Mari Boine and the New Joik Revival

In world music today, the traditional music of Sapmi, and its contemporary variants, are occupying a place of increasing prominence. This music, known as Joik or Joikh, is a vocal form with a long history (including a long period of prohibition and scapegoating as "the devil's music"), and plenty of scope for improvisation built into it, whether or not actual lyrics are used. Performers and bands throughout Scandinavia, Saami, or not, are employing this vocal form in their music; and newer forms, known by such terms as "technojoik" are springing up all the time. One singer from Norwegian Sapmi's north coast, Mari Boine, is one of the innovators within this tradition, and one of those responsible for plucking it away from obscurity. She was also virtually my first introduction to Scandinavian music at large, and I am primarily of Norwegian and Swedish ancestry.

Until several years ago, I knew very little of traditional Scandinavian music; and was mentally afflicted with stereotypes of rather dull waltzes played on fiddle, piano and accordion. So, world music buff that I am, I continued roaming musically around Africa and South Asia, hoping one day to discover native Scandinavian music that would excite and inspire me. At the same time, I began experimenting with improvised chant styles, mixing influences from Hebridean Gaelic mouth music and the powwow-inspired chants that Buffy Ste.-Marie used to enhance her contemporary Native American ballads.

It was while watching the opening ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, that my opening into Scandinavian music finally revealed itself. One of the first performances of the standard-setting Norwegian ceremonies was a full-throated Saami joik by vocalist Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (actually from Finnish Sapmi). I had heard a little previously about joik singing, but this was the first live performance of a joik I had ever heard; and I sat in front of my television in my little basement room in Seattle, staring and listening to this singer, completely transfixed. This was an indigenous music of my own ancestors' part of Europe, a form of singing that seemed exotic, but oddly familiar at the same time.

Not long after that, as I read issues of Folk Roots magazine and purchased world music tapes and CDs on the British Real World music label, I began seeing references to a woman singer from Samiland or Sapmi by the name of Mari Boine Persen (she now goes by Mari Boine, without the prior surname). She was described as a joik vocalist as well, though her music incorporates elements of many indigenous traditions from across the world: she herself plays an African djembe drum, in addition to native Saami shamanic drums; and members of her band include instruments from Africa and Latin America in their arsenal. Once I found a cassette of her Real World release "Gula Gula" in the local Tower Records store, curiosity got the better of me, and I purchased a copy.

A very interesting thing happened to me within the first few seconds of the title track, an appeal to contemporary listeners to heed the advice of our foremothers against harming Mother Earth. Boine began the song with a joik-syllable passage before launching into the first verse. Immediately upon hearing this passage, something began stirring way down, deep in my guts, that had been buried and slumbering for most of my life. Whatever it was, it seemed to jump out of its sleep, listen to the joik, and exclaim, "Hey, I KNOW that sound!" The rest of the songs on this album simply reinforced and built upon the effect activated by the first song. I don't know if I have Saami ancestors or not. My Norwegian ancestors came mainly from the south coast, the wrong end of the country to have had much contact with their north coast Saami neighbors. My Swedish ancestors (on my mother's side) were based a bit farther to the north in their homeland, and would have stood a better chance of interaction with people within Swedish Sapmi, and with those Saami people who ventured south on commercial routes. Still, this music pulled at me in a very deep, grounding sort of way that, for example, Japanese koto music has not affected me to date.

Mari Boine was raised in a conservative Protestant religious tradition which emphasized hymn-singing and, unfortunately, frowned upon the Saami people's own music and culture. She and many in her generation, however, have begun challenging their internalized oppression and feelings of cultural inferiority; and the joik song tradition, indigenous spirituality, and other suppressed elements of the Saami culture have at last begun to reassert themselves. Boine has used the spiritually healing effects of her people's music to facilitate her reconciliation to her native cultural traditions; and she and her multiethnic band have embarked on a mission to bring a similar healing to oppressed peoples and cultures worldwide. Their music includes drones and solos by eclectic violinist Hege Rimstad, African and Latin American drums and stringed instruments, guitars, hammered dulcimer, and shamanic frame drums. However, the focus is always on Boine's passionate, soaring voice, as she sings verses and choruses, chants repetitive phrases, layers wordless passages over the lyrics, and segues into entrancing joik themes with hints of Native American powwow singing and other influences.

Through it all, I am listening and dancing in spirals across my floor, clockwise and then counter-clockwise, while my arms wander in snakelike motions as the music directs me. I have gone on to explore the traditional musics of Norway, Sweden and Finland at last, largely under Boine's influence. I listen to albums of hardingfele music by Ann-Bjorg Lien, south coast ballads by Kirsten Braten Berg (who hails from Arendal, my grandfather's hometown), and Swedish folk-rock by Vasen and Hedningarna, among others. I slip into the music of these artists and move with it now, as well, doing the European shamanic equivalent of the Lakota Sioux Ghost Dance--dancing with my own ancestors, instead of playing the African or Native American wannabe. I have yet to visit Norway or Sweden in person, just as I have not yet seen Mari Boine sing and dance live. Yet I feel, nonetheless, well on my way to a homecoming.