Songs of Independence -memory dataset

In autumn 2016, the Helsinki City Museum and the Music Archive carried out the Finland 100 centenary year project “Songs of Self-Identity”, which collected memories and images of songs that have been sung in different decades at school and in a tavern, church and home, gigs and concerts. The survey produced 275 responses with more than 1,500 song mentions and memories. In all decades of independence, more than 100 responses were received. The most memories were from the 1970s-80s, and the songs of the 1950s-60s were well remembered. In addition to singing memories, the respondents’ background information was collected: gender, age categorised every 10 years, education (primary, secondary, lower tertiary and tertiary level) and residence classified by region.