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Written in fRoots issue 256, 2004
 

JOHAN SARA & GROUP
Boska
DAT DATCD-36 (2003)

Just when combining Sámi joik with technology seemed to be played out, along comes this. Not ambient, not dance, not pretty, but harshly, explosively full-blooded and wrought with a command of the medium that’s right inside the twists and turns of the joiking rather than overlaid on it.
      I remember seeing Sara and group live at Umeå festival at least ten years ago, and they were promising and no-nonsense even then. In 1995 came their impressive but little-known album Ovcci Vuomi Ovtta Veaiggis. In the early days Sara played guitar, and the band in effect was doing joik-rock, but with Boska, on which the group line-up has changed completely, he forsakes guitar, working just with his joiks, Geir Lysne’s wind instruments, Knut Aalefjær’s percussion and Erik Halvorsen’s synth. The use of rhythms and textures is extremely sophisticated, ever-changing with no clichés, been-there beats nor easy ways out. The very strong production is by Sara and Lysne, and it must have helped that the recording and mixing engineer was Reidar Skår, synthist and programmer with Nils Petter Molvær, Karl Seglem and others.
      Though Sara is Sámi he came to joiking relatively late, after a musical education centred on guitar. His joiking developed with an awareness of the possibilities of instrumental settings; nevertheless it is very fully-formed, real joik, of which he has great command and uses a range of vocal sounds that make him sound like several different people, including occasional flashes of the styles of other well-known joikers. On a couple of tracks Buryat throatsinger Sayan Zhambalov joins him, his guttural grinding and ringing harmonic sounds a natural companion to the joiking, and in Áilen to the soaring hard-edged female voice of Erzhena Zhambalova.
      This is no feeble striving for illusory dance-remix success, but something all its own, full of ideas, extremely present-day and rich with real joik culture. Magnificent.


© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw



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