Pekka Streng

Finnish musician (1948–1975)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (May 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions.

Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Wikipedia article at [[:fi:Pekka Streng]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fi|Pekka Streng}} to the talk page.
For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Pekka Valter Mattias Streng (April 26, 1948 in Sysmä – April 11, 1975) was a Finnish musician who had a notable influence on progressive rock in Finland.

Streng died of cancer at the age of 26. He knew about his disease throughout his career and the awareness of his forthcoming death can be heard from both his lyrics and music. During his short career he made two albums, which were published by Love Records. He wrote the songs and lyrics (in Finnish), and performed vocals and acoustic guitars on the albums. On the first one, Magneettimiehen kuolema (1970), he collaborated with Tasavallan Presidentti, a renowned Finnish prog band of the time. On Kesämaa (1972), various other noted musicians such as Olli Ahvenlahti and Hasse Walli took part in the studio sessions.

At the time of publication, Streng's records did not prove especially popular. Later, however, his music began gradually to attract more and more following. The two albums were first released on (one) CD in 1990. Due to demand, remastered CD editions of both albums (this time separately) were released in 2003.

Pekka Streng avoided publicity and only gave one interview to a music journalist during his life. Because of this, not much has been known about him as a person, which occasionally has helped form a somewhat mystified image of him.

In 2009, nearly 34 years after Pekka Streng's death was released a posthumous album called Unen Maa which was built upon old recovered tape recordings where Pekka sings and plays acoustic guitar. Studio musicians (Olympia-orkesteri) provided overdubs for the recordings.