About
The Saami artist Mari Boine from Norway has helped renew the proud musical traditions of the far north.
The word joik invokes immediate connotations: music from the North Calotte area, the folk music of the Saami people in Norway, Finland and Sweden.
New generations of musicians and composers have emerged in recent decades to renew Saami music, using it as a the basic sound for radical new experiments.
Mari Boine is one of the leading lights on the new Saami music scene.
Boine’s music defies facile attempts at labelling. It is based on joik but the complimentary stylistic ingredients include African rhythms, world music and rock-funk.
This description makes it sound like a musical pick’n’mix because language has a tendency to sound clumsy and generalised whenever you try to grasp and describe Mari Boine's music properly – a bit like trying to repair a watch with mittens on. Her art is so relevant because it reveals new ways of navigating the musical landscape.
Mari Boine upholds Saami tradition. Saami language and culture serve as the basic backdrop for her music. This traditional musical language also serves as a springboard to something non-traditional, however, to a norm-bursting, international music. Her lyrics are endowed with a poetic quality that carries the idiom to a certain extent.
For a more in-depth understanding of joik as epitomised by Boine, you have to look at it from a historical perspective. The earliest joik songs were unaccompanied and in older Saami music the only accompaniment was the drum. The drum also plays a central role in Boine's music, as a basic beat solidly anchored in Saami tradition.
Two technical terms characterise her music: ostinato and pentatonic. The former is a musical starting point with a figure that is repeated throughout the piece. It can be varied and solos may be played over the recurring pattern. The latter is a five-tone scale used in many folk songs and which often serves as the basic scale in joik.
The repeated patterns with heavy electronic bass and insistent bass drumming bestows a ritual air upon her music – the listener feels almost like a member of a cult. For the traditional listener who seeks progress, it is to be found in the variations within rigid musical frameworks.
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