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Written in
fRoots
issue 288, 2007
ADJÁGAS
Adjágas
Trust Me TMR 027 (2005)
VAJAS
Sacred Stone
Vaj VAJCD 601 (2007)
TRANSJOIK & SHER MIANDAD KHAN
Bewafá
Vuelie VUCD 803 (2005)
Having done a showcase last Womex, the band Adjágas fronted by young Sámi
joikers Sara Marielle Gaup and Lawra Somby seems to be picking up some gigs in
the UK, so presumably the showcase must have been more convincing than this
first album. While overall it’s an unpretentious, likeable enough listen, the
duo’s joiking is nothing special nor their duetting very together, and while it
has some nicely quirky accompaniment ideas, such as plunky banjo over crashing
snare, avoids new-joik clichés and is certainly not grandiose or overblown, and
some might well find it endearingly loose and simple, it feels more like the
tentative first album before it all perhaps comes together for the second, which
they’re currently recording.
Vajas’s Sacred Stone, which rose high in
the European World Music chart early this year, is much more fully-realised
affair, and uses a lot more production muscle and electronics. The joiker, Ánde
Somby, is more mature than Adjágas’s Sara Marielle and Lawra – in fact he’s
Lawra’s father. His joiking is deeper, more solidly founded at the guttural low
end and soaring into breathy falsetto. He’s accompanied by Kristin Mellem’s
acoustic and electric violins, cello and backing vocals and Nils Johansen’s
stick bass, keyboards, programming and ‘bongolaika’ (whatever that might be).
Synth and sampling technology and grainy,
primal-sounding joik, an essentially solo, unaccompanied vocal form from a
culture with virtually no instrumental tradition, have come together quite a lot
before, so much so as to create a definite genre. Following the pioneering
acoustic soundscapes of Seppo Paakkunainen and Esa Kotilainen working with
joiker Nils Aslak Valkeapää came the use of a combination of acoustic
instruments and often appealingly grainy electronic textures and beats in the
work of Wimme, Angelit, Ulla Pirttijärvi, Sančuari, Orbina, Frode Fjellheim Jazz
Joik Ensemble, Johan Sara Jr (his Boska CD is a particularly powerful and
tightly-constructed example) and others, as well as of course in that of Sápmi’s
most famous singer Mari Boine, who doesn’t joik as such. It’s getting harder to
come up with new approaches, but Sacred Stone has plenty of textural
contrast, muscle, melodic variety and originality in its arrangements, which
integrate well with the joiking rather than just surrounding it, and the bowed
strings provide beautiful serene moments in a rather fine album.
Incidentally, it does seem that releases on the
excellent and pioneering Kautokeino-based Sámi label
DAT, which include Johan
Sara’s Boska, the Sančuari album, the works of Nils Aslak Valkeapää and
many traditional unaccompanied joik recordings, haven’t reached a wider
audience, whereas some releases on other labels, even small ones and own-labels
such as these, have created something of a buzz abroad, presumably because of
greater publicity thrust than the rather shy DAT has mustered.
The aforementioned Frode Fjellheim Jazz Joik Ensemble, which with Saajve Dans
made a very fine and varied meeting between joik, technology and Miles Davis
style jazz, changed its name after that album to Transjoik. Several more albums
have followed, and for the newest one they headed south from Trondheim to the
heat of Lahore in Pakistan, to collaborate with qawwali singer Sher Miandad
Khan.
Much of Transjoik’s recent output, forsaking the characterful eccentricity of
approach of the early Jazz Joik Ensemble work, has been rather dominated by
programmed beats, and that’s what we get here too, thudding and tizzing at
varying paces but inexorably, in alliance with Tor Haugerud and Snorre Bjerck’s
percussion, under vocals that are largely Khan’s ecstatic qawwali with some
joiking from guitarist Nils-Olav Johansen (who is also a member of the dazzling
and wonderfully eccentric Norwegian band Farmers Market) and
keyboardist/programmer Fjellheim. Fundamental’s Aki Nawaz contributes some drums
and programming to the opening, more joikish track, and Transglobal Underground
sitarist Sheema Mukherjee adds lines and touches to a couple. Given the kinship
between joik and qawwali as personal vocal expression, this, with less emphasis
on beats, could have been much more special, but file, sadly, under
‘club/ambient’.
www.adjagas.net,
www.trustmerecords.com,
www.vajas.info,
www.transjoik.com,
www.vuelie.com
© 2007
Andrew Cronshaw
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