Photo: AJ Savolainen
Kielipankki – The Language Bank of Finland offers a comprehensive set of resources, tools and services in a high-performance environment. Inka Rantakallio tells us about her research on Finnish female and non-binary rap artists.
I am Inka Rantakallio, PhD, a researcher and lecturer in musicology at the University of Helsinki. Until the end of July 2025, I worked on the Suoni research association’s ”Music Scholars in Society” project. I am the editor-in-chief of Mene ja tiedä, an online magazine published by the Young Academy Finland, and one of the three editors-in-chief of Musiikki journal.
From 2021 to 2024, I was funded by the Research Council of Finland as a postdoctoral researcher. My project focused on Finnish female and non-binary rap artists and themes of gender, feminism, race, and whiteness. I was interested in how feminism, gender, and race/ethnicity affect artist identity and artistic expression, and how the norm of whiteness affects Finnish rap music. My interest stemmed strongly from my own background, as I have worked as a music journalist and DJ alongside my research career and have thus become acquainted with and performed alongside several female and non-binary rappers.
My research data consisted of music and music videos, participatory observation at concerts, and artist interviews. My project produced information on how female and non-binary rappers are carving out space in the rather heterosexist and male-dominated hip hop genre, and how white and non-white artists negotiate race and gender norms in relation to Finnish and international hip hop culture. My project also brought visibility to non-male artists and the norm of whiteness, which had previously received very little attention in hip hop research. I also critically reflected on my own position as an ”insider” in my research articles published on the project.
This Research Council of Finland project was the first project focusing on Finnish female and non-binary rappers, so I wanted to deposit the interviews produced in the project for possible future research projects. The Language Bank offers reliable long-term storage for interview transcripts.
Rantakallio, Inka (2021). Femcees Finland, NiceRap ja vastatilojen voima: Suomiräpin naisten vertaisverkostojen historiaa. Etnomusikologian Vuosikirja 33: 67–93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23985/evk.103019
Rantakallio, Inka (2023) Who Is Heard and Who Gets to Belong in Hip-Hop? The Counterspaces of Women and Gender Minority Rappers in Finland. In P. Dale, P. Burnard, & R. Travis (eds.), Music for Inclusion and Healing in Schools and Beyond: Hip Hop, Techno, Grime, and More. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 356–382.
Rantakallio, Inka (2025). Researcher as Minority and Majority: Hip Hop Feminist Epistemologies. In K. Ramstedt, S. Välimäki, K. Ahlsved, S. Mononen (eds.), Music, Research and Activism: Prospects and Projects in Northern Europe. Bristol: Intellect, 17–28.
Rantakallio, Inka & Andrea Dankić (2025). Ethnography and Researcher Positionality – Reflections on Feminist Fieldwork in Hip Hop Scenes in Sweden and Finland. IASPM@journal 15(1): 133–150. DOI: 10.5429/2079.387(2025)v15i1.9en
Rantakallio, Inka (2025). ‘Being a woman is the only thing considered questionable. But not the whiteness.’ Gender and race in normatively white hip hop scenes. Global Hip Hop Studies 6(1): 21–41. DOI: 10.1386/ghhs_00101_1
The FIN-CLARIN consortium consists of a group of Finnish universities along with CSC – IT Center for Science and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus). FIN-CLARIN helps the researchers of Social Sciences and Humanities to use, refine, preserve and share their language resources. The Language Bank of Finland is the collection of services that provides the language materials and tools for the research community.
All previously published Language Bank researcher interviews are stored in the Researcher of the Month archive. This article is also published on the website of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki.
