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Written in fRoots issue 187/188, 1999
 

MARI BOINE BAND
Bálvvoslatjna - Room of Worship
Antilles 5590232 (1998)

JOHAN ANDERS BÆR
Guovssu
DAT DATCD-27 (1997)

Mari Boine has a great band, making the spacious, powerful cradle that supports her voice whether it’s confidentially intimate or carving a vapour-trail across the blue. Gjermund Silset’s bass pumps and throbs, Roger Ludvigsen’s electric guitars slither and hover broodingly, like Helge Norbakken’s inventive percussion all the more powerful for withholding, while Hege Rimestad’s fiddle and Carlos Quispe’s quenas weave within and occasionally above. It’s a tribute to their collective arranging skill that though the Mari Boine Band’s music has an instantly identifiable sound, and the songs often have similar overall shapes and aren’t readily distinguishable by non-speakers of North Sámi by their lyrics, there’s no sense of sameyness, simply a continuing process and an exciting, pulsing environment that carries the listener with it, particularly live.
      The material on Bálvvoslatjna includes a Nils-Aslak Valkeapää song-poem, a setting of a poem by Risten Sokki about his great-grandfather’s execution in the aftermath of an 1852 conflict in Kautokeino between Sámi and the Norwegian authorities. Boine’s voice, a hardness rising and cutting through breathiness, has the essence of joiku even though she doesn’t joik as such. There are aspects to both her music and joiku in sound and relation to the physical and social environment that evoke comparison with Native American chants; it’s natural that she should pick up on them, and here she sings a Sámi translation of the Buffy Sainte-Marie song Eagle Man/Changing Woman.

       Less known internationally than Boine or Wimme, but well worth the attention of those attracted by developmental approaches in Sámi music (as are, incidentally, Johan Sara Jr. and also the band Sancuari, both on the same label, and Ulla Pirttijärvi and Transjoik on Sweden’s Atrium/Warner), Johan Anders Bær’s approach is specifically joiku, traditional and new-made. After much work with Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, and solo joiking including an album accompanied throughout only by a gannet colony, Guovssu is a strong move to a rockier approach. The five musicians include Finnish Valkeapää regulars keyboardist Esa Kotilainen and saxist Seppo “Baron” Paakkunainen, with guitar, bass and drums, and their experience shows; there are drawings from jazz and some fearlessly full-on rock touches, but they follow the joiks’ freedom rather than imposing structures heavily on them.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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