THE SÁMI (NORTHERN SOUTH SKOLT AND ÁNAR SÁMI) TRADITIONAL

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THE SÁMI (NORTHERN SOUTH SKOLT AND ÁNAR SÁMI) TRADITIONAL



THE SÁMI (NORTHERN, SOUTH, SKOLT

AND ÁNAR SÁMI) TRADITIONAL MUSIC

Marko Jouste


In the Northern Sámi musical culture is the yoiking (Northern Sámi juoigat) an essential and important part of traditional Sámi vocal art. Beside yoik, Sámis have a song tradition, shared with the neighbouring people. This includes Lutheran psalms and lullabies. Enormous amount of the Northern Sámi traditional musical have been recorded and preserved in Scandinavian sound archives.


The traditional yoik (Northern Sámi luohti) is an unaccompanied song with special kinds of social functions in the Sámi society. With a yoik, the Sámi performer refers to a large, traditionally orally transmitted historical knowledge of the Sámi society, concerning people, nature, animals, places, social events etc. A yoiker describes someone or something with the yoik as a whole. The individual, the object of a yoik literally owns his/her yoik. Usually the yoikers yoik someone else, it is considered not appropriate for someone to yoik his/her own yoik in public. In addition to people as objects of individual yoiks, there are many traditional yoiks of animals and places or they refer more generally to various elements of the Sámi society.


The modern era of the Northern Sámi music began in the 1960s. Nils-Aslak Valkeapää alias Áillohaš (1943–2001) is considered as the pioneer of the contemporary Sami music. He was the first internationally known musician who began to publish and record traditional yoiks and his own yoik inspired compositions by his own and with ensemble. Besides the musical work, Áillohaš was a poet, writer, painter and photographer. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed many music groups following the road that Áillohaš had opened. During the past three decades there has been a boom of modern Sámi music and dozens of new records are published every year. The two internationally most famous Northern Sámi artists are Mari Boine and Wimme Saari.


The musical culture of the Northern Sámi is internationally the best known of all Sámi cultures because of its visibility in the world music business beginning from the 1980s. Nowadays Sámi music can be heard on various music festivals and festivities, e. g. Riddu Riđđu (Olmmavaiggi, Norway), the Eastern Festival (Guovdageaidnu and Karašjok, Norway), the Winter Market of Jokkmokk (Sweden) and Ijahis Idja (Ánar, Finland).


The present cultural situation of the South Sámi in Sweden and Norway reveals a much stronger history of acculturation and assimilation with the Scandinavian culture than in the case of the Northern Sámis and this can be noticed in the musical culture as well. The genre of individual songs among the South Sámi is called vuelie.


The old Swedish Sámi vuelie-tradition can be heard trough the recordings made by Carl Tirén in the first decades of the 20th century and in the later recordings by the Swedish Radio. There exists also a notable collection of archive materials in the Swedish sound archives.


The most widely known of the Norwegian Southern Sámi artists is Frode Fjellheim. He has recorded solo albums as well as worked with a band called Transjoik.


In Finland, the traditional culture of the Skolt Sámis have in spite of forced migration during the Second World War been able to keep the traditional musical culture alive at least to some extent. There are several tradition bearers who have been active from the 1990s. Due to relatively large archived collections of Skolt Sámi materials, revitalisation of the song culture has begun.


The musical tradition the Skolt Sámis consists of several genres. In the centre of the Skolt Sámi musical tradition is the genre of vocally performed individual song called leu´dd. Other important forms of musical expression include both secular and religious songs, laments and instrumental music performed with accordions and harmonicas. Many Skolt Sámi songs and instrumental melodies have their stylistic origin in the neighbouring Russian or Karelian musical traditions. From the end of the 19th century onwards Skolt Sámis have adopted also many song types from the Karelian and Russian musical cultures e. g. Kadrill dances, Orthodox church song and ballads.


The leu´dd tradition has many principal similarities with the Northern Sámi yoik tradition, although the musical style of the leu´dd also has a relationship with Karelian runic songs and Russian ballads and bylinas. Generally, leu´dd is a form of narrative art, which expresses the oral history of the Skolt Sámis. Like the yoik, leu´dd is owned by its object. However, hearing one’s own leu´dd has been a cultural taboo in the traditional Skolt Sámi society. Leu´dds usually consist of lengthy, narrative texts. Although there are often very detailed descriptions of peoples lifestories and of commonly known social events, there are also many enigmatic elements (for the outsiders). Like in the yoiks, the meanings of leu´dd texts are fully revealed only for a person totally informed of the local culture.


During the recent years, the modern music has influenced the Skolt Sámi music as well. The first Skolt Sámi rock artist Tiina Sanila has had a wide success.


As a minority within a minority are the Ánar Sámi people, living in the district of Inari,

Finland. The Ánar Sámi individual song is called livđe. A written form of their language was developed during the 19th century and there are also survived livđe-texts from this period. There is also a vast collection of sound recordings of Ánar Sámi music from the first half of the 20th century.


Due to the influence of neighbouring Finnish and Northern Sámi cultures, the process of cultural change has been very strong among the Ánar Sámis and they have adopted some parts of Finnish song tradition and the Northern Sámi yoik tradition. Nevertheless, few artists, like Aune Kuuva and Ilmari Mattus have continued to perform music of Ánar Sámi. At the present moment, Ánar Sámi language has also transformed into a form of rap-music, performed by Ánar Sámi artist Amoc.


The Eastern Sámis in Kola peninsula were during the Soviet time forced to move from their original living areas to a village of Lovozero. This had a crucial impact to the local musical traditions. There are still lots of archive materials of Kola Sámi music collected mostly during 1970-es by the Russian and Estonian folklorist. Some of these field work materials are preserved in Estonian Folklore Archives in Tartu.

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Tags: (northern sámi, yoik (northern, sámi), (northern, south, traditional, skolt