Hello carol c!
I'm sure AKS can give you a pretty good answer to your questions as well, but here is my little rave!
I started with Irish tunes about 123 years ago and then, a few years ago was picked up and whisked away by Finnish music!!
I play the tunes on Bouzouki and Mandolin, I've learnt most of them from cd. My favoirite cd is full of AMAZING TUNES and they're very easy to pick up, really uncluttered playing, the cd is by a band called
* "Ottopasuuna" and the album is selftitled. Ottopasuuna's other album is "suokaasua"(swamp gas). it's also great but I find the other one has more appealing tunes(they are older too).
My second favourite band is
* 'pirnales' I only have 1 of their cd's -"parasta ennen" (best before). It's a very different style, but amazing as well and full of killer tunes for learning.
There are other bands like
* "troka", I have their music but they're not my favourite tunes, very interesting though.
* "Jpp" are the legends, kind of similar sound to Troka, I don't own cds though(have to get some)
* Varttina do some great tunes but usually only 1 per album (with the exception of the first one which has lots
As far as buying them,,The cheapest way for me has been from Amazon. I'm in Australia but it's stil cheaper for me to get European cds from usa, no retail markup. although you might have trouble with getting ottopasuuna from amazon. Not always the cheapest but the best range of Finnish music is of course, 'Digelius music', in Helsinki. You can buy from them online they ship internationally, they're friendly people and they DO have both ottopasuuna albums and the 3 pirnales ones............it's all well worth the expense and trouble, I just wish I knew more people who played these etherial, nordic sounds..
Moocowpoo