Last year, I shared with you a song by Resirkulert – a rock group from the north of Norway, in which Emil Kárlsen is the vocalist. – That song is one of the more popular songs by Resirkulert and, as far as I’m aware, is their only song in Sámi. It is a joik for Emil’s grandfather. Well, I’ve been listening to Resirkulert for quite some time, but only recently have I found also that Emil Kárlsen has also released some solo music, and collaborated with other famous Sámi musicians. It’s always a treat for me to come across new, good Sámi music, and I’ve been enjoying it very much. I was wondering what song by him I could share, but in the end I decided that, since I have already shared a joik of Emil’s grandfather, it would make sense to share one of his grandmother now. And it is also one of my most favourite songs by him.
I have mentioned it several times on here how one of the things that I like most about the Sámi joik is how very well it blends with all sorts of contemporary genres, better than any other type of folk music that I’m familiar with. ANd I’ve shared with you guys songs that blend joik together with such genres as electronic music, pop, hip-hop or bluegrass. Today it’s time for a fusion of joik with jazz.
This joik tune comes from an album called Árbi, which means heritage in Sámi, the result of a collaboration between Sámi singer Ellen A. Oskal and jazz musician, composer and guitarist Frode Barth, featuring various other jazz musicians. It includes joiks of various people, who I believe must be Ellen A. Oskal’s ancestors or family. Despite I’m not really a fan of jazz, I do like this album. This particular piece, as you can figure out from the title, is the joik of someone called Sara Helena Bergstrøm Oskal, and it also features French drummer Manu Katché, Danish trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, and Norwegian saxophone player Trygve Seim.
Since recently I’ve shared quite a few Sámi songs, why not share another one today. I heard this song yesterday for the first time on NRK P1, and I really liked it right away. Agnete, who is also known as Agnete Johnsen, Agnete Johnsen Saba or Agnete Saba, is a Sámi singer from Norway, who might be known to non-Norwegian audience for representing her country in 2016 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Icebreaker.
This song is about her love for her mother tongue, North Sámi. I found some Norwegian translation of it where the title is translated as soft language, but I have no way of verifying it.
Ok guys so as you know from the previous post which I reblogged from Watching The Swedes today is national day of the Sami people. Not only in Sweden, to be exact, but as it seems also in all the other countries where Sami people are a recognised minority. So, I’d like to celebrate this fact with some music, and I was looking forward to it for quite a while as it hasn’t been much of Sami music on my blog so far, just a couple of songs. On my last blog, the song with which I celebrated the national day of Sami people was Sofia Jannok’s song called “My Land”, and for a moment I intended to share this one here too especially that Sofia iS Swedish, and I know a lot of her music and like it, even if I don’t agree with all of her views wholeheartedly but that’s not what music is all about so I don’t care. But earlier today I decided it’s time to make some new Sami music discoveries, and not only in folk music, joiks and such, but generally, all the music that has been made all over Lapland. ANd I found lots of interesting things, just now in the last couple of hours. So you can definitely say that Sami music is a rare, very locally oriented, niche thing, but you can’t say that there is little of it, there is a whole lot of it. Well certainly not as much as say American music, but there is a lot of it out there. And therefore I decided on something else, not from Sofia Jannok’s repertoire. I was thinking that maybe I should pick something more, hm, folksy, traditional, more joiking even, but after some more thinking I believe that this is the best choice I could make.
Kevin Boine is from the Norwegian part of Lapland and if I understood well what I read, he is from Finnmark himself. It didn’t escape my attention that he shares his surname with another Sami singer – a worldwide famous one who is even somewhat acclaimed here in Poland and has fans here – Mari Boine. Well it turns out that they are relatives just as I thought. Although Mari’s style is quite eclectic, it’s still rather different from Kevin’s, because his music is something between hiphop and dance, it seems to be very popular in Norway now, and he has made a few hits. Most of his music is in Norwegian, but he started off in a Norwegian singing competition with a rap in Sami.
As for this song, it has two versions as you can see, one is in Norwegian and another one is in Sami, and as far as I can tell knowing only very small bits and pieces of Norwegian and even smaller of Sami, they’re translations of each other. I picked this song because I think it’s really suitable in a way. One of the aims why I generally make this whole song of the day thing on my blog is that I want to share music that people might not be aware of even existing, like Sami music for example, I just want to spread the awareness that there is more than just the hits you can hear in every single mainstream radiostation across the world. And so my aim today is the same, to share with people that Sami people also have their own music and that it’s good, to promote it as much as I can in one post and on my blog that isn’t that very famous. 😀 And I feel like this song could be perfectly usable if someone was to make a commercial advertising Finnmark, wanting to promote it for the tourists, hahahaha. That was just my first association, it would do really well in this function! So I think it could be also used to promote the Sami culture a bit in general, on this special day of theirs. And it’s so catchy, a real earworm, or a brainworm as I like to say. I think it’s very likeable. ALso it’s cool that it has two versions, pity though that the Sami version seems to only be available on Spotify. SO here are the two versions of it.
So here’s Jon Henrik Fjällgren’s and Aninia’s song from Melodifestivalen. 🙂 Honestly I think “The Reindeer Herder’s Joik” is much better, and this one seems like made much more for mainstream, which it surely is, but I still like it and it’s cool. While Sami language is on my list of languages to learn and I love it dearly, I have no idea whether indeed “Eatneme gusnie jeenh dåaroeh” means the same as Swedish “En Värld Full Av Strider”, as I can only utter a few words in Sami, but at least I know for sure that “En Värld Full Av Strider” means a world full of battles. So here it is.
This is such a beautiful joik. If there are some people who don’t know what joik is, it’s such a way of singing, and a type of song, which is traditional for Lappland and Sami culture. I guess that since I first heard Jon Henrik Fjälgren’s joiking he is one of my most favourite Sami singers, be them joiking or not joiking, traditional or not, there aren’t many Sami singers whatsoever, or at least not very many that I know of. I think his joiks are particularly moving. But this one is my absolute favourite by him, I don’t even know why, but it’s just so stunningly beautiful! Isn’t it?!
And as for Fjällgren, his story is also very interesting. He was born i Cali in Colombia, lived in an Indian village for some time, and was moved to an orphanage from there. Later he was adopted by a Sami family from Sweden and lived with them in Mittodalen. He came to prominence when he took part in a Swedish talent competition in 2014. He also took part last year in Melodifestivalen (which is a Swedish contest during which the singer who will represent the country on Eurovision is selected) in 2017, with Aninia, and I will show you the song they sang together in another post. That’s what I know about him from both English
Recently, I’ve showed you a lot of Scandinavian – Swedish and Norwegian – music, often some pretty new things. Let’s stay in Scandinavia, but have something slightly more exotic today.
IsÁk is a Sami band – from Norwegian Lapland – and they combine Sami joik – Sami traditional singing technique, joik is also a name of song sung in such a style and generally this genre – with modern, kinda synth sounds. Their lyrics, so far, as they don’t have any full length album as of yet, are in English, Norwegian or Sami. The band has gained quite a lot of attention in the Sami environment and on the modern Sami music scene.
The name of the name of the band, as I assume, comes from the leader and vocalist’s surname, she is ELla Marie Hætta Isaksen.
As far as I know, they only have a few songs released until now, and I must say that I generally quite like them but I find this song the best, I feel like the rest isn’t as good as this one, even this song is for the most part in English. Though as you will be able to hear, there is also a part in Sami, and with joik too. So here it is and I hope you’ll like it too.
So the song for yesterday is by Hanna Nutti, who is a Sami girl from Sweden, based in Kiruna. She started her career as a contestant in the Swedish version of “Idol”. I really like this song.
I still haven’t written about my favourite music from Lapland, so today it will finally happen. I love Sami language and I love Sami music. The song I want to show you is an effect of colaboration between brilliant Maxida Märak – singer, actress and human rights activist from Swedish Lapland, and Dowhill Bluegrass Band, who are a Swedish band making bluegrass music. Maxida is good both at doing contemporary music as well as traditional Sami yoik. She is particularly interested in Sami people’s rights. Actually, Sami people have quite a lot of famous activists, but that’s no wonder for me, their rights definitely seem underestimated by some. “The Mountain” is actually a cover, but Maxida made it a protest song. It is a protest against exploiting Lapland’s teritory and it’s resources and against threatening the industry of reindeer herding by opening mines in the areas where these animals are grazing. It is actually surprising how Maxida – always associated with hip hop and club music and Sami yoiks – found herself in bluegrass. I am not a big fan of bluegrasss, like I have many more favourite genres, but I really like the album that is the effect of Maxida’s cooperation with Downhill BB.
My Inner MishMash 