinking, which reminds me of a song…

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Hi Kirill, awesome that you’re applying for the best position in the guild!

A few more questions for you! Emilia asked most of the relevant ones, so these are slightly more lörs :~D

  • Do you think it’s best to pick songmasters from the pool purely randomly, or with some other process like I’ve done this year?

  • Is there something missing from Tietokilta’s song culture that you’d like to see? Should something be removed?

  • What’s your favorite unconventional place for singing or sitsit? What’s the weirdest you’ve seen?

  • What’s the best interjection you’ve heard during a donkey-bridge?

  • Omistatko metsää?

  • What’s the best drawing in your Kovalevy (or another songbook)? (pic please :D)

Edit: and one more thing came to mind:

  • Some guilds have traditionally organized an exchange event between the old and new songmasters. This might serve the purpose of e.g. both the practice sitsit and refreshment, and could of course include some other cool things (details typically kept secret from new songmasters)! Would you be interested in something like this already next year?

Best of luck for the elections!

–Petrus, Great Cucumber '24 and eternal song culture mouho

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Hello Kirill and great to see that guild activities interest you!!

There has been a lot of talk about the title Master of Songmasters or the Master of Master of Songmasters. The board draft proposal mentions

Do you think you could work a better english translation from this or something entirely different like Throat Goat :D

Good luck to the elections,
– Lasse

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Hi Petrus, after a bit of a busy week, it’s finally my pleasure to answer your questions!

I think we should account for a specific person’s situation when selecting the songleaders - e.g. if someone just joined the committee, or wasn’t able to songlead for a long time, perhaps it’s a good idea to pick them with increased chances. It also can be beneficial to make sure that songleaders of every sitsit include at least one more experienced one, but this should be accounted for only after ensuring that less experienced people have enough chances to songlead.

One more point - if there are some related events having likely similar audience, I think it’s worth trying to make sure they’re songlead by different people (example - I was picking songleaders both for the International Wonderland and Grand International sitsit, and, as they’re close in time and have the same target audience, it was important to try to have different people songleading).

As I said, I think this year the selection worked out quite well, so if I would end up being elected, I would definetely ask you to explain your process in details :D

Something that I really missed after coming from FK was a proper hymni for the guild. We have several ubiquitous songs, bittilaulu being probably the most well-known and easy to perform, but I feel like there’s not a song which is directly linked to the guild’s identity in the minds of both us and the wider Otaniemi community. Either adopting an existing song as the guild’s anthem or making a contest so people can write a new one can be nice, but I feel like the wish for it has to come from the guild’s crowd and not just be forced by one or couple of people responcible for something.

Didn’t have many sitsits in unusual places, so probably the most unconventional was a queue sitsit on alvari square. I liked how it was completely improvised in couple hours, with a lot of community spirit (and spirits)

The weirdest “sitsit” was probably one time when I was too “cheerful” after some sitsit, and didn’t feel like I already sang enough, so after coming home I sat in a chair and loudly sang some songs (might be that I started with Hyvät ystävät and ended with ken ompi and Ikuisen, making it a proper sitsit, I don’t remember). Surprisingly didn’t get any complaints from neighbours, but I’m sure they were not impressed.

One that came to my mind was something like: “What do you do in public bathrooms that makes you like them so much?”

If you get a court’s order, I’ll show you my tax card

The best something in my songbooks (which due to unfortunate circumstances don’t include kovalevy) is a piece of cabbage leaf that someone taped to the first page of my fiisut. It dried up nicely (unlike a piece of pasta attached on another page), and now serves both as a warm reminder of one of the best sitsit I went to and an easy way to identify my book. (picture coming as soon as I manage to retrieve my books from AK kiltis)
Edit:

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That is definetely a neat idea, and can serve as a first hangout for the committe. Something that comes to mind is a quest where people either get clues from the songs, or have to do some singing-related tasks in different places, all culminating with an actual sitsit, of course

There can be several issues:

  • The composition of the next year’s committee will probably not differ much from the last year’s one, at least at the start of the year
  • This year new people joined the committee regularly through the year

Based on this, I’d say we should think if it’s better to organize such event later through the year, or perhaps do something in this vein two times a year.

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Hi Lasse, thanks for your question!

I thought about it for a while, and have several options:

  • Herkkukurkku = Sweet Throat (don’t google it), Suurkurkku = Grand Throat
  • Herkkukurkku = Songleader, Suurkurkku = Songmaster
  • Herkkukurkku = Songleader/Songmaster, Suurkurkku = Grand Songleader/Songmaster

As you can see, I think the branding of the role is inevitably tied to how we brand the role of Herkkukurkku in English, so I’d say this should be discussed and resolved in the committee next year. After all, the issue is not that big, as far as we don’t call it the Gherkins committee anymore.

P.s: I don’t find Throat Goat a suitable name for the role, but it can make a great telegram nickname, if only it was available

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Also I guess it would be fair to reply to my own questions that I asked from Alpo:

I think there are several possible ways to help new songleaders

  • läsy/donkey bridges workshops
  • practice sitsits
  • maybe some “open mic” type sitsits, which are targeted at the people outside the ones who already joined the committee - to help stir up the interest in songleading

Whichever of those would end up being done, I think it’s important to organize it more that once a year, so more people can make it and have more opportunities to get into the committee.

You can always try to get attention with the gong/ollaan hilja/some crazy long and loud greeting, etc, and then hold it with a good story. That said, sometimes the house is inevitable and unstoppable, and then you can just relax and continue songleading as you wish - after all, if everyone’s having fun, why shouldn’t you?

Songs in English definetely belong in a purely Finnish-speaking sitsit, as there are songs you would put there not for being in English, but simply for being good songs (e.g. Paratrooper, Program in C, and one of my favourites - Beer Romance).
The opposite is also true - non-Finnish-speakers usually love to sing in Finnish even if they cannot understand a single word. A songleader can definetely enhance the experience by providing some explanation before or after the song.

Continuing one of my previous responces, “What’s your totem public bathroom”

My personal opinion - if there’s no word skål when drinking during the song, I skål in the end. My motivation is that skåling != just drinking, but also an act of communication with your peers. But the first rule of the sitsit is not to be a stickler about the rules of the sitsit, and most of all, no one should push anyone to drink, so that question should be left to everyone’s own discretion.

Answer to a very similar question in a previous post

:,: Make him sing this song all evening :,:
Make him sing this song all evening
Late night at the sitsit

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