HELSINKI, Finland — He is an unlikely rocker. And the dapper, graying Finnish academic ensconced in a downtown recording studio is making an unusual record. Its title: “Rocking in Latin.”
Jukka Ammondt, the Finnish doctor of philosophy who gained cult status last year with a quirky recording of Elvis Presley ballads translated into Latin, is putting the final touches on a new album.
This time it’s the hard stuff.
Ammondt and a professor colleague — who together sprang tunes like “Nunc hic aut Numquam” (It’s Now or Never) on an unsuspecting world — are about to rock out.
For example:
ù “Me humi proruas” (Well you can knock me down)
ù “Mi calces os” (Step on my face)
ù “Aut infames nomen animos” (Slander my name all over the place)
ù “Fac quidquid habes in animo” (Do anything that you wanna do)
ù “Sed, age, mel, nunc parce calceis” (But uh-uh honey, lay off of my shoes)
ù “Ne calces mi glaucos calceos” (Don’t you step on my blue suede shoes)
Teivas Oksala, the academic who translates the lyrics, says he had a slight problem here — the Romans had no suede. He also freely admits he is not overly enthusiastic about the whole idea, “Opera is about the lightest music that I like,” he said.
Ammondt said Oksala thought he had heard of Elvis before they made their first Elvis-in-Latin record (“The Legend Lives Forever in Latin”) last year, but he had certainly never listened to any of his songs.
It all started with a double-dare between the two scholars, who first teamed up in an outlandish bid to get a Latin version of some popular Finnish songs on vinyl for the pope.
Now they aim to release their new record in early January 1997 as a fitting tribute to Elvis in the year marking the 20th anniversary of his death.
Ammondt, who suavely sports an auburn silk cravat and looks nothing like the late Elvis, is not giving away everything about the planned record, but said it will contain “Nunc distrahor” (All Shook Up) and “Taddeus ursus” (Teddy Bear), as well as the classic “Glauci calcei” (Blue (Suede) Shoes).
Frivolous as the project may seem, for Ammondt it is part of a deeply personal, even serious, passage through hard times. He is coy about his exact age, but says he is about 10 years junior to Elvis, who was born in 1935. Singing has been a way for him to come to terms with a painful divorce eight years ago.
“To me, Latin is the language of rebirth,” said Ammondt, who makes a living as a senior lecturer in literature at the University of Jyvaskyla, in central Finland.
“It constantly follows humanity and never dies,” he said.
After his divorce, he sought consolation in melancholy music — especially the peculiar brand of Finnish tango that is hugely popular among older Finns.
Latin came into the picture through Oksala: He had heard Ammondt singing the tango and said he would translate the tunes into Latin if Ammondt dared send a recording to the pope.
The dare came off a few years ago, in an album called “Tango Triste Finnicum” (The Sad Finnish Tango), which Finnish diplomats were eager to send to the Vatican on Ammondt’s behalf. The pontiff graciously sent Ammondt an honorary medal, which Ammondt says helped end sniping in academic circles about his offbeat hobby.
“I’ve never regarded Latin as a language of authority — but rather as a liberating force,” he said. “Elvis liberated people and was a rebel in his time. I, too, want to free people.”
Ammondt sees himself as a respectful disciple of the king of rock ‘n’ roll, and he is no pelvis-pumping impersonator. “I’ve never tried to imitate Elvis. Besides, Elvis sang the songs so well in English, why should I try to copy him?”
Ammondt grew up in a remote rural area and first sang Elvis’s songs in a boyhood band in the 1960s, ordering Elvis records through the bookshop in his home town of Kauttua.
Now he is limbering up for such immortal lines as “Amo nunc, sed distrahor” (“I’m in love, I’m all shook up”) or even “Ubi sum, ibi non sum, no sum non” — more familiar to the rest of the world as the challenging “Mm, mm, oh yeah, yeah!”
Ammondt has already given Elvis fans a sample of his new sound. In August he sang for thousands at an Elvis conference in Oxford, Miss., a performance described by the local newspaper as “downright surreal.”
Now he says he has had enough of melancholy for the time being, and the rock ‘n’ roll project is part of a transition to a happier phase of life.
“Although life is a journey towards the grave, it is also a great joy and a gift,” said the singing, thinking Finn.